Quotes about taste
page 4

“Why did death make life taste so much sweeter? Why could the heart love only what it could also lose?”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkdeath

Love, Life, Death, Heart

“This soup tastes like windows”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

“This is like a cookie, it tastes like a cookie having sex with a doughnut.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Sex

“To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Happiness, World, Learning, Passion

“New tastes are like new ideas, young man -- the older you get, the more difficult they are for you to stomach.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Idea

“He knew he had no right to touch her, crave her like air, but he did both. And when he put his mouth on hers, he recognized the taste of her, like she'd been made just for him.”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Lucky in Love

“Why this cult of wilderness?… because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader

Freedom

“Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Personality

“She was a beautiful woman." Gavner sighed, tracing the outline of one of the elephants. "She just had very bad taste in underwear …"
"And in boyfriends," I added impishly.
Mr. Crepsley burst into laughter at that”

Darren Shan book Vampire Mountain

Source: Vampire Mountain

Beauty, Laughter

“Thank Artemis, it is you! That little scar on your lip--you tried to eat a stapler when you were two!"
…
Hedge nodded like he approved of Jason's taste. "Staplers--excellent source of iron.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“Good food isn't just about the taste.

It's about where and with whom you eat it.”

Natsumi Ando (1970) Manga artist

Source: Kitchen Princess, Vol. 03

Food

“No matter how long or how difficult, we will undo whatever that Moroi boy has done to you."

I managed a wavering smile, tasting blood in my mouth. "You sure about that, Dad? Because he's doneto me.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Smile, Boy

“Sunshine had never tasted so sweet as it did at that moment.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

“I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was with him: that incredible combination of comfort, decadence, and wonder; the knowledge that, with just a single taste of him, I was addicted.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Feeling, Knowledge

“The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Source: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

Happiness, Music, Nature, Loss

“Nevertheless, blood is thicker than water, as anyone knows who has tasted both.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Water

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Speech accepting the John Burroughs Medal (April 1952); also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 94
Context: Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, in his cities of steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water and the growing seed. Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going farther and farther into more experiments for the destruction of himself and his world.
There is certainly no single remedy for this condition and I am offering no panacea. But it seems reasonable to believe — and I do believe — that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.

Reality, Universe

“Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.”

Robert Redford (1936) actor and film director from the United States

Health, Food, Hell

“Each kiss was like biting into the richest darkest chocolate and pausing to savour the taste.”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

Source: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

Kiss

“His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

“For an absurd moment, I wondered if Ammit devoured the hearts of wicked cows, and if he liked the beefy taste.

- Carter Kane”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

Heart

“We have eyes, and we're looking at stuff all the time, all day long. And I just think that whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, and important.”

Eric Carle (1929) American children's illustrator and writer

Beauty, Thinking, Time

“But I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind”

Jack London Martin Eden

Source: Martin Eden

“I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Way

“A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden, or Life in the Woods

Beauty

“The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Wolf

“The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Future

“She read and read and read, but she was stuffing herself with the letters on the page like an unhappy child stuffing itself with chocolate. They didn’t taste bad, but she was still unhappy.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkdeath

Reading

“Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn.”

Don DeLillo Running Dog

Source: Running Dog

Art

“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Friendship, Beauty, Literature

“Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches bleeding wounds and knows our mother can hear only so much.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Time

“I had been right: freedom smelled like ozone and thunderstorms and gunpowder all at once, like snow and bonfires and cut grass, it tasted like seawater and oranges.”

Tana French book The Likeness

Source: The Likeness

Freedom, Grass

“I know I'm an acquired taste - I'm anchovies. And not everybody wants those hairy little things.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

“I hate that stuff. It tastes like feet."
At that he smiled. "How would you know what feet taste like?"
"I just know.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Hate, Smile

“I brought you some coffee.” he held out the cup but she waved it away.
“I hate that stuff. It tastes like feet.”
At that he smiled. “How would you know what feet taste like?”
“I just know.”
-Luke and Clary, pg.209-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Hate, Smile, Coffee

“The walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious.”

Roald Dahl James and the Giant Peach

Source: James and the Giant Peach

“Want me to warm up the sauce?”
“Do we do that? I mean, it’s in a jar, right? Can’t you just dump it over the pasta?”
“Well, you can, but it tastes better if you warm it up.”
“Oh.” Eve sighed. “This is complicated. No wonder I never cook.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

Cooking

“At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.”

