Refined Taste Quotes

One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed.

Why is it so embarrassing to admit you like someone? It should be a compliment to them, and even if they don't like you back, they should at least commend you on your refined taste.

I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

The man who can be contented to live with a pretty and useful companion who has no mind has lost in voluptuous gratifications a taste for more refined pleasures; he has never felt the calm and refreshing satisfaction. . . .of being loved by someone who could understand him.

you were the most beautiful thing i'd ever felt till now. and i was convinced you'd remain the most beautiful thing i'd ever feel. do you know how limiting that is. to think at such a ripe young age i'd experienced the most exhilarating person i'd ever meet. how i'd spend the rest of my life just settling. to think i'd tasted the rawest form of honey and everything else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing beyond this point would add up. that all the years beyond me could not combine themselves to be sweeter than you. - falsehood

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists - I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

Soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste are almost synonymous with the epithets of weakness…I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue.

Taste is developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole.

I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists - I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

One not only wants to be understood when one writes, but also quite as certainly not to be understood. It is by no means an objection to a book when someone finds it unintelligible: perhaps this might just have been the intention of its author, perhaps he did not want to be understood by "anyone”. A distinguished intellect and taste, when it wants to communicate its thoughts, always selects its hearers; by selecting them, it at the same time closes its barriers against "the others". It is there that all the more refined laws of style have their origin: they at the same time keep off, they create distance, they prevent "access" (intelligibility, as we have said,) while they open the ears of those who are acoustically related to them.

I bent over him and, before I could say anything, he grabbed me by the back of my head, dragged my mouth down and kissed me. Kissed me, with no drama and no explanation, like it was just something we did. Knowing in a half-forgotten way that he kissed like a demon was one thing; experiencing it all over again was quite another. There was no refined seduction- Pritkin kissed openmouthed, hard and hungry, until I could hear nothing over the pounding of my heart, until I could taste my blood on his lips as his tongue thrust into me.

P. and J. did not like books set in large type with wide margins, such as pleased readers of more refined tastes, but rather pages set in small type stretching all the way across tightly justified lines, filled to the brim with words and sentences, like those enormous rustic dishes you can eat at long and heartily without every emptying them, and are all that can satisfy some gigantic appetites.

People take for granted what is in fact an art. To live well, to live comfortably by one’s own standards takes a certain maturity of spirit, exceptional character, truly refined taste, and—’ ‘And money.

They had imagined too often and too much and so they had exhausted all their possibilities. When they embraced each other’s phantoms, each in his separate privacy has savoured the most refined of pleasures but, connoisseurs of unreality as they were, they could not bear the crude weight, the rank smell and the ripe taste of real flesh. It is always a dangerous experiment to act out a fantasy; they had undertaken the experiment rashly and had failed…

From the two things one: either my husband is a brutal, jealous one, or he’s a refined man; in the first hypothesis, the best I can do is to revenge myself for his conduct; in the second, I would know not to burden myself; since I taste of pleasures, he’ll be happy for it if he’s honest: there’s not a refined man who doesn’t take pleasure at the spectacle of the happiness of the person he adores.

There was a beauty here bigger than the hurtling beauty of basketball, a beauty refined from country pastures, a game of solitariness, of waiting, waiting for the pitcher to complete his gaze toward first base and throw his lightning, a game whose very taste, of spit and dust and grass and sweat and leather and sun, was America.

It's so weird that adults in committed relationships have a problem with something so innocuous as flirting. I would never expect you to walk around with a paper bag over your head to avoid catching the eye of a stranger, nor would I discourage you making friendly conversation with whomever you might encounter during the day. And if you needed to fuck somebody else, we could talk about it. People change, our desires evolve, and it feels foolish to me to expect what you'll want two, five, or ten years from now will be exactly the same thing that fills you up today. I mean, the way I feel about fidelity has evolved over the last ten years of my life. It's a hard-and-fast rule that we don't apply to any other thing in our lives: YOU MUST LOVE THIS [SHOW/BOOK/FOOD/SHIRT] WITH UNWAVERING FERVOR FOR THE REST OF YOUR NATURAL LIFE. Could you imagine being forced to listen to your favorite record from before your music tastes were refined for the rest of your life? Right now I'm pretty sure I could listen to Midnight Snack by HOMESHAKE for the rest of my life, but me ten years ago was really into acoustic Dave Matthews, and I'm not sure how I feel about that today. And yes, I am oversimplifying it, but really, if in seven years you want to have sex with the proverbial milkman, just let me know about it beforehand so I can hide my LaCroix and half eaten wedge of port salut. ('Milkmen' always eat all the good snacks.)

From their refined tastes in French wine to their fervent consumption of Maine’s microbrews, booze makes up a very important part of white culture.

We're victims of our own refined tastes.

The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple,authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is he beverage of the wealthy and of the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony.

At this juncture, the entire planet is locked, figuratively, in a room with the sociocultural equivalent of Hannibal Lecter. An individual of consummate taste and refinement, imbued with indelible grace and charm, he distracts his victims with the brilliance of his intellect, even while honing his blade. He is thus able to dine alone upon their livers, his feast invariably candlelit, accompanied by lofty music and a fine wine. Over and over the ritual is repeated, always hidden, always denied in order that it may be continued. So perfect is Lecter's pathology that, from the depths of his scorn for the inferiors upon whom he feeds, he advances himself as their sage and therapist, he who is incomparably endowed with the ability to explain their innermost meanings, he professes to be their savior. His success depends upon being embraced and exalted by those upon whom he preys. Ultimately, so long as Lecter is able to retain his mask of omnipotent gentility, he can never be stopped. The spirit of Hannibal Lecter is thus at the core of an expansionist European 'civilization' which has reached out to engulf the planet.

Every young woman should dress well, that is, neatly, tastefully, modestly, whether she be rich or poor. Conspicuous dressing is vulgar. True refinement avoids anything showy and flashy: it never dresses better than it can afford, and yet it is always well dressed, even in simple muslin or plain calico. Another

Music is the 'pure' art par excellence. It says nothing and has nothing to say. Never really having an expressive function, it is opposed to drama, which even in its most refined forms still bears a social message and can only be 'put over' on the basis of an immediate and profound affinity with the values and expectations of its audience. The theatre divides its public and divides itself. The Parisian opposition between right-bank and left-bank theatr, bourgeois theatre and avant-garde theatre, is inextricably aesthetic and political.

Nowadays, when more subtle studies and more refined taste have reduced the art of pleasing into principles, a vile and misleading uniformity governs our customs, and all minds seem to have been cast in the same mould: incessantly politeness makes demands, propriety issues orders, and incessantly people follow customary usage, never their own inclinations. One does not dare to appear as what one is. And in this perpetual constraint, men who make up this herd we call society, placed in the same circumstances, will all do the same things, unless more powerful motives prevent them. Thus, one will never know well the person one is dealing with.

By degrees they spoke of education , and the book-learning that forms one part of it; and the result was that Ruth determined to get up early all throughout the bright summer mornings, to acquire the knowledge hereafter to be give to her child. Her mind was uncultivated, her reading scant; beyond the mere mechanical arts of education she knew nothing; but she had a refined taste, and excellent sense and judgment to separate the true from the false.

She had, or might have had, many suitors in her own rank of life, but scornfully repulsed or rejected them all; for none but a gentleman could please her refined taste, and none but a rich one could satisfy her soaring ambition.

Are you not having anything?" Laith was watching her as he piled two cubes of sugar into his cup and fed a third to his cat. "I have very refined tastes," Arthie said. "You're a snob, you mean." "Better a snob than someone mistaking sugar for flavor," she replied. A slow smirk curled the side of his mouth, and he made sure she was looking when he added a third cube into his cup, stirring it thoroughly before meeting her eyes and dropping in a fourth. "Can't blame me for needing a way to work with something so bitter.

