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.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the difference between physical nourishment and the immediate uplifting effect of spirits on a weary person.
Brillat-Savarin emphasizes the distinction between mere sustenance and the restorative qualities of indulgence, such as wine or brandy, suggesting that while food provides necessary energy, it is often the comfort and pleasure from drink that can truly revive someone's spirit. This observation reflects on human experience and the ways in which different forms of nourishment can impact one's condition, not only physically but also emotionally and psychologically.
In practice
During a dinner party, one could use this quote to illustrate the importance of atmosphere in dining experiences.
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.
The limits of pleasure are as yet neither known nor fixed, and that we have no idea what degree of bodily bliss we are capable of attaining.
Gourmandism is an act of judgment, by which we prefer things which have a pleasant taste to those which lack this quality.
In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight.
You first parents of the human race...who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?
Cooking is one of the oldest arts and one which has rendered us the most important service in civic life.
There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live - this very difficulty being necessary.
I have always sought to guide the future-but it is very lonely sometimes trying to play God.
If my eyes could show my soul,everyone would cry when they saw me smile.
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
Who would you be without your story?
And when night comes, and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God's hands and leave it with Him.
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