Delicacy (person)

“ I considered that the taste of the day is refined and delicate to excess, and that to disgust that delicacy of taste, by a slovenly inattention to it, would be to forfeit, at once, all hope of being useful; and for this reason, though I have written more verse this last year than perhaps any man in England, I have finished, and polished, and touched, and retouched, with the utmost care. ”

“ It is but justice to our acquired delicacy of sentiment to say, that the absence of refinement contributed to this tranquillity. These primitive people, if they did not gather the flowers of cultivated elegance, were not wounded by the thorns of irritable delicacy. ”

“ In fine, the more simple our tastes are the more universal are they, and the most common repugnance is for made-up dishes. Does one ever see a person have a disgust for water or bread? Behold here the impress of nature! Behold here, then, our rule of life. Let us preserve to the child as long as possible his primitive taste; let its nourishment be common and simple; let not its palate be familiarised to any but natural flavours, and let no exclusive taste be formed.... ”

“ What remains positive in the impression is a sense of extreme fineness and delicacy, qualities which reflect themselves in the physical counterparts of that restraint and sure taste which are in the essence of all that she signed. ”

“ A coarse taste in eating is as sure an indication of coarseness in mind and habits, as delicacy of taste is of delicacy and refinement in other particulars. As the more vulgar desires are controlled by the{284} higher impulses of the mind, and clean hands are often the index of a clean heart, so purity of appetite usually accompanies purity of soul. Nothing condemns the vulgar man more quickly than the nature of his appetite, and his mode of gratifying it ”

“ As for delicacy, it is a word that is used so indiscriminately, and has so many significations, according to the mode, that few people rightly understand its true meaning. We say, for instance, a delicate child; and pork-butchers recommend a delicate pig! Delicacy and indelicacy depend on the mind of the recipient, and is not so much in the object as the observer, rely on't. Some men have a natural aptitude in discovering the indelicate, both in words and figures they appear, in a manner, to seek for it. ”

“ So saying, with despatchful looks in haste
She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent,
What choice to choose for delicacy best,
What order, so contrived as not to mix
Tastes, not well joined, inelegant, but bring
Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change; ”

“ On beholding a person indulge in such gluttony, I feel a distaste to eating, as a certain double-refined lady of my acquaintance declared that witnessing the demonstrations of love between two persons of low and vulgar habits so disgusted her with the tender passion, that she was sure she never could experience it herself. ”

“ His wife does the cooking, and he sits in a long sweet ecstacy, drinking in the fragrance of food, enjoying food by anticipation, with all his soul sunk in thoughts of food. As he dreams of his coming supper, "every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." ”

“ Delicacy is to the affections what grace is to the beauty.—Degerando.
Weak men often, from the very principle of their weakness, derive a certain susceptibility, delicacy and taste which render them, in those particulars, much superior to men of stronger and more consistent minds, who laugh at them.—Greville. ”

“ Why not take all our desserts in life when they taste best, instead of at the proper time, when we don't care for them? Desserts are, I suppose, meant to be enjoyed. Why not have them when most enjoyable? I wonder if there is not a certain perverted conscientiousness that leads us to this enforcement of our pleasures. I am myself conscious that I can scarcely ever approach a pleasure with a mind singly bent on enjoyment. ”

“ Let the ear be unmusically disposed, and the sweetest sounds put together with the greatest art, will give it no entertainment. And if the organs of taste are indisposed, either naturally or by a disease, the most delicious food is brought in vain, which, as it finds no taste, will give no relish. And if it be thus in the lowest pleasures, can it be otherwise in the highest? If a guest sits idle at a nice and plentiful table, merely because he wants a stomach to eat, or a palate to relish what he finds there, shall an indisposed soul enjoy God? ”

“ You will be as a soul,—no, you have no soul, you will be like a stomach, scenting, hunting, touching all the choicest dishes that can be served, and crying with terrible groanings as you recall this morning's breakfast: 'Alas! alas! my appetite has passed like a shadow; those exquisite dishes I will taste no more! alas! alas!' Then in your despair you will become lean,—do you hear me, canon?—you will become lean. ”