That to the adolescent is the authentic poetic note and whoever is the first in his life to strike it, whether Tennyson, Keats, Swinburne, Housman or another, awakens a passion of imitation and an affectation which no subsequent refinement or sophistication of his taste can entirely destroy. In my own case it was Hardy in the summer of 1923; for more than a year I read no one else and I do not think that I was ever without one volume or another or the beautifully produced Wessex edition in my hands: I smuggled them into class, carried them about on Sunday walks, and took them up to the dormitory to read in the early morning, though they were far too unwieldy to be read in bed with comfort. In the autumn of 1924 there was a palace revolution after which he had to share his kingdom with Edward Thomas, until finally they were both defeated by Elliot at the battle of Oxford in 1926.

When it turns out that the greatest enemy of truth is not falsehood, but gibberish, it turns out that the greatest intellectual virtue is not deductive brilliance or factual erudition, but common sense. When it turns out that the greatest enemy of decency is not hatred, but arbitrariness, it turns out that the greatest moral virtue is not kindness or mercy, but perseverance. When it turns out that the greatest enemy of good taste is not vulgarity, but ostentation, it turns out that the greatest aesthetic virtue is not elegance or refinement, but moderation. And when it turns out that the greatest enemy of civilization is not barbarity, but infantilism, it turns out that the greatest cultural virtue is not sophistication, but integrity.

LEGENDS & LATTES ~ MENU ~ Coffee ~ exotic aroma & rich, full-bodied roast—½ bit Latte ~ a sophisticated and creamy variation—1 bit Any drink ICED ~ a refined twist—add ½ bit Cinnamon Roll ~ heavenly frosted cinnamon pastry—4 bits Thimblets ~ crunchy nut & fruit delicacies—2 bits * FINER TASTES FOR THE ~ WORKING GENT & LADY ~

Her father's old books were all she could command, and these she wore out with much reading. Inheriting his refined tastes, she found nothing to attract her in the society of the commonplace and often coarse people about her. She tried to like the buxom girls whose one ambition was to "get married," and whose only subjects of conversation were "smart bonnets" and "nice dresses." She tried to believe that the admiration and regard of the bluff young farmers was worth striving for; but when one well-to-do neighbor laid his acres at her feet, she found it impossible to accept for her life's companion a man whose soul was wrapped up in prize cattle and big turnips.

Like Okakura, I know that tea is no minor beverage. When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment? The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and of the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed.

In refining their senses and aesthetic judgement, blind tasters become much more conscious of the richness not only of wine but also of other potentially complex beverages such as tea, coffee, and spirits, and, by extension, the flavours in food, the scents in the air, and the play of light in the world. For life is consciousness, and consciousness is life.

He was savoring for the first time the ineffable subtleties of feminine refinement. Never had he encountered this grace of language, this quiet taste in dress, these relaxed, dove like postures. He marveled at the sublimity of her soul and at the lace on her petticoat. With her ever-changing moods, by turns brooding and gay, chattering and silent, fiery and casual, she aroused in him a thousand desires, awakening instincts or memories. She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague "she" of all the poetry books.

What we will discover is that most of what interests and attracts people of more refined and discriminating taste, anyone of a higher nature, seems completely 'uninteresting' to the average person.

It's one of the greatest mistakes of cultivated people to take it as given that because they have sophisticated minds they also have sophisticated emotions. But what kind of soul feels sophisticated hatred or sophisticated grief, for, say, a murdered child? Is the broken heart of the educated and refined person different from that of the savage? Why not say that the enlightened and knowledgeable feel the pain of childbirth, or the kidney stone, in a different way to unpolished commoner or chav? Intelligence has many shades, but rage is the same color everywhere. Humiliation tastes the same to everyone.

Yes, in theory you’re definitely macho. But then you have such refined tastes in writers: Mallarmé, Huysmans. They don’t exactly play to the macho base. Plus you have a weirdly feminine eye for household textiles. On the other hand, you dress like a loser. I could see you cultivating a macho slob thing, but you don’t like ZZ Top, you’ve always preferred Nick Drake. In other words, you’re a walking enigma.

Your taste in furnishings is quite splendid, Captain Sharpe. One might almost say refined." She couldn't keep a trace of sarcasm out of her voice. "Unlike my manners, is that it, Miss Chastain?" "Your words, Captain, not mine.

Now the many are plainly quite slavish, choosing a life like that of brute animals: yet they obtain some consideration, because many of the great share the tastes of Sardanapalus. The refined and active again conceive it to be honour: for this may be said to be the end of the life in society: yet it is plainly too superficial for the object of our search, because it is thought to rest with those who pay rather than with him who receives it, whereas the Chief Good we feel instinctively must be something which is our own, and not easily to be taken from us. And besides, men seem to pursue honour, that they may *[Sidenote: 1096a] believe themselves to be good: for instance, they seek to be honoured by the wise, and by those among whom they are known, and for virtue: clearly then, in the opinion at least of these men, virtue is higher than honour. In truth, one would be much more inclined to think this to be the end of the life in society; yet this itself is plainly not sufficiently final: for it is conceived possible, that a man possessed of virtue might sleep or be inactive all through his life, or, as a third case, suffer the greatest evils and misfortunes: and the man who should live thus no one would call happy, except for mere disputation's sake. And for these let thus much suffice, for they have been treated of at sufficient length in my Encyclia.

He paused, then, I behind him, arms locked around the powerful ribs, fingers caressing him. To lie with him, to lie with him, burning forgetful in the delicious animal fire. Locked first upright, thighs ground together, shuddering, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, legs enmeshed, then lying full length, with the good heavy weight of body upon body, arching, undulating, blind, growing together, force fighting force: to kill? To drive into burning dark of oblivion? To lose identity? Not love, this, quite. But something else rather. A refined hedonism. Hedonism: because of the blind sucking mouthing fingering quest for physical gratification. Refined: because of the desire to stimulate another in return, not being quite only concerned for self alone, but mostly so. An easy end to arguments on the mouth: a warm meeting of mouths, tongues quivering, licking, tasting. An easy substitute for bad slashing with angry hating teeth and nails and voice: the curious musical tempo of hands lifting under breasts, caressing throat, shoulders, knees, thighs. And giving up to the corrosive black whirlpool of mutual necessary destruction. - Once there is the first kiss, then the cycle becomes inevitable. Training, conditioning, make a hunger burn in breasts and secrete fluid in vagina, driving blindly for destruction. What is it but destruction? Some mystic desire to beat to sensual annihilation - to snuff out one’s identity on the identity of the other - a mingling and mangling of identities? A death of one? Or both? A devouring and subordination? No, no. A polarization rather - a balance of two integrities, changing, electrically, one with the other, yet with centers of coolness, like stars. And there it is: when asked what role I will plan to fill, I say “What do you mean role? I plan not to step into a part on marrying - but to go on living as an intelligent mature human being, growing and learning as I always have. No shift, no radical change in life habits.” Never will there be a circle, signifying me and my operations, confined solely to home, other womenfolk, and community service, enclosed in the larger worldly circle of my mate, who brings home from his periphery of contact with the world the tales only of vicarious experience to me.

This book is the synthesis of, on one hand, the no-nonsense practitioner of uncertainty who spent his professional life trying to resist being fooled by randomness and trick the emotions associated with probabilistic outcomes and, on the other, the aesthetically obsessed, literature-loving human being willing to be fooled by any form of nonsense that is polished, refined, original, and tasteful. I am not capable of avoiding being the fool of randomness; what I can do is confine it to where it brings some aesthetic gratification.

take. Her designs would be more refined than Vera’s, because she did not intend to satisfy popular taste and create a brand, but to create for pleasure. The possibility of earning a living never occurred to her. She wasn’t interested in scarves for ten dollars, or sheets

She has a great and rare virtue: she is cheerful, but she can understand the sufferings of others and also knows how to soothe them with her mindful compassion. She is, above all, an intellectual woman, a woman of refined tastes, a perfect woman, a friend who is not a burden. She takes perhaps a little too much pleasure in witticisms and clever phrases, but her arrows always have a golden point and are shot with inimitable grace. Certainly, among all the worldly ladies I have known, she is the finest; among all my friends, she is my favorite.

Should you devote your life to asshole aikido? While that would not be entirely unworthy, there are probably better things to do with the limited time one has in life, things such as learning to paint large canvases in the abstract; refining one’s taste in jazz; or, indeed, learning the martial art of aikido for the sake of the practice itself (rather than for the few occasions one will ever use it in a fight). Life affords only so much time, and there are better things to do—sweeter spots to hit—than perfection in the asshole management arts.