George Packer (1960) American journalist and writer

Fear, Disappointment, Heart

“I don't know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it's something that anyone can make - pancakes, meat loaf, tuna salad - but it carries a certain taste of memory.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Food, Memory, Mother's Day, For Mother

“She had never imagined that the kiss would be so brief and desperate and wild. Or that it would taste of holy water. Holy water and blood.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Imagination, Kiss, Water

“Either you think — or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Quoted, Tender is the Night (1934)
Source: Tender Is the Night

Nature, Thinking

“It's funny how cucumber water can taste so much better than pickle juice, even though they come from the same source.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Water

“I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love

“How could I be sleeping with this particular man…. Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.”

Margaret Atwood book Lady Oracle

Source: Lady Oracle

Love, Sleep

“I'd be happy to die for a taste of what Angel had… Someone to live for… Unafraid to say 'I love you!”

Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright

Source: Rent (1996)

Love, Happiness, Angels

“She used to say she could taste sleep and that it was as delicious as a BLT on fresh French bread.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Sleep

“When chickens get to live like chickens, they'll taste like chickens, too.”

Michael Pollan book The Omnivore's Dilemma

Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

“A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“So, Beav, tell me about yourself."
"I'm Blue."
"Sweetheart, if I had your dubious taste in men, I wouldn't be too happy, either."
"My name is Blue. Blue Bailey.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Natural Born Charmer

Men, Happiness

“The inspector ate only two of my tiny sandwiches: the first because he hadn't expected it to taste so awful; the second, I think, because he'd thought surely the first must have been a mistake.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Thinking

“With the breakdown of the Medieval system, the gods of Chaos, Lunacy, and Bad Taste gained ascendancy.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 2, opening line

God

“I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but for some reason I don’t understand, I actually like you…most of the time. (Simone)
Well, you also love Jesse. Obviously your taste in men leaves a lot to be desired. (Xypher)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Love, Men, Understanding, Time

“You have never tasted freedom friend, or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.”

Steven Pressfield Gates of Fire

Dienekes p. 60
Gates of Fire (1998)
Source: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

Freedom

“So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: All the Sad Young Men

Pain, Happiness, Strong

“Haven't you ever wished that you could steal back just a few hours of your past?" she asked softly. "That's all I want… just a little taste of what might have been.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

Past

“Barbarian that I am, I had eaten all of it. It had tasted quite nice too. Still, I took note of this fact and resigned myself to throw away half of a perfectly good cheese if it was set in front of me. Such is the price of civilization.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“Freak is easily spooked. Flesh-eating monsters tend to scare him away. So do fireworks, clowns, and the smell of Sadie's weird British Ribena drink. (Can't blame him on that last one. Sadie grew up in London and developed some pretty strange tastes.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Sobek

Source: The Son of Sobek

Drink

“Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

The ABC Murders (1936)
Source: And Then There Were None

Soul

“A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Lie

“I tasted life.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Life

“I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, one as hated as the other.”

Annette Curtis Klause Blood and Chocolate

Source: Blood and Chocolate

Hate

“… a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.”

George Bernard Shaw Caesar and Cleopatra

Source: Caesar and Cleopatra

Courage, Sense

“Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things.

Love is the same way.

Use it to "season" people.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Love, People, Way, Season

“The strenuous life tastes better”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Life

“Oh, gross! Zombie goo. (Caleb)
Ooo, I wonder if it tastes like chicken? What do you think? (Simi)
I think I’m never eating guacamole again as long as I live. (Caleb)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Thinking

“Charles preferred his deer to taste like meat and his pancakes to look like pancakes. Brother Wolf thought he was too picky. Brother Wolf was probably right.”

Patricia Briggs book Fair Game

Source: Fair Game

Wolf

“I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cenci

The Cenci (1819), Act I, sc. iii, l. 88

Wine, Joy

“My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were on their shelves.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Parent

“If she kissed him, would he taste like blood or cloves or a mixture of the two?”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Kiss

“Taste of metal on my tongue. Poison the color of envy-
I'm delirious, you're delicious, I'm deluded and delusional.
I'm lost without you. I need you.”

