Top 84 Brillat Quotes
#2. Those truffled turkeys, of which the reputation and the price are still increasing, appear like beneficient stars, and make the eyes sparkle of all sorts of gourmands of every category, whilst their faces beam with delight and they themselves dance with pleasure.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#3. I am a strong partisan of second causes, and I believe firmly that the entire gallinaceous order has been merely created to furnish our larders and our banquets.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#4. A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner. "Much obliged," said he, pushing the plate aside; "I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills.
Brillat-Savarin
#5. Those who have been too long at their labor, who have drunk too long
at the cup of voluptuousness, who feel they have become temporarily
inhumane, who are tormented by their families, who find life sad and
love ephemeral ... they should all eat chocolate and they will be
comforted.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#7. It has been shown as proof positive that carefully prepared chocolate is as healthful a food as it is pleasant; that it is nourishing and easily digested ... that it is above all helpful to people who must do a great deal of mental work.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#10. He who receives his friends and gives no personal attention to the meal which is being prepared for them, is not worthy of having friends.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#13. The truffle is not a positive aphrodisiac, but it can upon occasion make women tenderer and men more apt to love.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#17. If one swallows a cup of chocolate only three hours after a copious lunch, everything will be perfectly digested and there will still be room for dinner.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#18. Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary meal in that, being offered to persons that have already dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst, and has no object but distraction, no basis but delicate enjoyment.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#20. The host took care to produce one or another of these whenever the current subjects seemed about used up, so that the conversation gathered new life and at the same time steered clear of political arguments, which are hindersome to both ingestion and digestion.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#24. Place a substantial meal before a tired man and he will eat with effort and be little better for it at first. Give him a glass of wine or brandy, and immediately he feels better: you see him come to life again before you.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#26. 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.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#27. The Spanish ladies of the New World are madly addicted to chocolate, to such a point that, not content to drink it several times each day, they even have it served to them in church.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#28. Food is all those substances which, submitted to the action of the stomach, can be assimilated or changed into life by digestion, and can thus repair the losses which the human body suffers through the act of living.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#29. 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.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#36. I appreciate the potato only as a protection against famine, except for that, I know of nothing more eminently tasteless.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#41. The pleasure of the table belongs to all ages, to all conditions, to all countries, and to all areas; it mingles with all other pleasures, and remains at last to console us for their departure.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#42. Every cure of obesity must begin with these three essential precepts:discretion in eating, moderation in sleeping, and exercise ...
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#45. Let the progress of the meal be slow, for dinner is the last business of the day; and let the guests conduct themselves like travelers due to reach their destination together.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#46. Truffle isn't exactly aphrodisiac but under certain circumstances it tends to make women more tender and men more likable
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#48. To claim that wines should not be changed is a heresy; the palate becomes saturated and after the third glass the best of wines arouses nothing but an obscure sensation.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#49. In the centre of a spacious table rose a pastry as large as a church, flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal, on the south by an enormous ham, on the east by a monumental pile of butter, and on the west by an enormous dish of artichokes, with a hot sauce.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#51. The first thing we become convinced of is that man is organized so as to be far more sensible of pain than of pleasure.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#54. In the state of society in which we now find ourselves, it is difficult to imagine a nation which lived solely on bread and vegetables.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#55. To invite people to dine with us is to make ourselves responsible for their well-being for as long as they are under our roofs.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#56. An intelligently planned feast is like a summing up of the whole world, where each part is represented by its envoys.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#57. Frying gives cooks numerous ways of concealing what appeared the day before and in a pinch facilitates sudden demands, for it takes little more time to fry a four-pound carp than to boil an egg.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#60. Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#61. 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.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#62. 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.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#65. 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.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#66. 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.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#67. You first parents of the human race ... who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#68. Animals fill themselves; man eats. The man of mind alone knows how to eat.
Brillat-Savarin
#69. Those persons who suffer from indigestion, or who become drunk, are utterly ignorant of the true principles of eating and drinking.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#70. 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.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#72. The limits of pleasures are as yet neither known nor fixed, and we have no idea what degree of bodily bliss we are capable of attaining.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#73. 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.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#77. Once fire was discovered, the instinct for improvement made men bring food to it. First to dry it, then to put it on the coals to cook.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#80. The pleasures of the table belong to all times and ages, to every country and every day; they go hand in hand with all our other pleasures, outlast them, and remain to console us for their loss.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#82. Dear gourmands! my bowels yearn towards them as a father's toward his children. They are so good natured! They have such sparkling eyes!
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#83. Gourmandism is an act of judgment, by which we prefer things which have a pleasant taste to those which lack this quality.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
