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FOOD QUOTES SECTION

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Cabbage Quotes

“Let them fart fire and brimstone....I will not have a single case of scurvy on my hands, the sea-surgeon's shame, while there is cabbage to be culled.”
Stephen Maturin in
Patrick O'Brian's 'Desolation Island' (1978)-
 

"The cabbage surpasses all other vegetables. If, at a banquet, you wish to dine a lot and enjoy your dinner, then eat as much cabbage as you wish, seasoned with vinegar, before dinner, and likewise after dinner eat some half-dozen leaves. It will make you feel as if you had not eaten, and you can drink as much as you like."
Cato (Marcus Porcius) 234-149 BC. Roman politician and general; he wrote the first history of Rome.
 

“In addition, store the urine of anyone who habitually eats cabbage; warm it, bathe the patient in it. With this treatment you will soon restore health; it has been tested....Thos who cannot see clearly should bathe their eyes in this urine and they will see more.”
Cato, 'On Farming' (234-149 B.C.)
translated by Andrew Dalby
 

"If you lived on cabbage, you would not be obliged to flatter the powerful." To which the courtier replied, "If you flattered the powerful, you would not be obliged to live upon cabbage."
Diogenes, ancient Greek philosopher’s advice to a young courtier
 

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."
H.L. Mencken
 

"A louse in the cabbage is better than no meat at all."
Pennsylvania Dutch proverb
 

"It will purge wounds full of pus, and canceps, and make them well when no other treatment can accomplish it...."
Cato (234-149 B.C.)
 

"The old Romans having expelled physicians out of their commonwealth, did for many years maintain their health by the use of cabbages, taking them for every disease."
16th century historian

"Boiled cabbage à l'Anglaise is something compared with which steamed coarse newsprint bought from bankrupt Finnish salvage dealers and heated over smoky oil stoves is an exquisite delicacy."
William Connor (1950) ‘Daily Mirror’ (England)
 

"Let a cabbage soup be entirely cabbage. . . and may what I say about soup be a law applied to everything that is eaten."
Nicholas de Bonnefons
‘Les Delices de la Campagne’ (1654)
 

"Cabbage: A vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head."
Ambrose Bierce, American writer (1842-1914)
 

“Cabbage as a food has problems. It is easy to grow, a useful source of greenery for much of the year. Yet as a vegetable it has original sin, and needs improvement. It can smell foul in the pot, linger through the house with pertinacity, and ruin a meal with its wet flab. Cabbage also has a nasty history of being good for you.”
Jane Grigson (1928-1990) ‘Vegetable Book’ (1978)