There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of... the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far- brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are many of us who cannot but feel dismal about the future of various cultures. Often it is hard not to agree that we are be...coming culinary nitwits, dependent upon fast foods and mass kitchens and megavitamins for our basically rotten nourishment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Once the visitor was told rather repetitively that this city was the melting pot; never before in history had so many people of su...ch varied languages, customs, colors and culinary habits lived so amicably together. Although New York remains peaceful by most standards, this self-congratulation is now less often heard, since it was discovered some years ago that racial harmony depended unduly on the willingness of the blacks (and latterly the Puerto Ricans) to do for the other races the meanest jobs at the lowest wages and then to return to live by themselves in the worst slums.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For anyone addicted to reading commonplace books ... finding a good new one is much like enduring a familiar recurrence of malaria..., with fever, fits of shaking, strange dreams. Unlike a truly paludismic ordeal, however, the symptoms felt while savoring a collection of one man's pet quotations are voluptuously enjoyable ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is puzzling to me that otherwise sensitive people develop a real docility about the obvious necessity of eating, at least once ...a day, in order to stay alive. Often they lose their primal enjoyment of flavors and odors and textures to the point of complete unawareness. And if ever they question this progressive numbing-off, they shrug helplessly in the face of mediocrity everywhere. Bit by bit, hour by hour, they say, we are being forced to accept the not-so-good as the best, since there is little that is even good to compare it with.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... word-sniffing ... is an addiction, like glue--or snow--sniffing in a somewhat less destructive way, physically if not economic...ally.... As an addict ... I am almost guiltily interested in converts to my own illness, and in a pinch I can recommend nearly any reasonable solace, whether or not it qualifies as a true descendant of Noah Webster.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided ...because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One ... aspect of the case for World War II is that while it was still a shooting affair it taught us survivors a great deal about... daily living which is valuable to us now that it is, ethically at least, a question of cold weapons and hot words.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »