Quotations and Sayings

Eating, Dining, Meals, Food

"Salt and the center of the world have to be there, in that spot on the tablecloth."
-  Julio Cortazar

"Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar."
-  Gustave Flaubert

"Laughter is brightest, in the place where the food is."
-  Irish proverb

"Where would we be without salt?"
-  James A. Beard

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."
-  Virginia Woolf

"All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast."
-  John Gunther

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
-  Albert Einstein

"A Zen blessing at mealtime: "In this plate of food, I see the entire universe supporting my existence." " 

"A mealtime blessing from the Taittiriya Upanishad: "From food all creatures are produced, and all creatures that dwell on the earth, by food they live and into food they finally pass.  Food is the chief among beings.  Verily he obtains all good who worships the Divine as food."

"The four seasons are salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar."
-  Old Saying

"Non ut edam vivo, sed vivam edo.
I do not live to eat, but eat to live."
-  Quintilianus, Instituitio oratoria

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food."
-  George Bernard Shaw

"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other."
-  Chinese proverb

"Don't dig your grave with your own knife and fork."
-  English Proverb

Garden

"Blinding heat divides day from night,
Brands short shadows into fecund soil.
Green tendrils, heavy with beans,
Coil around rustic bamboo racks.
Violet flowers gape erotically among velvet leaves :
A single gourd contains the entire world's dream.

There is a great comfort in growing your own food. You are close to the soil. You use the basic elements -- water, sunlight, earth, air, and plants -- for your work, your sustenance, and your pleasure. You nurture your garden from seedlings to mature plants, tending, pruning, weeding. Year after year, you see cycles come and go, from sprouting to harvest to withering, to seeding again. You eat your plants to live. You don't mind and they don't mind. Some day, you will fall back to this earth, back into the sun-baked dirt, and you will become food for the plants. It's the way of all life, and it's all very agreeable.

Those who follow Tao say that all reality is like a series of nesting circles : microcosms within macrocosms. What is close at hand is a microcosm of what is far away. Why search all over for Tao? It is all contained in the seeds of the gourd growing in your garden."

365 Tao: Daily Meditations
Deng Ming-Dao

"There are no secrets.  It's just we thought that they said "dead," when they said bread."
-  John Cage

"A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch, and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it."
-  Aldous Huxley

"The food of the future will be fruits and grains.  The time will come when meat will no longer be eaten ... our natural food is that which grows out of the ground."
-  A View on Ecology, Bahá'í Faith

"In vino veritas.
In the vine, the truth."
-  Old Latin saying

"Whenever you eliminate the inedible, whatever remains, however unpalatable, must be food."
-  Anonymous

"Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen."
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Grain crops, or cereals, are by far the most important sources of plant food for the human race.   On a world  wide basis, they provide two-thirds of the energy and half the protein of the diet."  [These crops are:  wheat, rice, maize (corn), oats, barley, rye, sorghum, and millet.]   
-  The New Oxford Book of Food Plants, xvi, 1997, by J. G . Vaughan and C. A. Geissler. 

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."
-  Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

"Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it's apt to give a person wind and self-righteousness."
-   Robert Hutchinson

My mother's menu consisted of two choices:
Take it or leave it.
-   Buddy Hackett

The act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown
is perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth.
-   Frances Moore Lappé

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts
while eating a homegrown tomato.
-   Lewis Grizzard

I will not eat anything that walks, runs, skips, hops or crawls.
God knows that I've crawled on occasion,
and I'm glad that no one ate me.
-   Alex Poulos

"An entomologist is not a bug." - Kenneth Rexroth
A gardener is not a plant - or is she?  - Pulling Onions

A gardener is not a plant - or is she?
A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.
Wishes are like seeds, few ever develop into something.
Sitting in a garden and doing nothing is high art everywhere.
Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener Her slave. 
When all the chores are done, the avid gardener will invent some new ones.
Where are the fig blossoms?  Exceptions to every rule.
Only two percent of all insects are harmful.  Why are they all in my garden?
The joyful gardener is evidence of an incarnation.  
To dig is to discover. 
-   Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions

I'm on a 90 Day Wonder Diet.   Thus far, I've lost 45 days.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
-  Samuel Butler

Better a mouse in the pot than no meat at all.
-  Romanian Proverb

Healthy Living - Quotes for Gardeners

Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.
-  Fernando Pessoa

The rich worry over their money, the poor over their bread.
-   Vietnamese proverb

