Quotes about spice (65 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“[Ibn Battuta’s description of the preparation of samosa would make one’s mouth water even today:] “Minced meat cooked with almond, walnut, pistachios, onion and spices placed inside a thin bread and fried in ghee.””

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1
Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

Water , Cooking

“My brain's dead weight, I'm tryin' to get my head straight, but I can't figure out which Spice Girl I want to impregnate.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"My Name Is" (Track 2).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Girl , Dead

“I promise this, that if I am supported by our most invincible sovereigns with a little of their help, as much gold can be supplied as they will need, indeed as much of spices, of cotton, of mastic gum (which is only found in Chios), also as much of aloes wood, and as many slaves for the navy, as their Majesties will wish to demand.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

"Concerning the Islands Recently Discovered in the Indian Sea" (14 March 1493)

Support , Help

“Infatuation was a good thing. It gave spice to life, and added to its enjoyment… But it was different from love. Love was worth everything, and couldn't be exchanged for anything.”

Paulo Coelho book The Valkyries

Source: The Valkyries

Love , Life

“Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni book The Mistress of Spices

Source: The Mistress of Spices

Love , Color , Light

“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Universe

“Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Art , Knowledge

“Hey, Dad, you’ve got to taste what we just did. It’s actually good. (Omari)
That is good. What did you two do? (Devyn)
No idea. We just added spices until it didn’t suck anymore. (Omari)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Ice

Idea

“Maybe I should add some graffiti to spice it up. For a good time call the Consort. Beast Lord eats your food and turns into a lion in his sleep. Mahon has hemorrhoids. Boudas do it better. Warning, paranoid attack jaguar on the prowl…”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Food , Sleep , Time

“Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Love , Books , Boy

“Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Women , Home

“A little danger adds spice to life.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

Life

“Sandwich outdoors isn’t a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

“There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Food , Nature , Box , Season

“Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Fear , Jealousy , Dreams , Music

“But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.”

Knut Hamsun book Dreamers

Source: Dreamers

Spring , Heart

“Dullness is the spice of life. Which is why we must always use other spices.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Life

“Words are like spices. Too many is worse than too few.”

Joan Aiken (1924–2004) English fiction writer

Source: The Last Slice of Rainbow and Other Stories

“Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy”

Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978) writer and poet

Life , Marriage , Happiness

“Hello, my name is ees Lebkuchen Spice, and I vant to show you my coooooookies…”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

Flowers , Bee

“Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni book The Mistress of Spices

Source: The Mistress of Spices

“I mean she's Cleopatra… shouldn't she and Antony have known better? They were so different…"
"Variety is the spice of life"
"And from a thousand miles apart"
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Life , Heart

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Quotes

“I'm afraid I couldn't like him without a spice of human naughtiness.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“Nobody wants to cook "Five Spice Stew With a Mother Deer Shot With a High-Powered Rifle While Her Baby Slept Nearby." But what about "Five Spice Venison Stew"? Much more palatable. … But when we tell ourselves that we're humanely harvesting venison out of reverence for the deer -- rather than killing a sentient being to satisfy our palate -- we're not so much connecting with our food as we are manipulating language to avoid knowing what we don't want to know.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Hunting for Euphemisms: How We Trick Ourselves to Excuse Killing", in The Atlantic (21 December 2011) https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/hunting-for-euphemisms-how-we-trick-ourselves-to-excuse-killing/250213/.

Food , Baby , Cooking

“If invited, you would go to this person's wedding and give them a spice rack, but you would secretly hope that their marriage ends in a bitter, public divorce.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006), Recognizing Your Nemesis

Marriage , Hope , Wedding , Personality

“I am dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope — those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love, — for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

10 July 1834
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Love , Life , Youth , World

“When I hold you in my arms,
I know that I can't do no wrong.
And when I hold you in my arms,
My love can't do me no harm.And I feel nice, like sugar and spice
I feel nice, like sugar and spice.
So nice, so nice, well I got you.”

James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist

I Got You (I Feel Good), from I Got You (1966)
Song lyrics

Love , Feeling

“It is manifest that there is no danger at all in the proportion or quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it should make it swell or out-compass itself; no, but it is merely the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantity more or less, if it be taken without the true corrective thereof, hath in it some nature of venom or malignity, and some effects of that venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity, which the Apostle immediately addeth to the former clause; for so he saith, “Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up.””

