Top 70 Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

2. “The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

3. “To invite people to dine with us is to make ourselves responsible for their well-being for as long as they are under our roofs.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

4. “Beasts feed. Man eats. Only the man of intellect knows how to eat.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

5. “The limits of pleasures are as yet neither known nor fixed, and we have no idea what degree of bodily bliss we are capable of attaining.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

6. “Burgundy makes you think of silly things; Bordeaux makes you talk about them, and Champagne makes you do them.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

7. “In fine, the truffle is the very diamond of gastronomy.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

8. “Poultry is for the cook what canvas is for the painter.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

9. “Turkey is undoubtedly one of the best gifts that the New World has made to the Old.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

10. “I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

11. “Cooking is one of the oldest arts and one which has rendered us the most important service in civic life.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

12. “I appreciate the potato only as a protection against famine, except for that, I know of nothing more eminently tasteless.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

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

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

14. “Once fire was discovered, the instinct for improvement made men bring food to it. First to dry it, then to put it on the coals to cook.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

15. “To know how to eat well, one must first know how to wait.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

16. “Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

17. “In the centre of a spacious table rose a pastry as large as a church, flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal, on the south by an enormous ham, on the east by a monumental pile of butter, and on the west by an enormous dish of artichokes, with a hot sauce.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

18. “The fate of a nation depends on the way that they eat.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

19. “Dessert without cheese is like a beauty with only one eye.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

20. “Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

21. “In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

22. “The pleasures of the table belong to all times and ages, to every country and every day; they go hand in hand with all our other pleasures, outlast them, and remain to console us for their loss.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

23. “He who receives his friends and gives no personal attention to the meal which is being prepared for them, is not worthy of having friends.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

24. “Gourmandise is an impassioned, rational and habitual preference for all objects that flatter the sense of taste.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

25. “The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its character.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

26. “Whosoever says truffle, utters a grand word, which awakens erotic and gastronomic ideas...”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

27. “Nothing is more pleasant than to see a pretty woman, her napkin well placed under her arms, one of her hands on the table, while the other carries to her mouth, the choice piece so elegantly carved.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

28. “Those from whom nature has withheld taste invented trousers.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

29. “The number of flavors is infinite, for every soluble body has a peculiar flavor, like none other.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

30. “L’alcool est le monarque des liquides, et porte au dernier degre l’exaltation palatale. Alcohol is the prince of liquids, and carries the palate to its highest pitch of exaltation.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

31. “A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner. “Much obliged,” said he, pushing the plate aside, “I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills.””

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

32. “The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

33. “The senses are the organs by which man places himself in connexion with exterior objects.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

34. “Salad freshens without enfeebling and fortifies without irritating.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

35. “For unknown foods, the nose acts always as a sentinal and cries. ‘Who goes there?’”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

36. “The Spanish ladies of the New World are madly addicted to chocolate, to such a point that, not content to drink it several times each day, they even have it served to them in church.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

37. “La truffe n’est point un aphrodisiaque positif; mais elle peut, en certaines occasions, rendre les femmes plus tendres et les hommes plus aimables. The truffle is not a true aphrodisiac; but in certain circumstances it can make women more affectionate and men more attentive.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

38. “The most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality. The same must be said of guests.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

39. “Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary meal in that, being offered to persons that have already dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst, and has no object but distraction, no basis but delicate enjoyment.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

40. “The centuries last passed have also given the taste important extension; the discovery of sugar, and its different preparations, of alcoholic liquors, of wine, ices, vanilla, tea and coffee, have given us flavors hitherto unknown.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

41. “Gluttony is mankind’s exclusive prerogative.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

42. “The truffle is not a positive aphrodisiac, but it can upon occasion make women tenderer and men more apt to love.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

43. “If one swallows a cup of chocolate only three hours after a copious lunch, everything will be perfectly digested and there will still be room for dinner.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

44. “In the state of society in which we now find ourselves, it is difficult to imagine a nation which lived solely on bread and vegetables.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

45. “Those persons who suffer from indigestion, or who become drunk, are utterly ignorant of the true principles of eating and drinking.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

46. “The table is the only place where we do not get weary during the first hour.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

47. “Let the progress of the meal be slow, for dinner is the last business of the day; and let the guests conduct themselves like travelers due to reach their destination together.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

48. “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.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

49. “When I need a word and do not find it in French, I select it from other tongues, and the reader has either to understand or translate me. Such is my fate.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

50. “Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.”

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin