111 Quotes by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

For unknown foods, the nose acts always as a sentinal and cries. 'Who goes there?'

Alcohol carries the pleasures of the palate to their highest degree.

Those truffled turkeys, of which the reputation and the price are still increasing, appear like beneficient stars, and make the eyes sparkle of all sorts of gourmands of every category, whilst their faces beam with delight and they themselves dance with pleasure.

Gourmandism is an act of judgment, by which we prefer things which have a pleasant taste to those which lack this quality.

I am a strong partisan of second causes, and I believe firmly that the entire gallinaceous order has been merely created to furnish our larders and our banquets.

At the table of a gentleman living in the Chausee d'Antin was served up an Arles sausage of enormous size. "Will you accept a slice?" the host asked a lady who was sitting next to him; "you see it has come from the right factory."It is really very large," said the lady, casting on it a roguish glance; "What a pity it is unlike anything."

A connoisseur of gastronomy was congratulated on his appointment as a director of indirect contributions at Periguex: and, above all, in the pleasure there would be in living in the midst of good cheer, in the country of truffles, partridges, truffled turkeys, and so forth. "Alas!" replied with a sigh the sad gastronomer, "can one really live at all in a country where there is no fresh sea-fish?"

Gastronomers of the year 1825, who find sateity in the lap of abundance, and dream of some newly-made dishes, you will not enjoy the discoveries which science has in store for the year 1900, such as foods drawn from the mineral kingdom, liqueurs produced by the pressure of a hundred atmospheres; you will never see the importations which travelers yet unborn will bring to you from that half of the globe which has still to be discovered or explored. How I pity you!

Gluttony is mankind's exclusive prerogative.