Cecily von Ziegesar (1970) American writer

Source: Would I Lie to You

Color, Envy

“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Love, Beauty, Art, Beauty

“Mathematics because of its nature and structure is peculiarly fitted for high school instruction [Gymnasiallehrfach]. Especially the higher mathematics, even if presented only in its elements, combines within itself all those qualities which are demanded of a secondary subject. It engages, it fructifies, it quickens, compels attention, is as circumspect as inventive, induces courage and self-confidence as well as modesty and submission to truth. It yields the essence and kernel of all things, is brief in form and overflows with its wealth of content. It discloses the depth and breadth of the law and spiritual element behind the surface of phenomena; it impels from point to point and carries within itself the incentive toward progress; it stimulates the artistic perception, good taste in judgment and execution, as well as the scientific comprehension of things. Mathematics, therefore, above all other subjects, makes the student lust after knowledge, fills him, as it were, with a longing to fathom the cause of things and to employ his own powers independently; it collects his mental forces and concentrates them on a single point and thus awakens the spirit of individual inquiry, self-confidence and the joy of doing; it fascinates because of the view-points which it offers and creates certainty and assurance, owing to the universal validity of its methods. Thus, both what he receives and what he himself contributes toward the proper conception and solution of a problem, combine to mature the student and to make him skillful, to lead him away from the surface of things and to exercise him in the perception of their essence. A student thus prepared thirsts after knowledge and is ready for the university and its sciences. Thus it appears, that higher mathematics is the best guide to philosophy and to the philosophic conception of the world (considered as a self-contained whole) and of one’s own being.”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 40.

Truth, World, School, Law

“It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park (1814)
Works, Mansfield Park

Love, Life, Feeling, Nature

“From the beginning while we were engaged in these issues, I said in interviews with those who came from abroad, even in Najaf or Paris or among my personal words, I have always said that clerics have an occupation which is more important than these executive jobs, and should Islam become victorious, clerics would dedicate themselves to their own occupation. But as we went on with the revolution, we found out that if we tell all clerics to go after their mosques, this country would fall into the throat of America and Soviet Union. We experienced and saw, those who took the lead but were not clerics, even though some of them were religious people, our revolutionary path was not according to their taste, therefore… we temporarily deviate from our original word until this country could be administered by those other than clerics, then clerics will go back to their preach and their own position and they will leave executive matters to others who work for Islam.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Imam's Sahife. vol. 16, p. 349,350. (21 June 1982)
Foreign policy

People, Victory, Personality, Country

“The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have died forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk on which you are crumbling.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever.

The autumn will come with conches,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.”

Federico García Lorca Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

No te conoce el toro ni la higuera,
ni caballos ni hormigas de tu casa.
No te conoce el niño ni la tarde
porque te has muerto para siempre.No te conoce el lomo de la piedra,
ni el raso negro donde te destrozas.
No te conoce tu recuerdo mudo
porque te has muerto para siempre.El otoño vendrá con caracolas,
uva de niebla y montes agrupados,
pero nadie querrá mirar tus ojos
porque te has muerto para siempre.Porque te has muerto para siempre,
como todos los muertos de la Tierra,
como todos los muertos que se olvidan
en un montón de perros apagados.No te conoce nadie. No. Pero yo te canto.
Yo canto para luego tu perfil y tu gracia.
La madurez insigne de tu conocimiento.
Tu apetencia de muerte y el gusto de su boca.
La tristeza que tuvo tu valiente alegría.
Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1935)

Death, Sadness, Dogs, Understanding

“It had, perhaps, not been a very edifying life. On the booze in England, in India, in Malaya… And then a couple of gins for breakfast and then the first beers of the day in a kedai … He had been driven out of that Eden…because of his sinful desire to taste what was forbidden.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

Life, Beer

“Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Quoted in Eleanor Harris, The Real Story of Lucille Ball, ch. 1 (1954)

“Audiences who have been forced to wade through the thick middle-class padding of more expensively made movies to get to the action enjoy the nose-thumbing at "good taste" of cheap movies that stick to the raw materials. At some basic level they like the pictures to be cheaply done, they enjoy the crudeness; it’s a breather, a vacation from proper behavior and good taste and required responses. Patrons of burlesque applaud politely for the graceful erotic dancer but go wild for the lewd lummox who bangs her big hips around. That’s what they go to burlesque for.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Behavior

