Anyone who’s a chef, who loves food, ultimately knows that all that matters is: ‚Is it good? Does it give pleasure?‘

You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.

I’ve been my mom’s kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

I’m not trying to take New York by storm. I just want to sneak in there, keep my head down, batten down the hatches and cook.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

I need more sex, OK? Before I die I wanna taste everyone in the world.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well.

I don’t have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what’s appropriate or attractive.

The pressure on young chefs today is far greater than ever before in terms of social skills, marketing skills, cooking skills, personality and, more importantly, delivering on the plate. So you need to be strong. Physically fit. So my chefs get weighed every time they come into the kitchen.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

I feel that if Jacques Pepin shows you how to make an omelet, the matter is pretty much settled. That’s God talking.

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Another suggestion is to cook a meal, maybe not every night, but a couple more times a week than you usually do. That way you have leftovers, and you take your lunch to work.

My mother cooked like a scientist. She had a giant Chinese-style cleaver that she chopped with, and a cupboard full of spices.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

I have loved to cook since I was a child in my mother’s kitchen. If I don’t have time to cook, I’ll just read a cookbook.

Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it’s a start.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

Those places I don’t understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

I cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous – that is to say, it’s obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do.

I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

When I’m home, I spend Sunday with my husband. If we’re not cooking, we travel around in our camper, stop at fast-food restaurants, and picnic. We love that stuff that will harden your arteries in a hurry.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

I draw pleasure in governance, in doing new things and bringing people together. That pleasure is all I need from life.

If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.

There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

My mom had Julia Child and ‚The Fannie Farmer Cookbook‘ on top of the refrigerator, and she had a small repertoire of French dishes.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

When I figured out how to work my grill, it was quite a moment. I discovered that summer is a completely different experience when you know how to grill.

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it’s too assertive to the naked eye.

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner’s medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it’s three-Michelin’s stars, there’s no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.