Cigar vs Pipe

"If I cannot smoke in heaven, then I shall not go."
-- Mark Twain

"Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp and playing my Hohner harmonica. - Lincoln

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~ Cigar and Pipe aficionados have created a culture all their own and have changed smoking into an art form.

~ With all the brands, textures, styles of the stogies and pipe, taste and aroma, along with the many accessories (paraphernalia) this love smokers acquire resembles the love, care and indulgence fine wine aficionados share. Both have an acquired taste.

~ Pipe smoking has a nearly 3000 year old history. Way longer than cigars. Initially, pipe smoking was a religious ritual. This can be testified by reliefs found on ancient Mayan ruins. Pipe smoking was reserved only for the holy priests. ~The largest expansion of pipe smoking occurred roughly 100 years later in the 16th century England who was establishing their American colonies. ~ Possibly the next most popular pipe smoking country other than England was in Holland. The quint town of Gouda reached fame by making clay pipes. In the 17th century roughly 500 or so shops were making the clay pipes to export all over Europe. ~ Chinese and Mongolian tradition, In 19th century, smoked pipes with a small metal tube. This tradition was taken from the smoking of their opium, where the small metal head of the pipe was ideal for securely holding the resiny opium bead.

~ Cigars, it is believed, probably was first produced in Spain, and then quickly smoldered into other European countries. Though many different countries manufacture cigars today, Cuban cigars have long been highly regarded as one of the most flavorful and rich. This is due to regional micro-climates that produce the highest quality of tobacco, not to mention the skill of the country's cigar makers. Other countries produce significant amounts of tobacco and cigars like Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Ecuador, Cameroon, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, as well as the USA. Why have cigars caught on so fast, by so many? Some speculate that the cigar's main attraction is in the way it is manufactured. High quality cigars are wrapped by hand and undergo a lengthy process of fermentation and aging (much like wine), resulting in subtle flavors and textures. The best cigars will provide no smoky aftertaste what so ever. (I have yet to find one)

"Cigar smoking knows no politics. It's about the pursuit of pleasure, taste, and aroma."
-- Anonymous

"A good cigar is like tasting a good wine: you smell it, you taste it, you look at it, you feel it - you can even hear it. It satisfies all the senses."
-- Anonymous

"Eating and sleeping are the only activities that should be allowed to interrupt a man's enjoyment of his cigar."
-- Mark Twain

"Given the choice between a woman and a cigar, I will always choose the cigar."
-- Groucho Marx

"A good Cuban cigar closes the door to the vulgarities of the world."
-- Franz Liszt, Composer

"If I had taken my doctor's advice and quit smoking when he advised me to, I wouldn't have lived to go to his funeral."
-- George Burns

"The only way to break a bad habit was to replace it with a better habit."
-- Jack Nicholson

"I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgement in all human affairs."  -Albert Einstein, 1950

"Nowhere in the world will such a brotherly feeling of confidence be experienced as amongst those who sit together smoking their pipes."  - The Results and Merits of Tobacco, 1844, Doctor Barnstein

"The fact is, squire, the moment a man takes to a pipe, he becomes a philosopher. It's the poor man's friend; it calms the mind, soothes the temper, and makes a man patient under difficulties. It has made more good men, good husbands, kind masters, indulgent fathers, than any other blessed thing on this universal earth."   -"Sam Slick, the clockmaker"

"A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan."  -Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

"A pipe is to the troubled soul what caresses of a mother are for her suffering child."  -Indian Proverb

"The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected..." -William Makepeace Thackeray

"May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest."   -Charles Lamb

"When you pray with this pipe, you pray for everything in the universe, and everything in the universe prays with you."   -Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglalas

"I have some friends, some honest friends, and honest friends are few;
My pipe of brier, my open fire, A book that's not too new."    -Robert Service