All flesh is grass.
-   Isaiah 40:6

I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid
and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United
States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.
-   George Bush, U.S. president, 1990

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement,
to leave off eating animals as surely as the savage tribes left off eating each other.
-  Henry David Thoreau

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus
and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either.  He's simply got the
instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
-   Saki

Hunger is not debatable.
-   Harry Hopkins

He who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.
-   Samuel Johnson

The origin of agriculture involved both human intentionality and
a set of underlying ecological and evolutionary principles.
-   Kent Flannery

Glutton: one who digs his grave with his teeth.
French Proverb

Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy
to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship.
It is of great importance to the morale.
-   Elsa Schiaparelli

Certain cereals and pulses (legumes) were domesticated in very ancient times.  In about 8000 BC in the Fertile Crescent of the Near and Middle East (present-day Syria, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Israel), wheats, barley, lentil, pea, bitter vetch, chick-pea, and possibly faba bean, were brought into cultivation by the Neolithic people.  These crops spread from the point of origin.  Archaeological evidence indicates that the wheats, and some of the legumes, had reached Greece by 6000 BC and evidence of their presence within that millennium has been found in the Danube Basin, the Nile valley, and the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan).  Dispersal continued throughout Europe, the crops reaching Britain and Scandinavia in 4,000-2,000 BC.
   - The New Oxford Book of Food Plants, xv, 1997, by J. G . Vaughan and C. A. Geissler. 

The History of Gardening and Farming

A Timeline - From Ancient Times to the 20th Century

Lettuce is like conversation: it must be fresh and crisp,
and so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it.
-  Charles Dudley Warner

Vegetables - Quotes for Gardeners

The west wasn't won on salad.
-   North Dakota Beef Council advertisement, 1990

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals;
I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
-  A. Whitney Brown

Worries go better with soup than without.
-   Yiddish proverb

Year by year, the energy cost of each mouthful of our food has increased, until now we are using about
ten times as much energy as our meals contain.  This is hard to believe, but it begins with agriculture itself.
The tractors need gasoline, the irrigation pumps need electricity, synthetic fertilizers need natural gas.
There are some crops like low-intensity potatoes that yield ten times as much energy as they use up, but
others, like feedlot beef, use more than ten times as much energy as they produce.   It all averages out to
figures that agriculture consumes about three times the amount of energy eventually consumed at the
table.  But the energy costs don't end with growing the food.  Harvesting is followed by trucking and food
processing.  The manufacture of paper, glass jars, and metal cans used for packaging all require
additional energy.  The costs just keep adding up right through cooking the meal itself.  The final tally is
roughly ten calories spent for every calorie we swallow.  The U.S. food system hasn't been at a
break-even point since about 1910, and it seems destined to get worse.

-  Roger B. Swain, Earthly Pleasures, 1978

All human history attests
That happiness for man, -  the hungry sinner!  -
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.
-   Lord Byron, The Island

Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
-   Mark Twain

Hunger is the best sauce in the world.
-   Miguel De Cervantes

Whose bread I eat: his song I sing.
-   German proverb

Grub first, then ethics.
-   Bertold Brecht

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if
green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.
-  Doug Larson

Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.
-  Hippocrates

A genial hearth, a hospitable board, and a refined rusticity.
-  William Wordsworth

Eat well, drink in moderation, and sleep sound,
in these three good health abound.
Latin Proverb

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. 
Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek.
Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.
-   Alice May Brock

Who depends on another man's table often dines late.
-   Italian proverb

In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.
-  Genesis 3:19

He bringeth forth grass for the cattle; and green herb for the service of men;
That he may bring food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man;
and oil to make him a cheerful countenance, and bread to strengthen a man's heart.
-  The Prayer Book, 1662

Moderately drunk, coffee removes vapours from the brain, occasioned by
fumes of wine, or other strong liquors; eases pains in the head, prevents sour
belchings, and provokes appetite.
-  England's Happiness Improved (1699)

Coffee Quotations

Since Eve ate the apple, much depends on dinner.
-   Lord Byron

When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them.
-   Chinese proverb

How can you eat anything with eyes?
-  Will Kellogg

The act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown is
perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth.
-  Frances Moore Lappé, Diet For A Small Planet, 1971

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
-  Samuel Johnson

Grapes and Wine - Quotes for Gardeners

In the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. 
No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.
-   Woodrow Wilson