Can you, who have always been used to serenity and order in a family, to rational, refined, and improving conversation, relinquish them, and launch into the whirlpool of frivolity, where the correct taste and the delicate sensibility which you possess must constantly be wounded

She sighed heavily before whispering, “I’m still a bit confused as to what we are waiting for.” “We are waiting for one of the constants in our world, Miss Braun,” Wellington assured her. “At the end of every opera, there is the grand finale, where the music continues its gradual crescendo, the tenor and tempo rising ever so gradually for that pinnacle of dramatic tension, that moment of anticipation—” “Welly, are you talking about opera or about sex?” His next words caught in his throat. For a woman of higher tastes and seeming refinement, this woman could be utterly crass.

are culture-vultures; but not in the way this phrase is usually used,” as Stephen Hugh-Jones, a British anthropologist, explains. “For anthropologists ‘culture’ is not a matter of refinement of tastes or the intellectual side of civilization; it is the commonly-held ideas, beliefs and practices of any society of any kind.

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment? The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accesion to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and of the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed.

Neighborhood folk still came, in small vanquished numbers and mostly in the afternoon, before the two small dining rooms and the bar were taken over by the educated classes, an ill-dressed, underfed, overdrunken group of squatters with minds so highly developed that they were excused from good manners, tastes so refined in one direction that they were excused for having none in any other, emotions so cultivated that the only aberration was normality, all afloat here on sodden pools of depravity calculated only to manifest the pricelessness of what they were throwing away, the three sexes in two colors, a group of people all mentally and physically the wrong size.

Again, there are multitudes who are quite ready for Christ to justify them, but not to sanctify. Some kind, some degree, of sanctification they will tolerate, but to be sanctified wholly,their "whole spirit and soul and body" (1 Thess. 5:23), they have no relish for. For their hearts to be sanctified, for pride and covetousness to be subdued, would be too much like the plucking out of a right eye. For the constant mortification of all their members they have no taste. For Christ to come to them as Refiner, to burn up their lusts, consume their dross, to dissolve utterly their old frame of nature, to melt their souls, so as to make them run in a new mould, they like not. To deny self utterly, and take up their cross daily, is a task from which they shrink with abhorrence.

They were all fine, handsome fellows; Fritz, now twenty-four, was of moderate height, uncommonly strong, active, muscular, and high-spirited. Ernest, two years younger, was tall and slight; in disposition, mild, calm, and studious; his early faults of indolence and selfishness were almost entirely overcome. He possessed refined tastes and great intellectual power. Jack, at twenty, strongly resembled Fritz, being about his height, though more lightly built, and remarkable rather for active grace and agility than for muscular strength. Franz, a lively youth of seventeen, had some of the qualities of each of his brothers; he possessed wit and shrewdness, but not the arch drollery of Jack. All were honorable, God-fearing young men, dutiful and affectionate to their mother and myself, and warmly attached to each other. Although

Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling - for as soon as the mind responds, connects with the thing, the feeling shows in the words; this is how poetry enters deeply into us. If the poet presents directly feelings which overwhelm ... they cannot strengthen morality and refine culture, set heaven and earth in motion, and call up the spirits!

Our pleasures, however refined or easily acquired, are by their very nature fleeting. They begin to subside the instant they arise, only to be replaced by fresh desires or feelings of discomfort. You can’t get enough of your favorite meal until, in the next moment, you find you are so stuffed as to nearly require the attention of a surgeon—and yet, by some quirk of physics, you still have room for dessert. The pleasure of dessert lasts a few seconds, and then the lingering taste in your mouth must be banished by a drink of water. The warmth of the sun feels wonderful on your skin, but soon it becomes too much of a good thing. A move to the shade brings immediate relief, but after a minute or two, the breeze is just a little too cold. Do you have a sweater in the car? Let’s take a look. Yes, there it is. You’re warm now, but you notice that your sweater has seen better days. Does it make you look carefree or disheveled? Perhaps it is time to go shopping for something new. And so it goes. We seem to do little more than lurch between wanting and not wanting. Thus, the question naturally arises: Is there more to life than this? Might it be possible to feel much better (in every sense of better) than one tends to feel? Is it possible to find lasting fulfillment despite the inevitability of change? Spiritual life begins with

the orthogonality thesis suggests that we cannot blithely assume that a superintelligence will necessarily share any of the final values stereotypically associated with wisdom and intellectual development in humans—scientific curiosity, benevolent concern for others, spiritual enlightenment and contemplation, renunciation of material acquisitiveness, a taste for refined culture or for the simple pleasures in life, humility and selflessness, and so forth.

My people!" he shouted in the stentorian voice. "I shall speak now of us! Who are we? We are an articulate people, yet a people of few words. We feel deeply, yet refrain from embarrassing displays of emotion. Though firm, we are never too firm, though we love fun, we never have fun in a silly way that makes us appear ridiculous, unless that is our intent. Our national collaboration, though varied, is consistent. Everything about us is as it should be, for example, we can be excessive when excess is called for, and yet, even in our excess we show good taste, although never is our taste so refined as to seem precious. Even the extent to which we are moderate is moderate, except when we have decided to be immoderately moderate, or even shockingly flamboyant, at which time our flamboyance is truly breathtaking in a really startling way, and when we decide to make mistakes, our mistakes are as big and grand and irrevocable as any nation's colossal errors, and when we decide to deny our mistakes, we sound just as if we are telling the truth, and when we decide to admit our errors, we do so in a way that is truly moving in its extreme frankness! Am I making sense? Am I saying this well?

The old proverb that you cannot argue about matters of taste may well be true, but that should not conceal the fact that taste can be developed. This is again a matter of common experience which everybody can test in a modest field. To people who are not used to drinking tea one blend may taste exactly like the other. But, if they have the leisure, will and opportunity, to search out such refinements as there may be, they may develop into true connoisseur's who can distinguish exactly what type and mixture they prefer, and their greater knowledge is bound to add greatly to their enjoyment of the choicest blends.

In the pages that follow we shall review some of the ways that the quality of experience can be improved through the refined use of bodily processes. These include physical activities like sports and dance, the cultivation of sexuality, and the various Eastern disciplines for controlling the mind through the training of the body. They also feature the discriminating use of the senses of sight, hearing, and taste. Each of these modalities offers an almost unlimited amount of enjoyment, but only to persons who work to develop the skills they require. To those who do not, the body remains indeed a lump of rather inexpensive flesh.

An irregular birthmark stood out on the crest of her hip, like a splash of wine on snow. He touched a finger to it, and she stirred. “Don’t look at that,” she mumbled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “I know it’s horrid.” “Horrid?” Despite the pained expression on her face, he had to laugh. “Sweetheart, I can honestly say that there is nothing about you that’s horrid in the least.” “My painting master would not agree.” The bitter taste of envy filled his mouth. “Do you know, that Frenchman of yours had better hope I never meet with him. “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “Not Gervais. Never Gervais. My painting master was an old, balding prig called Mr. Turklethwaite.” Gray’s bafflement must have been obvious. She went on, “There was never any Gervais. I mean, you know that I’d never taken a man to my bed, but you must understand…I’ve never allowed another man into my heart, either.” She kissed his brow, then his lips. “I love you, only you.” God. How brave she was. Tossing those words about as though they were feathers. Could she possibly suspect how they landed in his chest like cannonballs, detonating deep in his heart? Struggling for equanimity, he asked casually, “So when did this other painting master have occasion to see your birthmark?” She laughed. “He didn’t. But I painted something like it once, on a portrait of Venus. I told him I thought it lent her an air of reality. Oh, how he scolded me. A lady who paints, he said-“ She gave Gray a teasing look. “He would not apply the term “artist” to a female, you see.” “I see.” “A lady who paints, he said, should approach the art as she would any other genteel accomplishment. Her purpose is to please; her goal is to create an example of refinement. A true lady would not paint an imperfection, he said, any more than she would strike a false note in a sonata. Beauty is not real, and reality is not beautiful.” Gray shook his head. “Remarkable. I believe I despise your real painting master even more than I hated the fictional one. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.