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book I
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Nature , Knowledge

“A little remorse they felt too in front of those who knew nothing, but it made their memories all the sweeter, for remorse is the best spice of all.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 243

Memory

“I’ve been vegan since 1988, and over that time, my relationship with cooking has ebbed and flowed. I am very happy to eat very simply; I love to be able to taste the incredible produce I find. I enjoy making simple harmonies from whatever is seasonal. When I have people over though, I love exploring spices. Just because a meal is plant-based doesn’t mean it can’t be a flavor power-house.”

Bellamy Young (1970) American artist

"Bellamy Young", interview with The New Potato (2 October 2013) http://www.thenewpotato.com/2013/10/02/bellamy-young-2015/2/.

Love , People , Time , Housing

“I could heartily wish that you and all others concerned in this sad loss, were more taken up in minding the happy exchange that she hath made, than with your present loss. She hath exchanged earth for heaven, a wilderness for a paradise, a prison for a palace, a house made with hands for one eternal in the heavens (2 Cor 5:1-2). She hath exchanged imperfection for perfection, sighing for singing, mourning for rejoicing, prayers for praises, the society of sinful mortals for the company of God, Christ, angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, Heb 12:22-24; an imperfect transient enjoyment of God for a more clear, full, perfect, and permanent enjoyment of God. She hath exchanged pain for ease, sickness for health, a bed of weakness for a bed of spices, a complete blessedness. She hath exchanged her brass for silver, her counters for gold, and her earthly contentments for heavenly enjoyments.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

A String of Pearls

Men , God , Pain , Health

“Maia lifted her gaze to watch low clouds briefly occult a brightly speckled, placid sea, its green shoals aflicker with silver schools of fish and the flapping shadows of hovering swoop-birds. The variegated colors were lush, voluptuous. Mixing with scents carried by the moist, heavy wind, they made a stew for the senses, spiced with fecund exudates of life.
The beauty was heavy-handed, adamantly consoling. She got the point—that life goes on.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 4 (p. 80)

Life , School , Beauty , Color

“If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow the wealth which they spend? They are clad in velvet and camlet lined with squirrel and ermine, while we go dressed in coarse cloth. They have the wines, the spices and the good bread: we have the rye, the husks and the straw, and we drink water. They have shelter and ease in their fine manors, and we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain in the fields. And from us must come, from our labour, the things which keep them in luxury”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Et, se venons tout d'un père et d'une mere, Adam et Eve, en quoi poent il dire ne monstrer que il sont mieux signeur que nous, fors parce que il nous font gaaignier et labourer ce que il despendent? Il sont vestu de velours et de camocas fourés de vair et de gris, et nous sommes vesti de povres draps. Il ont les vins, les espisses et les bons pains, et nous avons le soille, le retrait et le paille, et buvons l'aige. Ils ont le sejour et les biaux manoirs, et nous avons le paine et le travail, et le pleue et le vent as camps, et faut que de nous viengne et de nostre labeur ce dont il tiennent les estas.
Book 2, p. 212.
Froissart is again quoting John Ball.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Spring , Drink , Water , Wine

“Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark's fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider.”

Ernest Bramah book Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree

The Story of the Poet Lao Ping, Chun Shin's Daughter Fa, and the Fighting Crickets
Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree (1940)

Wine

“Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought nothing out but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. London turns dirt into gold. Rome turned gold into dirt.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", pp. 383-4.

Wealth

“…the eyes, black, were all East - houris, harems, beds scented with Biblical spices; nose and lips were pan-Mediterranean. Her body…was that of the Shulamite and Italian film stars. The décolletage, with its promise of round, brown, infinitely smooth, vertiginous sensual treasure, was a torment to the blood…. Many had promised marriage, but all had gone home, the promise unfulfilled…. quite considerable capacity for all kinds of sensuous pleasure.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Marriage , Pleasure , Home , Star

“My good friends, things cannot go on well in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common, when there shall be neither vassal nor lord, and all distinctions levelled; when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves. How ill they have used us!… They have wines, spices and fine bread, when we have only rye and the refuse of fine straw; and if we drink, it must be water. They have handsome seats and manors, when we must brave the wind and rain in our labours in the field; but it is from our labour they have the wherewith to support their pomp.… Let us go to the king, who is young, and remonstrate with him on our servitude, telling him we must have it otherwise, or that we shall find a remedy for it ourselves.”