“But will reënforcement work the other way, also? Religion strengthens the social spirit; will the social spirit strengthen personal religion? When a minister gets hot about child labor and wage slavery, is he not apt to get cold about prayer meetings and evangelistic efforts? When young women become interested in social work, do they not often lose their taste for the culture of the spiritual life and the peace of religious meditation?”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 103

Life, Women, Peace, Religion

“We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn’t the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life’s lived before it gets to the parlor door.”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

The Home Club: For Servants Only, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (12 October 1913)

Life, Girl

“The reputation of a Don Juan gives to a man the most dangerous power. Wise virgins resist it, but foolish virgins frequently yield to the desire to take a celebrated lover from a rival - even from a friend. This emotion is a complex one, mad up of vanity, respect for another woman's taste, and the need to establish self-assurance by winning a difficult victory. Don Juan chose his first mistresses; later he was chosen. Byron said that he had been raped oftener than anyone since the Trojan War.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

War, Lovers, Victory, Madness

“Seeing the water birds on the lake increase in number day by day, I thought to myself how nice it would be if it snowed before we got back to the Palace—the garden would look so beautiful; and then, two days later, while I was away on a short visit, lo and behold, it did snow. As I watched the rather drab scene at home, I felt both depressed and confused. For some years now I had existed from day to day in listless fashion, taking note of the flowers, the birds in song, the way the skies change from season to season, the moon, the frost and snow, doing little more than registering the passage of time. How would it all turn out? The thought of my continuing loneliness was unbearable, and yet I had managed to exchange sympathetic letters with those of like mind—some contacted via fairly tenuous connections—who would discuss my trifling tales and other matters with me; but I was merely amusing myself with fictions, finding solace for my idleness in foolish words. Aware of my own insignificance, I had at least managed for the time being to avoid anything that might have been considered shameful or unbecoming; yet here I was, tasting the bitterness of life to the very full.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring (Penguin Books, 1996)
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Life, Beauty, Way, Home

“Hee drinkes misery, and he tastes happinesse; he mowes misery, and he gleanes happinesse; he journeys in misery, he does but walke in happinesse.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Meditation 13
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Drink

“To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do: whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Women, People, World, Behavior

“Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits. There cannot be much said for the taste of Queen Anne's time downwards — bagged, wigged, and hooped; there was not a picture of which the African's question might not have been asked, "Pray tell me, white woman, if this is all you?””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Life, Family, Home, History

“If you expect manners from modern newspapers you will be sorely disappointed in these democratic days. It is one of the blessings of modern democracy? If you were in America and did not give any interview, even then they would invent one? The press is a public institution; formerly, it was something dignified, but now the newspapers are the correct measure of the futility of human life…. It is the same with all other modern things… the press, the theatre, the radio; they drag down everything to the level of the crowd…. They succeed only if they can pamper the common man's tastes…. It is the same old question of the mass being pulled up by something higher. But, as it always happens, instead of being pulled up it is the mass that pulls everything down to its level….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

June 1, 1926
India's Rebirth

Life, Disappointment, Democracy, Question

“When I tried to sort out the pernicious disagreements between new classical and new Keynesian economists, I conducted a series of conversations with the protagonists (Klamer 1983). The personal differences were revealing. The viva cious Robert Solow (with a taste for the quick quip), the serious Robert Lucas (never less than self-composed), the chatty Franco Modigliani (not shy of self promotion), and the unassuming James Tobin (wanting an interview at least as long as Lucas’s) quickly taught me how trenchant the rhetorical differences were.”

Arjo Klamer (1953) Dutch columnist, economist and politician

Source: Speaking of economics: how to get in the conversation (2007), Ch. 7 : Why disagreements among economists persist, why economists need to brace themselves for differences within their simultaneous conversations and their conversations over time, and why they may benefit from knowing about classicism, modernism, and postmodernism

Personality

“He avoids the official "heroes'" cemetery, done in such impeccable taste. Why, he wonders, do the Germans do so much for their dead and so little for the living?”

Heinrich Böll (1917–1985) German author, novelist, and short story writer

You Enter Germany (1967); cited from Aufsätze, Kritiken, Reden (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1967) p. 278. Translation: "You are Now Entering Germany", in Leila Vennewitz (trans.) Missing Persons and Other Essays (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994) p. 48.