Berta, like so many Great Russians, thought of Kiev and the surrounding provinces as a Russian outpost: provincial, backward, but Russified to some extent. She had a respect for both the Polish and German influences there, but agreed with the authorities that the Ukrainian culture and language had little to offer. It was banned in the schools and in the government institutions and was thought to be the purlieu of reprobates, lazy slum dwellers, and rustics. Berta was born in Little Russia, a small fact that she never bothered to share with anyone of consequence. She was a Great Russian, as anyone could see by her fierce accomplishments, tasteful dress, and overall refinement.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who 'but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.

If Shakespeare be considered as a MAN born in a rude age and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy; if represented as a POET capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of this eulogy. In his compositions, we regret that many irregularities, and even absurdities, should so frequently disfigure the animated and passionated scenes intermixed with them; and, at the same time, we perhaps admire the more those beauties on account of their being surrounded by such deformities. A striking peculiarity of sentiment, adapted to a single character, he frequently hits, as it were, by inspiration; but a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. Nervous and picturesque expressions as well as descriptions abound in him; but it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a defect, yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can more easily excuse than that want of taste which often prevails in his productions, and which gives way only by intervals to the irradiations of genius. [....] And there may even remain a suspicion that we overrate, if possible, the greatness of his genius; in the same manner as bodies often appear more gigantic on account of their being disproportioned and misshapen.

With one stroke the bond and constraint of the ancient discipline [of the aristocratic caste] is broken: it is no longer felt to be a necessity, a condition of existence — if it were to persist it could be only as a form of luxury, as an archaizing taste . Variation, whether as deviation (into the higher, rarer, more refined) or as degeneration and monstrosity, is suddenly on the scene in the greatest splendour and abundance, the individual dares to be individual and stand out [...] The dangerous and uncanny point is reached where the grander, more manifold, more comprehensive life lives beyond the old morality; the “individual” stands there, reduced to his own law-giving, to his own arts and stratagems for self- preservation, self-enhancement, self-redemption.

Because this tea kaiseki would be served so soon after breakfast, it would be considerably smaller than a traditional one. As a result, Stephen had decided to serve each mini tea kaiseki in a round stacking bento box, which looked like two miso soup bowls whose rims had been glued together. After lifting off the top dome-shaped cover the women would behold a little round tray sporting a tangle of raw squid strips and blanched scallions bound in a tahini-miso sauce pepped up with mustard. Underneath this seafood "salad" they would find a slightly deeper "tray" packed with pearly white rice garnished with a pink salted cherry blossom. Finally, under the rice would be their soup bowl containing the wanmori, the apex of the tea kaiseki. Inside the dashi base we had placed a large ball of fu (wheat gluten) shaped and colored to resemble a peach. Spongy and soft, it had a savory center of ground duck and sweet lily bulb. A cluster of fresh spinach leaves, to symbolize the budding of spring, accented the "peach," along with a shiitake mushroom cap simmered in mirin, sake, and soy. When the women had finished their meals, we served them tiny pink azuki bean paste sweets. David whipped them a bowl of thick green tea. For the dry sweets eaten before his thin tea, we served them flower-shaped refined sugar candies tinted pink. After all the women had left, Stephen, his helper, Mark, and I sat down to enjoy our own "Girl's Day" meal. And even though I was sitting in the corner of Stephen's dish-strewn kitchen in my T-shirt and rumpled khakis, that soft peach dumpling really did taste feminine and delicate.

As Lorn approached the booth, a man holding a black chicken wrapped in a sumptuous, teal-silk shawl stepped up to the front of the line. “It’s Endora, you see,” the man said to Maddox, gesturing with his chin to the chicken. “She has a sensitive disposition.” Endora clucked pitifully. “And the Lunar Crossing stresses her enormously.” Endora clucked in agreement. “Understandable,” Maddox murmured with a straight face. The man patted Endora. “So … where would be the best place to put her during this time, keeping in mind she doesn’t like drafts, loud noises, other animals—particularly yaks—any rhythmic movement that could be construed as folk dancing, the smell of cooked fat, the color magenta, or any musical or theatrical performance that requires audience participation?” Lorn looked down at Endora. “This is clearly a chicken of exquisite taste and refinement

The Egyptian chronicler of the Napoleonic invasion, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1754-1826), was impressed with the scientific interests of the French but described their mores in scandalous terms:   Their women do not cover themselves and have no modesty; they do not care whether they uncover their private parts. Whenever a Frenchman has to perform an act of nature he does so wherever he happens to be, even in full view of people, and he goes away as he is, without washing his private parts after defecation. If he is a man of taste and refinement he wipes himself with whatever he finds, even with a paper with writing on it, otherwise he remains as he is. They have intercourse with any woman who pleases them and vice versa. Sometimes one of their women goes into a barber’s shop, and invites him to shave her pubic hair. If he wishes he can take his fee in kind.7

Each bite is a tidal wave of savory, fatty eel juices... ... made fresh and tangy by the complementary flavors of olive oil and tomato! ...! It's perfect! This dish has beautifully encapsulated the superbness of Capitone Eel!" "Capitone specifically means 'Large Female Eel'! It's exactly this kind of eel that is served during Natale season from Christmas to New Year's. Compared to normal eels, the Capitone is large, thick and juicy! In fact, it's considered a delicacy!" "Yes, I've heard of them! The Capitone is supposed to be significantly meatier than the standard Anguilla." *Anguilla is the Italian word for regular eels.* "Okay. So the Capitone is special. But is it special enough to make a dish so delicious the judges swoon?" "No. The secret to the Capitone's refined deliciousness in this dish lies with the tomatoes. You used San Marzanos, correct?" "Ha Ragione! (Exactly!) I specifically chose San Marzano tomatoes as the core of my dish!" Of the hundreds of varieties of tomato, the San Marzano Plum Tomato is one of the least juicy. Less juice means it makes a less watery and runny sauce when stewed! "Thanks to the San Marzano tomatoes, this dish's sauce remained thick and rich with a marvelously full-bodied taste. The blend of spices he used to season the sauce has done a splendid job of highlighting the eel's natural flavors as well." "You can't forget the wondrous polenta either. Crispy on the outside and creamy in the middle. There's no greater garnish for this dish." *Polenta is boiled cornmeal that is typically served as porridge or baked into cakes.* "Ah. I see. Every ingredient of his dish is intimately connected to the eel. Garlic to increase the fragrance, onion for condensed sweetness... ... and low-juice tomatoes. Those are the key ingredients.

It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side against appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in one's body?),--who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an even securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by "modern ideas"? There is distrust of these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure the bric-a-brac of ideas of the most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels them from modern reality, is unrefuted... what do their retrograde by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is not that they wish to go "back," but that they wish to get away therefrom. A little more strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be off--and not back!

At present ye have still the choice: either the least possible pain, in short painlessness and after all, socialists and politicians of all parties could not honourably promise more to their people, or the greatest possible amount of pain, as the price of the growth of a fullness of refined delights and enjoyments rarely tasted hitherto! If ye decide for the former, if ye therefore want to depress and minimise man's capacity for pain, well, ye must also depress and minimise his capacity for enjoyment. In fact, one can further the one as well as the other goal by science! Perhaps science is as yet best known by its capacity for depriving man of enjoyment, and making him colder, more statuesque, and more Stoical. But it might also turn out to be the great pain-bringer! And then, perhaps, its counteracting force would be discovered simultaneously, its immense capacity for making new sidereal worlds of enjoyment beam forth!

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment? The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and of the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed.

These neighborhoods went on for miles—just street after foot-wearying street of trophy homes, with big gates beside broad drives, patios adorned with Grecian urns on ornate plinths, and garages for fleets of cars. It was a stunning demonstration of the proposition that money and taste don’t always, or even often, go together. These were the houses of lottery winners, of retailers of the sort who appear in their own television commercials, of people for whom the words “Peppermint Grove” in an address would not be an embarrassment. I would not suggest for a moment that Australia’s nouveaux riches are more distant from refinement than the people of other lands, but the absence of a distinctive architectural vernacular in Australia does mean that people can take their styles from a wider range of sources—principally drive-in banks, casinos, upmarket nursing homes, and ski lodges. To see it massed over a spread of miles as in the western suburbs of Perth is certainly an absorbing experience.

