Quotes about food

12 real sentences about food, left by people who came before us, from 5th century BC to 1906, oldest first. Each one has its source and the original text.

Confucius 孔子

5th century BC · Lu, Spring and Autumn China · His pupils' record of the Master's habits at table

He did not dislike his rice finely polished, nor his raw meat cut thin.

食不厭精，膾不厭細。

Analects, book 10 (Xiang Dang)

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The first bowl wets my lips and throat. The second breaks my lonely gloom. The third searches my dry insides and finds only five thousand scrolls of writing. The fourth brings a light sweat, and all the wrongs of my life go out through my pores. The fifth clears my flesh and bones. The sixth puts me in touch with the immortals. The seventh I cannot drink at all: I only feel a cool breeze rising softly under both my arms.

一椀喉吻潤，兩椀破孤悶。三椀搜枯腸，唯有文字五千卷。四椀發輕汗，平生不平事。盡向毛孔散，五椀肌骨清。六椀通仙靈，七椀喫不得也。唯覺兩腋習習清風生

"Written in Haste to Thank Imperial Censor Meng for Sending New Tea"

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Su Shi 蘇軾

1085 · Song China

Beyond the bamboo, two or three sprays of peach blossom; when the spring river warms, the ducks are the first to know. Mugwort covers the ground and the reed shoots are short: just the season when the pufferfish come upstream.

竹外桃花三兩枝，春江水暖鴨先知。蔞蒿滿地蘆芽短，正是河豚欲上時。

"On Huichong's Painting of a Spring River at Evening"

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Su Shi 蘇軾

1096 · Song China · Exiled to Huizhou, in the far south

If I could eat three hundred lychees every day, I would not refuse to be a man of the far south for good.

日啖荔支三百顆，不辭長作嶺南人。

"Eating Lychees," the second poem, in the Complete Song Poems

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Samuel Pepys

September 4, 1666 · London, England · The third day of the Great Fire of London, with the flames coming near his house

And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.

Diary

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Sor Juana Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

1691 · Mexico City, New Spain · After listing what she found out while frying eggs and boiling down syrup

But, my lady, what can we women know, if not the philosophies of the kitchen? Lupercio Leonardo said it well: one can perfectly well philosophize and cook the supper. And I often say, seeing these little things: if Aristotle had cooked, he would have written a great deal more.

Pero, señora, ¿qué podemos saber las mujeres, sino filosofías de cocina? Bien dijo Supercio Leonardo: Que bien se puede filosofar y aderezar la cena. Y yo suelo decir, viendo estas cosillas: Si Aristóteles hubiera guisado, mucho mas hubiera escrito.

"Reply to Sor Filotea"

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Alexander Pope

1714 · London, England · Twickenham · The scene in which the Baron, having drunk his coffee, thinks of a way to snip off a lock of the lady's hair

Coffee, (which makes the politician wise, And see thro' all things with his half-shut eyes) Sent up in vapours to the Baron's brain New Stratagems, the radiant Lock to gain.

The Rape of the Lock, canto 3

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Charles Dickens

1837 · London, England · The hungry boy Oliver, having emptied his bowl of thin gruel in the workhouse

Please, sir, I want some more.

Oliver Twist, chapter 2

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Henry David Thoreau

1854 · Massachusetts, USA · He goes on to deplore dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor…

Walden, "Higher Laws"

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Lewis Carroll

1865 · Oxford, England

‘Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. ‘I’ve had nothing yet,’ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’ ‘You mean you can’t take less,’ said the Hatter: ‘it’s very easy to take more than nothing.’

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, chapter 7

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Okakura Tenshin 岡倉天心

1906 · Yokohama, Japan · Boston, USA

Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.

The Book of Tea, chapter 1

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