Dead

“There was no time for scholarly details, and, besides, I have always believed that a man can fairly be judged by the standards and taste of his choices in matters of high-level plagiarism.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"Prisoner of Denver", in Vanity Fair (June 2004) https://archive.is/20130628091446/www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-6240592_ITM 2000s

Time

“The carnistic schema, which twists information so that nonsense seems to make perfect sense, also explains why we fail to see the absurdities of the system. Consider, for instance, advertising campaigns in which a pig dances joyfully over the fire pit where he or she is to be barbecued, or chickens wear aprons while beseeching the viewer to eat them. And consider the Veterinarian's Oath of the American Veterinary Medical Association, “I solemnly swear to use my … skills for the … relief of animal suffering,” in light of the fact that the vast majority of veterinarians eat animals simply because they like the way meat tastes. Or think about how people won't replace their hamburgers with veggie burgers, even if the flavor is identical, because they claim that, if they try hard enough, they can detect a subtle difference in texture. Only when we deconstruct the carnistic schema can we see the absurdity of placing our preference for a flawless re-creation of a textural norm over the lives and deaths of billions of others.”

Melanie Joy book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows

Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), p. 133

Death, People, Way, Thinking

“… the single most important activist thing we could do is invent a good vegan cheese. If someone’s receptive to veganism, but they don’t feel like they can do it, it always is, “But I love how this or that tastes!” And it seems like as much as they’ll agree with you about the ethical arguments, their own taste preferences win out.”

Isa Chandra Moskowitz (1973) American food writer

" Isa Chandra Moskowitz: The vegan ambassador http://www.culinate.com/articles/the_culinate_interview/isa_chandra_moskowitz". Interview by Ben Grossblatt for Culinate, July 3, 2007

Love, Feeling

“The mathematician requires tact and good taste at every step of his work, and he has to learn to trust to his own instinct to distinguish between what is really worthy of his efforts and what is not; he must take care not to be the slave of his symbols, but always to have before his mind the realities which they merely serve to express. For these and other reasons it seems to me of the highest importance that a mathematician should be trained in no narrow school; a wide course of reading in the first few years of his mathematical study cannot fail to influence for good the character of the whole of his subsequent work”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 467 : On the importance of broad training

School, Mathematics, Reality, Effort

“A principal aim of education is to give students a taste for literature, for the books of life and power, and to accomplish this, it is necessary that their minds be held aloof from the babblement and discussions of the hour, that they may accustom themselves to take interest in the words and deeds of the greatest men, and so make themselves able and worthy to shape a larger and nobler future; but if their hours of leisure are spent over journals and reviews, they will, in later years, become the helpless victims of the newspaper habit.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 148

Life, Men, Books, Education

“We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal — all of us. You aren't very different.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

East of Eden (1952)

Children, Color, Sense, Time

“The Arab world has seen elections before. However, virtually all of them were artificial affairs, their outcomes never in doubt. They were in the end celebrations of one version or another of autocracy, never a repudiation of them. That kind of state-management is not what has just taken place in Iraq. Millions of people actually made choices, and placed claims on those who will lead them in the future. To act upon one's own world like this, and on such a scale, is what politics in the purest sense is all about. It is why we all, once upon a time, became activists. And it is infectious. The taste of freedom is a hard memory to rub out. No wonder the political and intellectual elites of the Arab world are so worried, and no wonder they were so hostile to everything that happened in Iraq since the overthrow of the Saddam regime. They had longed for failure. They trotted out the tired old formulas of anti-Americanism to impart legitimacy to the so-called Iraqi "resistance to American occupation." But the people of Iraq have put an end to all that. En masse, ordinary people took to the streets in the second great Iraqi revolt against the politics of barbarism exemplified by Abu Musab al Zarqawi's immortal words: "We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it."”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"The Shiite Obligation", Wall Street Journal (February 7, 2005)

Hostility, War, People, World

“When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter,—thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.”

Charles Miner (1780–1865) American politician

"Who ’ll turn Grindstones" from Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe, Doylestown, Pa., (1815); first published in the Wilkesbarre Gleaner (1811).

Thinking