It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made. It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way, — as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn, — and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Higher Laws
Author: SO GOOD QUOTES
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You wait for evening before you take food, but you spend the day in the law courts.
—St. Basil, Homilies on the Holy Spirit -
Appetites and pleasures which are in accordance with nature are not reprehensible, since they are a necessary consequence of natural appetency. For our ordinary food, whether we wish it or not, naturally produces pleasure, since it satisfies the hunger which precedes a meal. Drink: also produces pleasure, since it relieves the discomfort of thirst; so does sleep, since it renews the strength expended in our waking hours; and so, too, do all our other natural functions necessary for maintaining life and conducive to the acquisition of virtue.
—St Maximos the Confessor, Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice -
Why do we rush to a lavish table? Because we know the meaning of material food from experience. Why do we not rush to church, but try to come a little later, when a significant portion of the Divine services are already over? Because we do not know from experience the meaning of prayer, which is food for the soul, and which imparts spiritual strength to the soul.
—St. Ignatius Brianchanivov -
Do not hanker after varied and costly foods or lethal pleasures. For ‘she that indulges in pleasure”, it is said, ‘is dead while still alive” (1 Tim. 5: 6). Even with ordinary foods, avoid satiety as far as possible. For it is written; ‘Do not be deceived by the filling of the belly’ (Prov. 24: 15. LXX).
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One should eat every day, but only a little, so as not to be satisfied.
—Abba Poemen -
It is also necessary to accustom the body to become alienated, as much as possible, from the pleasure of the satiety arising from luxurious food, but not from the fullness produced by a slender diet, in order that moderation may proceed through all things, and that what is necessary, or what is most excellent, may fix a boundary to our diet. For he who thus mortifies his body will receive every possible good, through being sufficient to himself, and an assimilation to divinity.
—St. Porphyry, On Abstinence From Animal Food, Book 1 -
but once he’d sated his hunger, he thought no greater pleasure would come from actively seeking more elaborate dining.
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“I feed sweetly upon bread and water, those sweet and easy provisions of the body, and I defy the pleasures of costly provisions;” and the man [Epicurus] was so confident that he had the advantage over wealthy tables, that he thought himself happy as the immortal gods, for these provisions are easy, they are to be gotten without amazing cares ; no man needs to flatter if he can live as nature did intend.
—Rev. Jeremy Taylor, The House of Feasting .The Whole Works of the Rt. Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 1
SO GOOD QUOTES 