One of the great benefits of organised religion is that you can be forgiven your sins, which must be a wonderful thing. I mean, I carry my sins around with me, there's nobody there to forgive them.
Kingsley AmisRead
When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the pretentiousness in wine criticism and how it affects the speaker's perception.
Kingsley Amis humorously critiques the snobbish terminology often used in wine reviews. He illustrates how the language and attitudes of critics can influence one's feelings about a wine, creating a sense of discomfort—especially when the descriptors used seem overly complicated or pretentious. The mention of simpler fruit flavors serves to emphasize the absurdity of such complex critiques.
Themes
WineCriticismHumorPretentiousnessLanguageSnobbery
In practice
Example use cases
During a wine tasting event, I shared this quote to lighten the mood about wine descriptions.
More from Kingsley Amis
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Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.
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He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
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