Food As Nourishment Quotes & Sayings

Food was celebration, conversation, and nourishment. The table is where the big decisions of the family are made and all the arguing takes place. — Adriana Trigiani

We are narrative creatures, and we need narrative nourishment - narrative catechisms. — N.D. Wilson

In the Lord's discourse on spiritual nourishment, we hear Him says: "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life." (John 6:27). He then continued by talking about the true bread from Heaven the bread of God, and the bread of life. (John 6:32-35). Here He appeals to the soul for its nourishment and our thoughts to the spiritual way so as not to occupy our minds with the body and its needs. — Pope Shenouda III Of Alexandria

I always have this sense of food as triangular, in that one point is nourishment, one point is connection, and one point is pleasure, and I always come at it from the pleasure and connection points, and the nourishment follows. — Crescent Dragonwagon

The first man ... ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? — Plutarch

O You who are mad about Your creature! true God and true Man, You have left Yourself wholly to us, as food, so that we will not fall through weariness during our pilgrimage in this life, but will be fortified by You, celestial nourishment — St. Catherine Of Siena

Nothing can survive without food. Everything we consume acts either to heal us or to poison us. We tend to think of nourishment only as what we take in through our mouths, but what we consume with our eyes, our ears, our noses, our tongues, and our bodies is also food. The conversations going on around us, and those we participate in, are also food. Are we consuming and creating the kind of food that is healthy for us and helps us grow? When we say something that nourishes us and uplifts the people around us, we are feeding love and compassion. When we speak and act in a way that causes tension and anger, we are nourishing violence and suffering. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The nourishment of body is food, while the nourishment of the soul is feeding others. — Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S

You like the Earth, Man, and you - pawing the ground - think of God, the little nursling will recognize you, and will think of you with love, because God lives even in it also. Give nourishment to the developing little creatures, either to plant or to animal, and it will develop for your sweet amazement. Give food for the wild animal starving, and it will slick to you. — Tivadar Kosztka Csontvary

Don't live a day without your spiritual nourishment; mediation on the word of God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

One could say that someone who does nothing but wait is like a glutton whose digestive system processes great masses of food without extracting any useful nourishment. One could go further and say that just as undigested food does not strengthen a man, time spent in waiting does not age him. — Thomas Mann

Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food. — Lewis Mumford

Many of us think of our daily nourishment only in terms of what we eat. But in fact, there are four kinds of food that we consume every day. They are: edible food (what we put in our mouths to nourish our bodies), sensory food (what we smell, hear, taste, feel, and touch), volition (the motivation and intention that fuels us), and consciousness (this includes our individual consciousness, the collective consciousness, and our environment). — Thich Nhat Hanh

I would like to coin the phrase alimentary theology, a theology that is more attentive to and welcoming of the multiple layers contained and implied in the making of theology. This is a theology that not only pays closer attention to matters related to food and nourishment, and the many ways they can relate, inspire, and inform theological reflection. Most importantly, it is an envisioning of theology as nourishment: food as theology and theology as food. Alimentary theology is envisioned as food for thought; it addresses some of the spiritual and physical hungers of the world, and seeks ways of bringing about nourishment. — Angel F. Mendez Montoya

We tend to think of nourishment only as what we take in through our mouths, but what we consume with our eyes, our ears, our noses, our tongues, and our bodies is also food. The conversations going on around us, and those we participate in, are also food. Are we consuming and creating the kind of food that is healthy for us and helps us grow? — Thich Nhat Hanh

Taste is developed by the diversity of the products one can sample. I think our children today may be missing an education about food. We must teach them to know their cuisine and to know the equilibrium of nourishment. That is very important for health. — Joel Robuchon

Everything one reads is nourishment of some sort - good food or junk food - and one assumes it all goes in and has its way with your brain cells. — Lorrie Moore

Die, then!" This alarming counsel split the air. "Die if you must, Mukunda! Never believe that you live by the power of food and not by the power of God! He who has created every form of nourishment, He who has bestowed appetite, will inevitably see that His devotee is maintained. Do not imagine that rice sustains you nor that money or men support you. Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your life breath? They are His instruments merely. Is it by any skill of yours that food digests in your stomach? Use the sword of your discrimination, Mukunda! Cut through the chains of agency and perceive the Single Cause! — Paramahansa Yogananda

Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction. — John Cage

In a relationship, we are nourishment for each other. So we have to select the kind of food we offer the other person, the kind of food that can help our relationships thrive. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The green man said, "I'm a fool, I suppose, to put any confidence in you. And yet I do. I am a free man, come from your own future to explore your age." "That is impossible." "The green color that puzzles your people so much is only what you call pond scum. We have altered it until it can live in our blood, and by its intervention have at last made our peace in humankind's long struggle with the sun. In us, the tiny plants live and die, and our bodies feed from them and their dead and require no other nourishment. All the famines, and all the labor of growing food, are ended." "But you must have sun." "Yes," the green man said. "And I have not enough here. — Gene Wolfe