Seafood, of course, has aphrodisiac qualities. Mollusks, too---like lanarche ajo e ojo, snails in oil and garlic. Perhaps some carciofioni, baby artichokes cooked with mint, pulled apart with the fingers and dipped in soft, melted butter. Wine, obviously. And then, to finish, a burst of sugar, something light but artificial, so that you feel full of energy and happiness---but that's only one side of the story. If you want someone to fall in love with you, you would cook for them something very different, something perfectly simple but intense. Something that shows you understand their soul." "Such as?" "Well, that's the difficulty. It will vary from individual to individual. You'd have to really know the person concerned---their history, their background, whether they are raw or refined, dry or oily. You would have to have tasted them, to know whether their own flesh is sweet or savory, salty or bland. In short, you would have to love them, and even then you might not truly know them well enough to cook a dish that would capture their heart.

In all the countries of Europe, and in America, too, there now is something that abuses this name: a very narrow, imprisoned, chained type of spirits who want just about the opposite of what accords with our intentions and instincts—not to speak of the fact that regarding the new philosophers who are coming up they must assuredly be closed windows and bolted doors. They belong, briefly and sadly, among the levelers—these falsely so–called ‘free spirits’—being eloquent and prolifically scribbling slaves of the democratic taste and its ‘modern ideas’; they are all human beings without solitude, without their own solitude, clumsy good fellows whom one should not deny either courage or respectable decency—only they are unfree and ridiculously superficial, above all in their basic inclination to find in the forms of the old society as it has existed so far just about the cause of all human misery and failure—which is a way of standing truth happily upon her head! What they would like to strive for with all their powers is the universal green–pasture happiness of the herd, with security, lack of danger, comfort, and an easier life for everyone; the two songs and doctrines which they repeat most often are ‘equality of rights’ and ‘sympathy for all that suffers’—and suffering itself they take for something that must be abolished. We opposite men, having opened our eyes and conscience to the question where and how the plant ‘man’ has so far grown most vigorously to a height—we think that this has happened every time under the opposite conditions, that to this end the dangerousness of his situation must first grown to the point of enormity, his power of invention and simulation (his ‘spirit’) had to develop under prolonged pressure and constraint into refinement and audacity, his life–will had to be enhanced into an unconditional power– will. We think that hardness, forcefulness, slavery, danger in the alley and the heart, life in hiding, stoicism, the art of experiment and devilry of every kind, that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything in him that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents, serves the enhancement of the species ‘man’ as much as its opposite does.

... The influence of the Pre-Raphaelites was felt less through their paintings than through a book, The Poems of Tennyson, edited by Moxon and wonderfully illustrated by Rossetti and Millais. The influence on Maeterlinck stems less from the poems themselves than from the illustrations. The revival of illustrated books in the last two years of the century derives from this Tennyson, the books printed at William Morris' press, the albums of Walter Crane. These last two and the ravishing little books for children by Kate Greenaway were heralded by Huysmans as early as 1881. Generally speaking, it is the English Aesthetic Movement rather than the Pre-Raphaelites which influenced the Symbolists, a new life-style rather than a school of painting. The Continent, passing through the Industrial Revolution some fifty years after England, found valuable advice on how to escape from materialism on the other side of the Channel. Everything that one heard about the refinements practised in Chelsea enchanted Frenchmen of taste: furniture by Godwin, open-air theatricals by Lady Archibald Campbell, the Peacock Room by Whistler, Liberty prints. As the pressure of morality was much less pronounced in France than in England, the ideal of Aestheticism was not a revolt but a retreat towards an exquisite world which left hearty good living to the readers of the magazine La Vie Parisienne ('Paris Life') and success to the readers of Zola. If one could not write a beautiful poem or paint a beautiful picture, one could always choose materials or arrange bouquets of flowers. Aesthetic ardour smothered the anglophobia in the Symbolist circle. The ideal of a harmonious life suggested in Baudelaire's poem L' Invitation au Voyage seemed capable of realization in England, whose fashions were brought back by celebrated travellers: Mallarmé after 1862, Verlaine in 1872. Carrière spent a long time in London, as did Khnopff later on. People read books by Gabriel Mourey on Swinburne, and his Passé le Détroit ('Beyond the Channel') is particularly important for the artistic way of life ... Thus England is represented in this hall of visual influences by the works of Burne-Jones and Watts, by illustrated books, and by objets d'art ...

Despite the beauty of our world and the scope of human accomplishment, it is hard not to worry that the forces of chaos will triumph—not merely in the end but in every moment. Our pleasures, however refined or easily acquired, are by their very nature fleeting. They begin to subside the instant they arise, only to be replaced by fresh desires or feelings of discomfort. You can’t get enough of your favorite meal until, in the next moment, you find you are so stuffed as to nearly require the attention of a surgeon—and yet, by some quirk of physics, you still have room for dessert. The pleasure of dessert lasts a few seconds, and then the lingering taste in your mouth must be banished by a drink of water. The warmth of the sun feels wonderful on your skin, but soon it becomes too much of a good thing. A move to the shade brings immediate relief, but after a minute or two, the breeze is just a little too cold. Do you have a sweater in the car? Let’s take a look. Yes, there it is. You’re warm now, but you notice that your sweater has seen better days. Does it make you look carefree or disheveled? Perhaps it is time to go shopping for something new. And so it goes.

There is an instinct for rank which, more than anything, is already an indication of a high rank. There is a delight in the nuances of respect which permits us to surmise a noble origin and habits. The refinement, good, and loftiness of a soul are put to a dangerous test when something goes past in front of it which is of the first rank, but which is not yet protected by the shudders of authority from prying clutches and crudities: something that goes its way unmarked, undiscovered, tempting, perhaps arbitrarily disguised and hidden, like a living touchstone. The man whose task and practice is to investigate souls will use precisely this art in a number of different forms in order to establish the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will put it to the test for its instinct of reverence. Différence engendre haine [difference engenders hatred]: the nastiness of some natures suddenly spurts out like dirty water when some sacred container, some precious object from a locked shrine, some book with marks of a great destiny is carried by. On the other hand, there is an involuntary falling silent, a hesitation in the eye, an end to all gestures, things which express that a soul feels close to something most worthy of reverence. The way in which reverence for the Bible in Europe has, on the whole, been maintained so far is perhaps the best piece of discipline and refinement of tradition for which Europe owes a debt of thanks to Christianity: such books of profundity and ultimate significance need for their protection an externally imposed tyranny of authority in order to last for those thousands of years which are necessary to exhaust them and sort out what they mean. Much has been achieved when in the great mass of people (the shallow ones and all sorts of people with diarrhoea) that feeling has finally been cultivated that they are not permitted to touch everything, that there are sacred experiences before which they have to pull off their shoes and which they must keep their dirty hands off - this is almost the highest intensification of their humanity. By contrast, perhaps nothing makes the so-called educated people, those who have faith in "modern ideas," so nauseating as their lack of shame, the comfortable impudence in their eyes and hands, with which they touch, lick, and grope everything, and it is possible that these days among a people, one still finds in the common folk, particularly among the peasants, more relative nobility of taste and tactful reverence than among the newspaper-reading demi-monde of the spirit, among the educated. Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil

As with most thoughtful natures, Odo's first disillusionment was to come from discovering not what his God condemned, but what He condoned. Between Cantapresto's coarse philosophy of pleasure and the refined complaisances of his new confessor he felt the distinction to be one rather of taste than of principle; and it seemed to him that the religion of the aristocracy might not unfairly be summed up in the ex-soprano's cynical aphorism: "As respectful children of our Heavenly Father it behoves us not to speak till we are spoken to." Even the religious ceremonies he witnessed did not console him for that chill hour of dawn, when, in the chapel at Donnaz, he had served the mass for Don Gervaso, with a heart trembling at its own unworthiness yet uplifted by the sense of the Divine Presence. In the churches adorned like aristocratic drawing-rooms, of which some Madonna, wreathed in artificial flowers, seemed the amiable and indulgent hostess, and where the florid passionate music of the mass was rendered by the King's opera singers before a throng of chattering cavaliers and ladies, Odo prayed in vain for a reawakening of the old emotion. The sense of sonship was gone. He felt himself an alien in the temple of this affable divinity, and his heart echoed no more than the cry which had once lifted him on wings of praise to the very threshold of the hidden glory — Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuae et