John Ball (priest) (1338–1381) English rebel and priest

Typical sermon, described in the Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and other places adjoining by Jean Froissart

Drink , Support , Water , Wine

“Whenever I go out with other married couples, I like to bring along a single crackhead. Just to spice things up.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Never Scared (HBO, 2004)

“I consider myself a troll at heart. Making people bristle, being a little outrageous in order to add some spice to life—I get that. I’ve done that.”

Steve Huffman (1983) American businessman

The New Yorker: "Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the-struggle-to-detoxify-the-internet (19 March 2018)

Life , People , Heart

“When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside thinking about how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I were you because you won't like what you'll find. Then again, I'm not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren't nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn't a coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

My Gun is Quick (1950)

Life , People , Books , School

“If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Sheridan Morley, A Talent to Amuse (1985).

Chance

“The grass so little has to do,—
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,

And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything;

And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine,-
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.

And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine.

And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away,—
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were a hay!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Nature, p. 112
Collected Poems (1993)

Dreams , Sleep , Grass , Bee

“It's the way that you kiss, the way that you give back,
The way you love me like this -- look at the beauty of that.
These are the tangled words of our love, that we both do untie --
Same old ways, same old spice, same old paradise.”

Amber (1970) Dutch born German singer, songwriter, label owner and executive producer

"Same Old Paradise", My Kind of World (2004).

Love , Beauty , Way , Kiss

“A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean.”

Charles Dickens book Little Dorrit

Bk. I, Ch. 1
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)

Men , Knowledge , Light

“One of the most common failings [when writing a drum track] is repetition. Nobody wants to hear that same stupid 16-line bass-snare pattern throughout the WHOLE song. Didn't your mother ever teach you that variety is the spice of life?”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

"Melodic Structure", Necros, TraxWeekly #15, 1995

Life , Stupidity

“On working at La Passione (1996): Day one, the damage was done. All it was meant to be was one hour of a little boy’s dreams. And I had things I wanted to do with the guitar that hadn’t been done before. Like, there’s one number called "Olive Oil", where I was actually playing slide guitar in the same scale as a saxophone. […] But then in came millions of executives from America. So in the end, it fell flat on its arse. And it came out the same week that Britpop took off. Blair had just won the election. Oasis. Spice Girls. So something a bit Fellini-ish – about a little boy who loved red cars – went straight over the top. It was like, ‘Well, don’t you have a 335 guitar with a Union Jack on it?’”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2015

Love , Dreams , Cars , Girl

“Fly, like a youthful hart or roe,
Over the hills where spices grow.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Hymn 79, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book I.
Attributed from postum publications, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1773)

Youth , Flying

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real… for a moment at least… that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smoke-stacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the song the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever, somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

The Faces of Fantasy (1996)

Love , Dreams , Color , Thinking

“In one work Marcel Duchamp meets Tracey Emin in the desert, with three camp cowboys. In another he meets Elvis and the Spice Girls.”

Peter Blake (1932) British artist

Charlotte Higgins, "It was 37 years ago today – and Sgt Pepper cover has still failed to pay", http://www.guardian.co.uk/thebeatles/story/0,,1230411,00.html The Guardian, 2004-06-03
On his painting, Marcel Duchamp's World Tour.
Art

Girl

“Only today do I understand the lonely heroism with which he gave single-handed battle against the boundless element of boredom numbing the town. Bereft of all support, without acknowledgement on our part, that astonishing man defended the lost cause of poetry. He was a wondrous mill, into whose hoppers the bran of the empty hours was poured, bursting into bloom in its mechanism with all of the colours and aromas of oriental spices.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“Mannequins” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/mannequins.htm
His father

Understanding , Support , Parting

“In the black sky no star is seen,
somewhere in ambush lurks the Angel of Death,
but the spices tongues of the masqueraders
are loose and shameless
A shout:
"Make way for the hero!"
Ah yes. Displacing the tall one,
he will step forth now without fail
and sing to us about holy vengeance…”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Death , Angels , Way , Star