“ All dishes must be beautifully prepared and disposed to woo and win the sense of sight; the assembled articles must give off odors harmoniously blended to delight and cultivate the sense of smell; and each substance must balance with every other in point of flavor, to meet the natural demands of taste; otherwise the entertainment is shorn of its virtue to bless and tranquillize the soul! . . . .
"But lo, the fanatic in eating appears! Miserably hot with gluttonous debauchery. He has feasted upon a thousand deaths! ”

“ Whatever connection there may be originally between these two species of delicacy, I am persuaded that nothing is so proper to cure us of this delicacy of passion, as the cultivating of that higher and more refined taste, which enables us to judge of the characters of men, of the compositions of genius, and of the productions of the nobler arts. A greater or less relish for those obvious beauties which strike the senses, depends entirely upon the greater or less sensibility of the temper ”

“ Drinking has indeed been sung, but why, I have heard it asked, have we no ‘Eating Songs’?—for eating is, surely, a fine pleasure. Many practise it already, and it is becoming more general every day. I speak not of the finicking joy of the gourmet, but the joy of an honest appetite in ecstasy, the elemental joy of absorbing quantities of fresh, simple food—mere roast lamb, new potatoes, and peas of living green. ”

“ Enough! to live is the end of eating, not to be pleased and made better with objects, odors, flavors. Therefore welcome a few articles of food in violation of every fine sensibility. Stuff in and masticate the crudest forms of eatables,—bad-cooking, bad-looking, bad-smelling, bad-tasting, and worse-feeling,—down with them hastily,—and then, between your headaches and gastric spasms, pride yourself upon virtues and temperance not possessed by any student in the gastronomic school of Epicurus! ”

“ The pure beverage which nature has provided so liberally for our enjoyment, confers upon us both health and pleasure; and although the indulgence of every natural inclination is allowed, any intemperance in the enjoyment of an appetite is punished with immediate and general disgrace; the sensualist, the glutton, or the drunkard is avoided as unworthy to associate with his fellow men, and the instances of such offences being committed are so rare, that they are now looked upon as altogether unnatural. ”

“ He is, for instance, connoisseur of food and wine, but he is epicure not glutton. Your true gourmet has [Pg 100] with much effort and at considerable cost trained his palate to an appreciation of subtle distinctions, of vague, elusive flavours. Eating and drinking are serious matters with him. He eats not to kill his appetite but to tickle his senses, and he values his capacity for epicurean joys too highly to endanger it by riotous indulgence. ”

“ But the desire expressed is half aspiration and half appetite, and the dainty rises into ideal beauty under this dear little aspirant's gaze, and is seen in a light quite other than that which falls on a gourmand's table, after he is gorged with viands and wine, and ends his gross banquet with a dessert of fruit which his stupid and uncertain eye can hardly distinguish. ”

“ The eagerness of appetite that one can fairly see in the watery and sensual eyes of men to whom eating has become the aim and joy of their existence—the absorption of every faculty in the gluttonous pursuit—the animal indulgence and delight—these are sickening ”

“ But the hiccuping of those who are loaded with wine, and the snortings of those who are stuffed with food, and the snoring rolled in the bed-clothes, and the rumblings of pained stomachs, cover over the clear-seeing eye of the soul, by filling the mind with ten thousand phantasies. And the cause is too much food, which drags the rational part of man down to a condition of stupidity. ”

“ In his essay on ‘The Pleasure of Eating, and of the Means that may be Employed for Increasing it,’ he says: ‘The pleasure enjoyed in eating depends, first, on the agreeableness of the taste of the food; and, secondly, upon its power to affect the palate. ”

“ for there was a certain delicacy, which in yielding conquered, and with a pitiful look made one find cause to crave help himself. ”

“ A careful observation and just views would be able, as a general thing without detriment, to wrest many an hour from vain, vulgar, useless, or harmful pursuits, to bestow it upon adornments and amenities that do not perish with the using. And if a man or a woman is so deteriorated as to prefer the indulgence of a coarse or frivolous appetite, or the inordinate indulgence of a merely natural appetite, to the gratification and cultivation of refined and elevated tastes,—the more’s the pity! ”

“ Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains; so that a sensible temper must meet with fewer trials in the former way than in the latter. Not to mention, that men of such lively passions are apt to be transported beyond all bounds of prudence and discretion, and to take false steps in the conduct of life, which are often irretrievable.
There is a delicacy of taste observable in some men, which very much resembles this delicacy of passion, and produces the same sensibility to beauty and deformity of every kind, as that does to prosperity and adversity, obligations and injuries. ”

“ When one comes to think about it, what sense is there in throwing away a palatable morsel of food when the taste is at its best, or while taste lasts at all, even if the purpose of the meal is merely to contribute to the pleasure of eating?
"Some people live to eat and others eat to live" is a saying that is familiar to everyone, and yet how few appreciate that the perfection of living includes the perfection of both these desiderata! ”

“ As to the vulgar and old-fashioned habits of eating and drinking, they are matters in general but little thought of in expeditions under the directions of a god who is too sublime to be satisfied with common food. ”

“ Moved by one of those reckless explorative appetites to which youth is subject, attracted, no doubt, by the sweet almondy or peach-stony savour of the stuff, he had dared to taste, and had paid with his life for his mad temerity. ”

“ Yet numbers of people attempt to justify the gratification of their gluttonous proclivities by the statement that they are "blessed with a good appetite," while the truth of the matter is, they are cursed with an inordinate lust for food. ”

“ And that it has the sense of taste also, will, I think, be clear to you, when you remember bow much you enjoy the reading of a good book, wherein is food for the mind. Healthy food is sometimes presented in so unpalatable a shape, that the taste rejects it; and so it is with truth, which is the mind's food. ”

“ But here to this weak and delicate appetite is presented an abundance of the most stimulating and least nourishing food possible. It snatches it greedily, and is not only satisfied, but actually conceives a distaste for anything simpler and more wholesome. ”

“ Eating is not beautiful, and to watch one's darling stowing away food in her beautiful mouth, which ought to speak beautiful words, smile bewitchingly, and purse up her tender lips to a kind of flower-bud which one inhales in a kiss—that may be downright repugnant! ”

“ The writer has heard of a person, whose refinement of taste and feeling was such, as made him quite disgusted with any woman who eat in his presence; and perhaps the ladies in general are somewhat apprehensive of their running the risk of being depreciated by the appearance of a good appetite in public, and hence their common practice of taking what is called a luncheon before going to a feast, or social eating-party, and their being pleased with the compliment given in the form of complaint, that they have very poor stomachs! ”

“ Much more complicated than the psychology of the ordinary eater is that of the gourmand, who always seems even to himself to be an exceptional kind of person and who has in unsuspected ways enlarged the sphere of possible pleasures. ”

“ The gratification of our taste in the abundant supplies of nature, converted by art to the purposes of wholesome food, is perfectly compatible with the necessary maintenance of health; it is only the indiscriminate or inordinate indulgence of our appetites, regardless of the consequences, that is the proper object of censure. ”

“ It was sometimes for me a sight fraught with dangerous fascination, and often as I looked upon it, forgetting all else for the moment, have I been recalled disagreeably to my mundane sphere of slops, soot, smoke and dish-rags, as I heard the ominous sizzle and splutter of the coffee boiling over, or scented on the morning air that peculiar odor, full of alarm to the culinary soul, the odor of burning bread in the oven. ’Tis ever thus that the fondest illusions of life are rudely broken in upon by the vulgar necessities and accidents of earthly existence. ”

“ All this you would have escaped, if you had rejected idle fictions, and had followed what truth sanctions in abstinence from food, which would have taught you that sumptuous eating is to be avoided, not to escape pollution, as there is nothing of the kind, but to subdue the sensual appetite. ”

“ One of the most disgusting of your amusements, must be your feasts, great and small, where ladies and gentlemen are not only not ashamed but actually take pride in assembling together to cram themselves with all sorts of food and drink. No wonder, with your frequent dinner parties, most of you suffer from indigestion, for you must, on those occasions, eat and drink more than is good for you. ”