.....On account of you I hear an evil report among strangers. My enemies examine all that I do; if I break wind they smell it at Rome. If in drink you should do some harm, do you not know how you would brand me and this house and the town and the Evangelic faith? Other men when drunk are happy and mild, as my father was; they sing and joke, but you fall into a fury. Such men ought to flee drink like a poison, for it is a deadly poison to such natures. Men of better humor may indulge more freely in liquor.
..........— Martin Luther (1483 – 1546), German priest, professor of theology, "Father of the Protestant Reformation." Quoted in
The life and letters of Martin Luther (1911) by Preserved Smith (1880-1941). Smith writes that it was said by Luther as a warning to a young relative, Hans Polner, who was a frequent abuser of alcohol and who displayed an angry temperament whenever he drank. Martin Luther lived in Wittenberg at the time, and this may be the source for the more famous version of that quote, "If I break wind in Wittenberg, they smell it in Rome." It is quoted that way in a
1957 Time magazine book review of
The Reformation by Will Durant, but as no source was mentioned in that article, I consider the comment by the Time reviewer to be mere gossip. In
An Introduction to the History of Psychology (6th Edition, March 11, 2008), the author, B. R. Hergenhahn, quotes it with the phrase "in Wittenberg" as well, but he sources the quote to page 355 of the Preserved Smith book, which makes no mention of that phrase. I have no idea where Preserved Smith obtained the quote.