Protein was the most valued ingredient 250 years ago: It was the rarest thing. Now the rarest thing we have is time: time to cook and time to eat.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the changing value of resources over time, highlighting time as a precious commodity in our modern lives.
Adam Gopnik's quote reflects on the evolving perspective of what is deemed valuable in society. While protein was once considered the rarest and most valued ingredient due to its scarcity, in today's fast-paced world, it is our time that has become the scarce resource. This suggests that the ability to prepare and enjoy food is often neglected due to our busy schedules, prompting a reflection on our priorities and the importance of savoring life's experiences.
In practice
During a speech at a culinary conference to emphasize the importance of slow food.
The future will be like the past, in the sense that, no matter how amazing or technologically advanced a society becomes, the basic human rhythm of petty malevolence, sordid moneygrubbing, and official violence, illuminated by occasional bursts of loyalty or desire or tenderness, will go on.
The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.
The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present. If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping, and the room was full.
Love, like light, is a thing that is enacted better than defined: we know it afterward by the traces it leaves on paper.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
We can set our deeds to the music of a grateful heart, and seek to round our lives into a hymn β the melody of which will be recognized by all who come in contact with us, and the power of which shall not be evanescent, like the voice of the singer, but perennial, like the music of the spheres.
Your own pain is involuntary; you feel overwhelmed and have no control. When feeling the pain of others, there is an element of discomfort, but there also is a level of stability because you are voluntarily accepting pain. It gives you a sense of confidence.
What is well rooted cannot be pulled up. What is firmly grasped will not slip loose. It will be honoured from generation to generation.
The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--' Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked. We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily; 'really you are very dull!' You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth.
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
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