– “There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.”
M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf
– “Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.”
Samuel Johnson, Tour to the Hebrides
– “Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.”
Jacques Maritain, Reflections on America