The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.
Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.
Nothing is more pleasant than to see a pretty woman, her napkin well placed under her arms, one of her hands on the table, while the other carries to her mouth, the choice piece so elegantly carved.
Vegetables, which are the lowest in the scale of living things, are fed by roots, which, implanted in the native soil, select by the action of a peculiar mechanism, different subjects, which serve to increase and to nourish them.
I will only observe, that that ethereal sense - sight, and touch, which is at the other extremity of the scale, have from time acquired a very remarkable additional power.
The centuries last passed have also given the taste important extension; the discovery of sugar, and its different preparations, of alcoholic liquors, of wine, ices, vanilla, tea and coffee, have given us flavors hitherto unknown.
Sight and touch, being thus increased in capacity, might belong to some species far superior to man; or rather the human species would be far different had all the senses been thus improved.
Those persons who suffer from indigestion, or who become drunk, are utterly ignorant of the true principles of eating and drinking.
Hearing, which, by the motion of the air, informs us of the motion of sounding or vibrating bodies.
Taste, which enables us to distinguish all that has a flavor from that which is insipid.
I am essentially an amateur medecin, and this to me is almost a mania.
All men, even those we call savages, have been so tormented by the passion for strong drinks, that limited as their capacities were, they were yet able to manufacture them.
The sense of smell explores; deleterious substances almost always have an unpleasant smell.
When I need a word and do not find it in French, I select it from other tongues, and the reader has either to understand or translate me. Such is my fate.
The torrent of centuries rolling over the human race, has continually brought new perfections, the cause of which, ever active though unseen, is found in the demands made by our senses, which always in their turns demand to be occupied.