Culture is not something you put on like a ready-made suit of clothes, but a nourishment you absorb to build up your personality, just as food builds up the body of a growing boy; it is not an ornament to decorate a phrase, still less to show off your knowledge, but a means, painfully acquired, to enrich the soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

Food keeps us alive, as we all know. Nourishment allows us to grow and be healthy. But good cooking takes us beyond survival and into the realms of culture and pleasure. — Fernando Divina

It is not necessarily ominous that the formal family dinner is declining in many households or becoming limited to special occasions. We might be better off if we could separate food as nourishment and pleasure from food as the currency of care that leaves so many woman laboring long hours to prove affection in that semantic muddle called nurturance. — Mary Catherine Bateson

In order to survive human beings need air, water, food, love, and shelter. It would make sense that we focus on the quantity and quality of each of these elements. Instead, we put social status, markets, money, and ego in front of these basic needs. As a result of our behavior, the air we breathe is polluted, the water we drink is polluted, our food is contaminated, and our ability to love is limited because we have been tricked into not loving ourselves, resulting in millions of people who are without shelter, without nourishment, and without community. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Pastor Bob's breakthrough twenty years earlier had been the discovery that while Americans were hungry for spiritual nourishment, they wanted it bland and easy to digest - the religious equivalent of fast food. All that New Testament stuff about self-sacrifice and forgiveness puzzled them mightily. So Pastor Bob preached the Christian virtues of feeling good, relieving stress, getting rich, and hiring abundant deadly force to protect the good people from the bad. — Tony Hendra

Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person's thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like. — Arthur Schopenhauer

It is well known among physicians that the best of the nourishing foods is the one that the Moslem religion forbids, i.e., Wine. It contains much good and light nourishment. It is rapidly digested and helps to digest other foods. — Maimonides

Religion is a form of nourishment. It is difficult to appreciate the flavor and food-value of something one has never eaten. — Simone Weil

Just as our bodies need proper food to live and develop, our souls need love to blossom. The strength and nourishment that love can give our souls is even more potent than the nourishing power of a mother's milk for a baby. — Mata Amritanandamayi

We often view healthy eating as synonymous with restrictive eating, and we likewise view joyful eating as a guilty pleasure, something that begs for strict limits. I believe that real food allows us both the gift of nourishment, and the gift of pleasure, without unnecessary restrictions. Eating a diet of traditional foods helps us to develop a positive relationship with our food, not one born out of guilt and denial; rather, the traditional foods movement teaches us to purchase, prepare, and enjoy our food with intention. — Jennifer McGruther

When it comes to literal nourishment, the food we eat, life begets life. — Victoria Moran

Feelings are for the soul what food is for the body. — Rudolf Steiner

How many of you say: I should like to see His face, His garments, His shoes. You do see Him, you touch Him, you eat Him. He gives Himself to you, not only that you may see Him, but also to be your food and nourishment. — Saint John Chrysostom

Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs. — Leonardo Da Vinci

I just hope Americans come to understand that food isn't something to be manipulated by our teeth and shoved down our gullet, that it's our spiritual and physical nourishment and important to our well-being as a nation. — Alice Waters

If we didn't have bodies, we couldn't feel the sun on our faces or smell the earthy, mushroom-y rich smell of the ground right after the rain. If we didn't have bodies, we couldn't wrap our arms around the people we love or taste a perfect tomato right at the height of summer. I'm so thankful to live in this physical, messy, blood-and-guts world. I don't want to live in a world that's all dry ideas and theorems. Food is one of the ways we acknowledge our humanity, our appetites, our need for nourishment. And so it may seem trivial or peripheral to some people, but to me, when I'm telling a story, the part about what we ate really does matter. — Shauna Niequist

The skin is an integral part of the body and depends upon the general system for its supply of food and to carry away its waste. Skin health depends primarily upon the general health of the body. All attempts to deal with the skin as an independent entity, without due regard to its reliance upon the general system, must of necessity result in failure. The skin is nourished by the blood and there is no other source from which it can draw sustenance. "Skin foods" are all frauds. These are composed chiefly of grease. No fat can be assimilated by the skin or other tissues of the body until it has first been broken down into its constituent fatty acids in the process of digestion. Even were this not true, the skin contains very little fat and these "skin foods" would still not constitute proper nourishment for it. Blood is the only skin food. — Herbert M. Shelton