A mistress, perhaps,” I thought to myself, remembering the influence that Saint-Loup’s seemed to have had over him, which enabled me to realise the point to which men can be refined by the women with whom they live. “Once she was with her daughter, he had probably nothing to say to her,” put in Mme. de Villeparisis. “Most certainly she had: if it was only what she calls ‘things so slight that nobody else would notice them but you and me.’ And anyhow she was with her. And Labruyère tells us that that is everything. ‘To be with the people one loves, to speak to them, not to speak to them, it is all the same.’ He is right; that is the only form of happiness,” added M. de Charlus in a mournful voice, “and that happiness — alas, life is so ill arranged that one very rarely tastes it; Mme. de Sévigné was after all less to be pitied than most of us. She spent a great part of her life with the person whom she loved.” “You forget that it was not ‘love’ in her case; the person was her daughter.” “But what matters in life is not whom or what one loves,” he went on, in a judicial, peremptory, almost a cutting tone; “it is the fact of loving. What Mme. de Sévigné felt for her daughter has a far better claim to rank with the passion that Racine described in Andromaque or Phèdre than the commonplace relations young Sévigné had with his mistresses. It’s the same with a mystic’s love for his God. The hard and fast lines with which we circumscribe love arise solely from our complete ignorance of life.

The Fool's Interruption. It is not a misanthrope who has written this book: the hatred of men costs too dear today. To hate as they formerly hated man, in the fashion of Timon, completely, without qualification, with all the heart, from the pure love of hatred - for that purpose one would have to renounce contempt: - and how much refined pleasure, how much patience, how much benevolence even, do we owe to contempt! Moreover we are thereby the "elect of God": refined contempt is our taste and privilege, our art, our virtue perhaps, we, the most modern amongst the moderns!... Hatred, on the contrary, makes equal, it puts men face to face, in hatred there is honour; finally, in hatred there is fear, quite a large amount of fear. We fearless ones, however, we, the most intellectual men of the period, know our advantage well enough to live without fear as the most intellectual persons of this age. People will not easily behead us, shut us up, or banish us; they will not even ban or burn our books. The age loves intellect, it loves us, and needs us, even when we have to give it to understand that we are artists in despising; that all intercourse with men is something of a horror to us; that with all our gentleness, patience, humanity and courteousness, we cannot persuade our nose to abandon its prejudice against the proximity of man; that we love nature the more, the less humanly things are done by her, and that we love art when it is the flight of the artist from man, or the raillery of the artist at man, or the raillery of the artist at himself...

But most of all, where did this deeply complex sweetness come from?! It's far too nuanced to be solely brown sugar!" "Oh, the answer to that is in the flavoring I used." "Soy sauce?!" "Oh my gosh, she added soy sauce to a dessert?!" "I used it at the very end of the recipe. To make the whipped-cream filling, I used heavy cream, vanilla extract, light brown sugar and a dash of soy sauce. Once the cakes were baked, I spread the whipped cream on top, rolled them up and chilled them in the fridge for a few minutes. All of that made the brown sugar in the cake both taste and look even cuter than it did before." "Aah, I see. The concept is similar to that of salted caramels. Add salt to something sweet.. ... and by comparison the sweetness will stand out on the tongue even more strongly. She's created a new and unique dessert topping- Soy Sauce Whipped Cream!" "Soy sauce whipped cream, eh? I see! So that's how it works!" Since it isn't as refined as white sugar, brown sugar retains trace amounts of minerals, like iron and sodium. The unique layered flavor these minerals give to it matches beautifully with the salty body of soy sauce! "Without brown sugar as the main component, this exquisite deliciousness would not be possible!" "It tastes even yummier if you try some of the various fruits in between each bite of cake. The candy sculptures are totally edible too. If you break one up into crumbs and crunch on it while taking a bite of the cake, it's super yummy." How wonderfully surprising! Each and every bite... ... is an invitation to a land of dreams!

The whole labour of the ancient world gone for naught: I have no word to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me. — And, considering the fact that its labour was merely preparatory, that with adamantine self-consciousness it laid only the foundations for a work to go on for thousands of years, the whole meaning of antiquity disappears! ... To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans? — All the prerequisites to a learned culture, all the methods of science, were already there; man had already perfected the great and incomparable art of reading profitably — that first necessity to the tradition of culture, the unity of the sciences; the natural sciences, in alliance with mathematics and mechanics, were on the right road, — the sense of fact, the last and more valuable of all the senses, had its schools, and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly understood? Every essential to the beginning of the work was ready: — and the most essential, it cannot be said too often, are methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed by habit and laziness. What we have today reconquered, with unspeakable self-discipline, for ourselves — for certain bad instincts, certain Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies — that is to say, the keen eye for reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest things, the whole integrity of knowledge — all these things were already there, and had been there for two thousand years! More, there was also a refined and excellent tact and taste! Not as mere brain-drilling! Not as “German” culture, with its loutish manners! But as body, as bearing, as instinct — in short, as reality ....

The belief in oneself, pride in oneself, a fundamental hostility and irony against “selflessness” belong to noble morality, just as much as an easy contempt and caution before feelings of pity and the “warm heart.” Powerful men are the ones who understand how to honour; that is their art, their realm of invention. The profound reverence for age and for ancestral tradition — all justice stands on this double reverence — the belief and the prejudice favouring forefathers and working against newcomers are typical in the morality of the powerful, and when, by contrast, the men of “modern ideas” believe almost instinctively in “progress” and the “future” and increasingly lack any respect for age, then in that attitude the ignoble origin of these “ideas” already reveals itself well enough. However, a morality of the rulers is most alien and embarrassing to present taste because of the severity of its basic principle that man has duties only with respect to those like him, that man should act towards those beings of lower rank, towards everything foreign, at his own discretion, or “as his heart dictates,” and, in any case, “beyond good and evil.” Here pity and things like that may belong. The capacity for and obligation to a long gratitude and a long revenge — both only within the circle of one’s peers — the sophistication in paying back again, the refined idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as, so to speak, drainage ditches for the feelings of envy, quarrelsomeness, and high spirits — basically in order to be capable of being a good friend): all those are typical characteristics of a noble morality, which, as indicated, is not the morality of “modern ideas” and which is thus nowadays difficult to sympathize with, as well as difficult to dig up and expose.

Through education, then, man must be made— First, subject to discipline; by which we must understand that influence which is always restraining our animal nature from getting the better of our manhood, either in the individual as such, or in man as a member of society. Discipline, then, is merely restraining unruliness. Secondly, education must also supply men with culture. This includes information and instruction. It is culture which brings out ability. Ability is the possession of a faculty which is capable of being adapted to various ends. Ability, therefore, does not determine any ends, but leaves that to circumstances as they arise afterwards. Some accomplishments are essentially good for everybody—reading and writing, for instance; others, merely in the pursuit of certain objects, such as music, which we pursue in order to make ourselves liked. Indeed, the various purposes to which ability may be put are almost endless. Thirdly, education must also supply a person with discretion (Klugheit), so that he may be able to conduct himself in society, that he may be liked, and that he may gain influence. For this a kind of culture is necessary which we call refinement (Civilisierung). The latter requires manners, courtesy, and a kind of discretion which will enable him to use all men for his own ends. This refinement changes according to the ever-changing tastes of different ages. Thus some twenty or thirty years ago ceremonies in social intercourse were still the fashion. Fourthly, moral training must form a part of education. It is not enough that a man shall be fitted for any end, but his disposition must be so trained that he shall choose none but good ends—good ends being those which are necessarily approved by everyone, and which may at the same time be the aim of everyone.