“The Spice Girls are easier to tell apart than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but that is small consolation: What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names? They occupy Spice World as if they were watching it: They're so detached they can't even successfully lip-synch their own songs. During a rehearsal scene, their director tells them, with such truth that we may be hearing a secret message from the screenwriter, "That was absolutely perfect — without being actually any good." Spice World is obviously intended as a ripoff of A Hard Day's Night which gave The Beatles to the movies… the huge difference, of course, is that the Beatles were talented — while, let's face it, the Spice Girls could be duplicated by any five women under the age of 30 standing in line at Dunkin' Donuts.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spice-world-1998 of Spice World (23 January 1998)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Women , Truth , Secret , Age

“My mother had naturally spiced the pudding with sixpences and threepenny bits, called zacs and trays respectively. Grandpa had collected one of these in the oesophagus. He gave a protracted, strangled gurgle which for a long time we all took to be the beginning of some anecdote.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Source: Memoirs, Unreliable Memoirs (1980), p. 13

Nature , Time

“But let me ask you this though, first and foremost: who's your favorite Spice Girl? Mine is Sporty Spice and I'll tell you why. You know what? She might not be as aesthetically pleasant as the rest but she'll do a backflip and steal your heart.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

self-titled TV comedy special, 1997
Standup routines

Girl , Heart

“I think that politics needs a bit of spicing up.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

In response to criticism of an anti-euro advertisement which showed Adolf Hitler promoting the single currency - Hitler anti-euro ad condemned http://articles.cnn.com/2002-07-03/world/eu.hitlerad_1_anti-euro-appearance-by-rock-star-euro-currency?_s=PM:WORLD, CNN, 3 July 2002.
2002

Thinking

“Variety's the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 606.

Life

“How do I pick a role? Well, primarily I think I would like to be part of a film that's progressive as well as entertaining, you know? Because in India we have a huge amount of audience that is not educated, and they really look up to films… So I think it's important to do a film… that's entertaining but has a message. And after that I'd like to do films that are different for me -- if I'm doing a love story then I want to do a war film, if I'm doing a war film then I want to do a story about an un-wed mother. I think variety is the spice of life.”

Preity Zinta (1975) film actress

Famous quotes

Love , Life , War , Education

“I'm not - the terrific guy you keep telling me about. I'm not made of sugar and spice and everything nice. I'm made of rats and snails and puppy-dogs tails. I lie sometimes. I have broken people's hearts. I'm looking for love, I'll admit that, but now that it's here in abundance, I'm afraid of commitment and I want you, please, to leave me.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Collectively

Love , People , Lie , Dogs

“Even good arguments fail, if they are spiced with digressions.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

“I guess I have an eclectic taste [about (500) Days of Summer, G. I. Joe, and Uncertainty all in one year], I don't just like one thing. Contrast is key. What do they say? Variety is the spice of life. My favorite actors are the chameleons, guys like Daniel Day-Lewis, Billy Bob Thornton, Meryl Streep, people who are always different.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

Salon, November 2009

Life , People , Guy , Summer

“Standardization robs life of its spice.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)
Context: But to return to the Jewish question. Other groups and nations cultivate their individual traditions. There is no reason why we should sacrifice ours. Standardization robs life of its spice. To deprive every ethnic group of its special traditions is to convert the world into a huge Ford plant. I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.

Life

“Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

Part I, section xxii, stanza 1
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

Night

“To be individual, my friends, to be different from others, is the only way to become distinguished from the common herd. Let us be glad, therefore, that we differ from one another in form and in disposition. Variety is the spice of life, and we are various enough to enjoy one another's society; so let us be content.”

L. Frank Baum book The Lost Princess of Oz

The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)
Later Oz novels
Context: Were we all like the Sawhorse, we would all be Sawhorses, which would be too many of the kind. Were we all like Hank, we would be a herd of mules; if like Toto, we would be a pack of dogs; should we all become the shape of the Woozy, he would no longer be remarkable for his unusual appearance. Finally, were you all like me, I would consider you so common that I would not care to associate with you. To be individual, my friends, to be different from others, is the only way to become distinguished from the common herd. Let us be glad, therefore, that we differ from one another in form and in disposition. Variety is the spice of life, and we are various enough to enjoy one another's society; so let us be content.

Life , Way