When there are starving people in the world, it seems wrong that so many
of us Americans eat as much for entertainment as for nourishment.
-   Andy Rooney

No man in the world has more courage than the man
who can stop after eating one peanut.
-   Channing Pollack

Spread the table and contention will cease.
-   English proverb

The rich would have to eat money if the poor did not provide food.
-   Russian proverb

One should eat to live, and not live to eat.
-  Moliere (J. B. Poquelin) 1622-1673

Man is what he eats.
-  Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872

Truths are first clouds; then rain, then harvest and food.
-  Henry Ward Beecher

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? 
Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
-  Henry David Thoreau

Never fall out with your bread and butter.
-   English proverb

This cabbage, these carrots, these potatoes, these onions ... will soon become me. 
Such a tasty fact!
- Mike Garofalo

The artist Arcimboldo drew a "Portrait of the Emperor Rudolph II as Autumn." 
This Man made out of Vegetables and Fruits  is a delightful characterization of the real truth in this case.  (96K)

Not a deed would he do,
Not a word would he utter,
Till he's weighed its relation
To plain bread and butter.
-  James Russell Lowell

God gave teeth; He will give bread.
-   Lithuanian proverb

Hunger: One of the few cravings that cannot
be appeased with another solution.
-  Irwin Van Grove

Celebrate Fine Wine at Wine.Com

Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.
-   Turkish Proverb

Coffee should be black as night, hot as hell, and strong as love.
- A saying from the American South

Most Americans are two to four generations removed from the farm. 
The general public has very little idea of what agriculture is about. 
Food is cheap and plentiful.  Everyone takes it for granted.
-   Shawn S. Stevenson, A Clovis, California, citrus grower and former President of the Fresno County Farm Bureau

For additional comments on food in America, please refer to the short essays by
Stanley Wise, Jr., Alcorn County Agent, Mississippi, at The Wise Farmer.

This meal is the labor of countless beings;
let us remember their toil.
-  Zen meal chant

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist,
otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types.  But if the material world is
merely illusion, an honest guru should as content with Budweiser and
bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.
-   Edward Abbey

Edible:  Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a
snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
-   Ambrose Bierce

Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. 
And cooking done with care is an act of love.
-  Craig Claiborne

"I will not move my army without onions."
-  Ulysses S. Grant, U. S. General

I don't even butter my bread;
I consider that cooking.
-  Katherine Cebrian

You have increasing poverty and increasing wealth.  Fine food is one
way to dispense with a lot of money...  It's understanding that our daily
choices about food connect us to a worldwide economic system.   And
that economic system -- not scarcity -- creates worldwide hunger
for millions of people.

-  Frances Moore Lappé, San Francisco Daily Examiner Chronicle, 1987

Food, Eating

Links and References

The Chef's Garden.  By Terence Conran and A. M. Clevely.  Soma Books, 2000.  144 pages.  ISBN: 1579590500. 

Cooking.Com    Extensive selection of quality cooking products. 

A.G. Ferrari Foods   Gourmet food products. 

Food - Amerispeak

Food and Beverage Facts   

Gode Cookery

The New Oxford Book of Food Plants:  A Guide to the Fruit, Vegetables, Herbs and Spices of the World. By J. G. Vaughan and C. A. Geissler.   Illustrated by B. E. Nicholson.  With additional illustrations by Elisabeth Dowle and Elizabeth Rice.  Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997.  Index, tables, recommended reading, 239 pages.  ISBN: 0-19854825-7.  Revised and improved over the 1st edition of 1969.  Outstanding botanical illustrations!!   Every type of plant used as a food is covered.  Informative articles on each food item.   "The purpose of the book was to describe the origin, distribution, structure, cultivation, utilization, and nutritive value of the world's common food plants, as well as some lesser known species."

The Quotation Garden - Food and Vegetarianism

The Ravenous Muse:  A Table of Dark and Comic Contents, a Bacchanal of Books.   By Karen Elizabeth Gordon.   New York, Pantheon Books, 1996.  248 pages, index, and biographies of author cited.  ISBN: 0-679-41861-X.

Tabletalk: The Literary Feast

Quotes for Gardeners

Haiku and Short Poems

The Spirit of Gardening

Cuttings by Michael P. Garofalo

The History of Gardening Timeline

Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and Qigong

Valley Spirit Journal by Michael P. Garofalo

Trees

Months

Zen Poetry

Fitness and Well Being

Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo

Valley Spirit Photography Gallery

Green Way Research