What a wonderful crunch! And yet the char's meat was still hot and deliciously juicy! The breading perfectly contained inside its protective shell the savory flavor of the fish! The Kaki no Tane Crackers came already seasoned... ... so the breading itself had a solid, delicious taste. And the dipping sauce is perfect! The Ki no Me mixed with Tamago no Moto is wonderfully light and fluffy!" *Ki no Me: The young leaves of the Japanese pepper plant. Clapping one in your palm crushes the leaf's cells, releasing a distinctive scent.* TAMAGO NO MOTO. Mayonnaise without the vinegar, it is simply egg yolks and vegetable oil whisked into a creamy consistency. It's often used to bring ingredients together or to add flavor to a dish. Some salt and minced Ki no Me adds an overall refreshing taste to the fish... ... erasing any oiliness and giving it a refined flavor. "That wonderfully smooth creaminess hiding between the crispy crunchiness of the breading really spurs the appetite! The breaded and deep-fried mountain vegetables on the side cannot be ignored, either. They provide an eye-pleasing contrast when arranged side-by-side with the deep-fried fish. " "Soma, where on earth did you get the idea for this?" "In Japanese cooking, there's a type of tempura called Okakiage, right? When deep-frying things, use crushed-up Okaki Rice Crackers instead of panko to give the dish some uniqueness and kick. I made this at home once long ago with my dad. " "And that gave you the idea to use the Kaki no Tane Crackers in place of the Okaki Rice Crackers?" "Yep! I call it the Yukihira Style Okaki- YUKIHIRA STYLE OKAKI-NO-TANE-AGE CHAR!" "You just slapped the two names together!" On one hand, Takumi Aldini maintained a broad version that did not overlook potential ingredients, such as the duck. On the other, Soma Yukihira's rare ability to think outside the box... ... led him to create a dish that no one else even expected! Neither was intimidated by the time constraints or the limited ingredients. They instead focused on what they could do to create their dish. That is the spirit of a true professional! Hee hee! This is hardly the first time I've given this assignment. And students have made deep-fried items before... without breading. But he is the first one to find a way to present to me fish that is both breaded and deep-fried! The char, in season this spring... ... is snuggly wrapped in a protective shell of Kaki no Tane Cracker breading.

In all the countries of Europe and in America as well there is now something which drives people to misuse this name, a very narrow, confined, chained-up type of spirit which wants something rather like the opposite of what lies in our intentions and instincts — to say nothing of the fact that, so far as those emerging new philosophers are concerned, such spirits definitely must be closed windows and bolted doors. To put the matter briefly and seriously, these falsely named “free spirits” belong with the levellers, as eloquent and prolific writing slaves of democratic taste and its “modern ideas”: collectively people without solitude, without their own solitude, coarse brave lads whose courage or respectable decency should not be denied. But they are simply unfree and ridiculously superficial, above all with their basic tendency to see in the forms of old societies up to now the cause for almost all human misery and failure, a process which turns the truth happily on its head! What they would like to strive for with all their powers is the universal, green, pasture-happiness of the herd, with security, absence of danger, comfort, an easing of life for everyone. The two songs and doctrines they sing most frequently are called “equality of rights” and “pity for all things that suffer” — and they assume that suffering itself is something we must do away with. We who are their opposites, we who have opened our eyes and consciences for the question of where and how up to now the plant “man” has grown most powerfully to the heights, we think that this has happened every time under the opposite conditions, that for this to happen the danger of his situation first had to grow enormously, his power of invention and pretence (his “spirit”—) had to develop under lengthy pressure and compulsion into something refined and audacious, his will for living had to intensify into an unconditional will to power: — we think that hardness, violence, slavery, danger in the alley and the heart, seclusion, stoicism, the art of the tempter, and devilry of all kinds, that everything evil, fearful, tyrannical, predatory, and snake-like in human beings serves well for the ennobling of the species “man,” as much as its opposite does: — in fact, when we say only this much we have not said enough, and we find ourselves at any rate with our speaking and silence at a point at the other end of all modern ideology and things desired by the herd, perhaps as their exact opposites?

There is an instinct for rank which, more than anything, is already an indication of a high rank. There is a delight in the nuances of respect which permits us to surmise a noble origin and habits. The refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a dangerous test when something goes past in front of it which is of the first rank, but which is not yet protected by the fear of authority from prying clutches and crudities: something that goes its way unmarked, undiscovered, tentative, perhaps arbitrarily disguised and hidden, like a living touchstone. The man whose task and practice is to investigate souls will use precisely this art in a number of different forms in order to establish the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will put it to the test for its instinct of reverence. Différence engendre haine [Difference engenders hatred]: the nastiness of some natures suddenly spurts out like dirty water when some sacred container, some precious object from a locked shrine, or some book with marks of a great destiny is carried by. On the other hand, there is an involuntary falling silent, a hesitation in the eye, an end to all gestures, things which express that a soul feels close to something most worthy of reverence. The way in which reverence for the Bible in Europe has, on the whole, been maintained so far is perhaps the best piece of discipline and refinement of habits for which Europe owes a debt of thanks to Christianity: such books of profundity and ultimate significance need for their protection an externally imposed tyranny of authority in order to last for those thousands of years necessary to exhaust them and sort out what they mean. Much has been achieved when in the great mass of people (the shallow ones and all sorts of people with diarrhoea) the feeling has finally been cultivated that they are not permitted to touch everything, that there are sacred experiences before which they have to pull off their shoes and which they must keep their dirty hands off—this is almost the highest intensification of their humanity. By contrast, perhaps nothing makes the so-called educated people, those who have faith in “modern ideas,” so nauseating as their lack of shame, the comfortable impudence in their eyes and hands, with which they touch, lick, and grope everything, and it is possible that these days among a people, one still finds in the common folk, particularly among the peasants, more relative nobility of taste and tactful reverence than among the newspaper-reading demi-monde of the spirit, among the educated.

Every special human being strives instinctively for his own castle and secrecy, where he is saved from the crowd, the many, the majority—where he can forget the rule-bound "people," for he is an exception to them;—but for the single case where he is pushed by an even stronger instinct straight against these rules, as a person who seeks knowledge in a great and exceptional sense. Anyone who, in his intercourse with human beings, does not, at one time or another, shimmer with all the colours of distress—green and gray with disgust, surfeit, sympathy, gloom, and loneliness—is certainly not a man of higher taste. But provided he does not take all this weight and lack of enthusiasm freely upon himself, always keeps away from it, and stays, as mentioned, hidden, quiet, and proud in his castle, well, one thing is certain: he is not made for, not destined for, knowledge. For if he were, he would one day have to say to himself, "The devil take my good taste! The rule-bound man is more interesting than the exception—than I am, the exception!"— and he would make his way down , above all, "inside." The study of the average man—long, serious, and requiring much disguise, self-control, familiarity, bad company - (all company is bad company except with one’s peers):—that constitutes a necessary part of the life story of every philosopher, perhaps the most unpleasant, foul-smelling part, the richest in disappointments. But if he’s lucky, as is appropriate for a fortunate child of knowledge, he encounters real shortcuts and ways of making his task easier; I’m referring to the so-called cynics, those who, as cynics, simply recognize the animal, the meanness, the "rule-bound man" in themselves and, in the process, still possess that degree of intellectual quality and urge to have to talk about themselves and people like them before witnesses;—now and then they even wallow in books, as if in their very own dung. Cynicism is the single form in which common souls touch upon what honesty is, and the higher man should open his ears to every cruder and more refined cynicism and think himself lucky every time a shameless clown or a scientific satyr announces himself directly in front of him. There are even cases where enchantment gets mixed into the disgust—for example, in those places where, by some vagary of nature, genius is bound up with such an indiscreet billy-goat and ape; as in the Abbé Galiani, the most profound, sharp-sighted, and perhaps also the foulest man of his century—he was much deeper than Voltaire and consequently a good deal quieter. More frequently it happens that, as I’ve intimated, the scientific head is set on an ape’s body, a refined and exceptional understanding in a common soul; among doctors and moral physiologists, for example, that’s not an uncommon occurrence. And where anyone speaks without bitterness and quite harmlessly of men as a belly with two different needs and a head with one, everywhere someone constantly sees, looks for, and wants to see only hunger, sexual desires, and vanity, as if these were the real and only motivating forces in human actions, in short, wherever people speak "badly" of human beings—not even in a nasty way—there the lover of knowledge should pay fine and diligent attention; he should, in general, direct his ears to wherever people talk without indignation. For the indignant man and whoever is always using his own teeth to tear himself apart or lacerate himself (or, as a substitute for that, the world, or God, or society) may indeed, speaking morally, stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary, the more trivial, the more uninstructive case. And no one lies as much as the indignant man.

Life Path # 11: You are highly intuitive and you are gifted with amazing psychic abilities. Without any effort you become a source of inspiration for other people. You have this innate ability to connect the subconscious and the conscious and the higher and the lower realms. You are a natural psychic. Eleven is the life path of many prophets, inventors, historical leaders, religious leaders and artists. They usually don’t progress early in life but they are destined to accomplish more than other life paths. When they reach the age of maturity (35-45) their success starts to bloom. Confidence is the key to success for the Eleven. Your tremendous potential needs equally tremendous confidence for you to realize your dreams. Without confidence, you are reduced to nothing. As a higher vibration of the number 2, you have many characteristics, talents and tendencies inherent to the Twos. You have to guard your nervous system from stress. Seek out peace and harmony and you will find it in nature. Exercise and diet is necessary for you. Just like the number 2, you love harmony and peace and you possess a refined taste for beauty. You are best suited to anything that requires healing like physical therapy, acupuncture, massage and counseling. As a partner, you know what your partner needs and desires.

So let’s review all the ways the Dorito Effect appears to be turning us into nutritional idiots: • Dilution. As real food becomes bland and loses its capacity to please us, we are less inclined to eat it and very often enhance it in ways that further blunt its nutrition. • Nutritional decapitation. When we take flavors from nature, we capture the experience of food but leave the nutrition—the fiber, the vitamins, the minerals, the antioxidants, the plant secondary compounds—behind. In nature, flavor compounds always appear in a nutritional context. • False variety. We naturally crave variety in food—it’s one of nature’s ways of making sure we get a diverse diet. Fake flavors make foods that are nutritionally very similar seem more different than they actually are. • Cognitive deception. Fake flavors fool the conscious mind. A mother enticed by a Dannon Strawberry Blitz Smoothie as an after-school snack for her eight-year-old child will taste it and reasonably believe the product contains strawberries, even though it contains none. • Emotional deception. Flavor technology manipulates the part of the mind that experiences feelings. Fake flavors take a previously established liking for a real food and apply it, like a sticker, to something else—usually large doses of calories—creating a heightened and nutritionally undeserved level of pleasure. • Flavor-nutrient confusion. By hijacking flavor-nutrient relationships, fake flavors, by their very nature, set a false expectation. A major aspect of obesity is an outsized desire for food, one that very often cannot be extinguished by food itself. By imposing flavors on foods without the corresponding nutrients, are we creating foods that are incapable of satiating the people who eat them? So many of the foods we overconsume—refined carbs, high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, added fat—would not be palatable without synthetic flavor. We gorge on them because they taste like something they are not.

But when my heart has sickened at the sight, and at the thought of so much gratuitous pain, it has grown strong again in the reflection that, if unnecessary, this misery is temporary, — that the true ground of mourning would be if the pain were not from causes which are remediable. Then I cannot but look forward to the time when the bad training of children, — the petulancies of neighbors — the errors of the ménage — the irksome superstitions, and the seductions of intemperance, shall all have been annihilated by the spread of intelligence, while the mirth at the minutest jokes — the proud plucking of nosegays — the little neighborly gifts, (less amusing hereafter, perhaps, in their taste) — the festal observances — the disinterested and refined acts of self-sacrifice and love, will remain as long as the human heart has mirth in it, or a humane complacency and self-respect,

Their tastes have been narrowed, not refined, Lydian.

In brief, as long as the direct vision of ultimate reality has not dawned in the mind, one definitely has to rely on the gradual refinement of discriminating knowledge that entails more or less subtle modes of apprehension. However, once the nature of mind is directly realized, all analyses and modes of apprehension naturally subside on their own, just as there is no longer a need to ponder elaborate descriptions of the taste of an unknown Chinese dish on the menu once it finally is in your mouth.

Lake Haven hadn’t become a fashionable summer getaway for the East Coast elite until somewhere around the fifties, about the time Grandma and Grandpa had opened the East Beach Lake Cottages. The houses built on the lake since then had big windows and rooms set at angles designed to capture the best views. But Ross house had its own unique charm. Once you entered through the stone gate, you knew you were entering an area of wealth and refined taste. You’d expect to find the woman of the house in Ralph Lauren, perhaps on her way to a golf game. You would not expect to find Nancy Yates.

The Basic Five are these: (1) a man who can fix things, (2) a man you can dance with, (3) a man who can pay for things, (4) a man you can talk to, and (5) a man to have great sex with. As I said, this is the rudimentary team you need to form, according to our sage adviser. Certainly other functions can be added to suit your more refined tastes, but with this starting lineup, you can at least avoid abject misery.

Having got rid of Jefferson—at least in name—Turing next addresses a whole class of objections that he calls “Arguments from Various Disabilities,” and which he defines as taking the form “I grant you that you can make machines do all the things you have mentioned but you will never be able to make one to do X.” He then offers a rather tongue-in-cheek “selection”: Be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly; have initiative, have a sense of humour, tell right from wrong, make mistakes; fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream; make some one fall in love with it, learn from experience; use words properly, be the subject of its own thought; have as much diversity of behaviour as a man, do something really new. As Turing notes, “no support is usually offered for these statements,” most of which are founded on the principle of scientific induction. . . . The works and customs of mankind do not seem to be very suitable material to which to apply scientific induction. A very large part of space-time must be investigated, if reliable results are to be obtained. Otherwise we may (as most English children do) decide that everybody speaks English, and that it is silly to learn French. Turing’s repudiation of scientific induction, however, is more than just a dig at the insularity and closed-mindedness of England. His purpose is actually much larger: to call attention to the infinite regress into which we are likely to fall if we attempt to use disabilities (such as, say, the inability, on the part of a man, to feel attraction to a woman) as determining factors in defining intelligence. Nor is the question of homosexuality far from Turing’s mind, as the refinement that he offers in the next paragraph attests: There are, however, special remarks to be made about many of the disabilities that have been mentioned. The inability to enjoy strawberries and cream may have struck the reader as frivolous. Possibly a machine might be made to enjoy this delicious dish, but any attempt to make one do so would be idiotic. What is important about this disability is that it contributes to some of the other disabilities, e.g. to the difficulty of the same kind of friendliness occurring between man and machine as between white man and white man, or between black man and black man. To the brew of gender and sexuality, then, race is added, as “strawberries and cream” (earlier bookended between the ability to fall in love and the ability to make someone fall in love) becomes a code word for tastes that Turing prefers not to name.

I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

A book is the best gift, everything best in me I owe to books, book after book, cherish books-they ennoble and refine one's taste, you look in a book but see gobbledygook, a book is man's best friend, it enhances interiors, exteriors, and fox terriers.

Your pussy is a delicacy, baby, and I could eat it forever and never grow tired of the taste of you. Is that refined enough?

In the long run—and often in the short-run—your willpower will never beat your environment. —JAMES CLEAR, AUTHOR OF ATOMIC HABITS Let’s say you decide to remove refined sugar from your diet. There’s overwhelming evidence that it’s not good for your health, and you’re convinced your quality of life would improve if you can kick the habit. There’s just one problem: sugar tastes good, and you experience cravings that are difficult to resist. How can you make it easier to change your eating habits? One of the most effective strategies is simple: don’t purchase products with refined sugar at the grocery store, get rid of any food with added sugar in your house, and purchase a few healthy snacks that meet your new criteria. If sugar isn’t available when and where you experience hunger, and if there are easy alternatives to your typical choices, there’s no need to resist temptation: the structure of your immediate Environment makes your new behavior automatic. A few minutes of willpower applied to altering the world around you can make it much easier to act in the ways you’ve decided to act.

The United States is a nation addicted to sugar. In 1890, the average American ate 10 pounds of sugar a year. Today, that figure is between 170 and 200 pounds. Unfortunately, in our society sugar is not just something that tastes good. It has also become an emotional pacifier. Refined sugar may satisfy your psychological needs for a moment, but ultimately it will destroy your body.