There is more food in a pennyworth of bread than in a gallon of ale. — Joseph Livesey

No amount of good food can nourish a starving soul. — Catherine Barnhoorn

The world is a perfect design. If we can see it. If we can see ourselves and our surroundings. A vast sky held up by pillars. A carpet of earth that gives us all the food and fruit and nourishment we need to live. Animals of every species. Some that we can ride, some that we can eat, some that can help us in our work. They have specific duties.You can't tie a lion to a cart.
They have all been placed here as means for us to see our inner natures. Just because we are dressed like human beings doesn't exempt us from having animal tendencies. The mouse in us that steals a little bit from here and there. The vain peacock that grooms himself all the time. The sly fox. The stubborn donkey that closes his ear to the name of Allah. The scorpion that stings. These are all in us. — Shems Friedlander

One can watch hours and hours of TV without actually losing interest, but, as with Chinese food, one is rarely left with much residue of nourishment. — Frederic Raphael

Among those kinds of food which the good housekeeper should scrupulously banish from her table, is that of hot leavened bread ... I believe it more often lays the foundation of diseases of the stomach, than any other kind of nourishment, used among us. — Sarah Josepha Hale

For me, dance is a nutrient, you know, it's something that I need, it's something like, you know, the air we breath, the food we eat. These are things that we need for survival. For me, dance is a nutrient. It's my nourishment. — Gregg Burge

As an automobile needs premium fuel to operate well, our bodies need real, fresh food to maintain health. Packaged food creates dis-ease. There's no nourishment in it. The body can only handle it for so long. Then, when you do have a problem, you usually take an over-the-counter or prescription drug. This is another form of poison. — Louise Hay

When my mother was dying, I cooked for her. One of the things I realised was that the smell and look of the food was key. I concentrated on how it looked on the plate. Even if the amount was small, it gave her a nourishment of a different kind. — Simon McBurney

I love humanity, which has been a constant delight to me during all my seventy-seven years of life; and I love flowers, trees, animals, and all the works of Nature as they pass before us in time and space. What a joy life is when you have made a close working partnership with Nature, helping her to produce for the benefit of mankind new forms, colors, and perfumes in flowers which were never known before; fruits in form, size, and flavor never before seen on this globe; and grains of enormously increased productiveness, whose fat kernels are filled with more and better nourishment, a veritable storehouse of perfect food - new food for all the world's untold millions for all time to come. — Luther Burbank

Mama operated under the assumption that I was eight years old and incapable of feeding myself. It was physically impossible for her to cross my threshold without some form of nourishment. She once offered me cheese and crackers from her while we were standing in my kitchen. — Molly Harper

That break comes for all of us, at different times and in different ways. The nourishment of food, the bonds of friendship, the occasions for celebration, and the delights of legitimate pleasure end in a matter of a moment for each life and each relationship. It is to this vulnerability of living that Jesus points His finger. The poet puts it in these words: Our life contains a thousand springs and dies if one be gone; Strange that a harp of a thousand strings can stay in tune so long. There is an old adage that says you can give a hungry man a fish, or better still, you can teach him how to fish. Jesus would add that you can teach a person how to fish, but the most successful fisherman has hungers fish will not satisfy. G — Ravi Zacharias

To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need forever is taste. — Robert Farrar Capon

People need dreams, there's as much nourishment in 'em as food. — Dorothy Gilman

Gluttony and satiety in food produce defiled lust, while free association with women enflames the fire of lusts ... At the time of struggle with defilement, punish your thoughts with lack of nourishment, so that you will think not of defilements, but of hunger, and reject the invitation to go visiting. — Nilus Of Sinai

WEAN YOURSELF
Little by little, wean yourself.
This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,
move to an infant drinking milk,
to a child on solid food,
to a searcher after wisdom,
to a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.
At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding."
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.
Listen to the answer.
There is no "other world."
I only know what I've experienced.
You must be hallucinating. — Rumi

I have the privilege to make ethical choices through my food each day. It's beyond nourishment to me. Each meal represents a lifestyle I passionately believe in. — Margaret Chapman

All mankind lives in a state of terrible ignorance. In the opinion of food addicts, the consumption of cooked food is something quite natural, while nourishment by the laws of nature is an experiment, and a dangerous experiment at that. — Arshavir Ter Hovannessian

Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum. — Frederick Douglass

They may also ask that you bring certain types of food, alcohol, or tobacco on a regular basis. It must be noted that although djinn in their natural state might be composed of plasma, most of them can take a physical shape for short periods of time. This means that a djinni is able to take in nourishment by absorbing energy or consuming food. It's thought that many djinn enjoy the "taste" of a variety of our everyday foods, especially ice cream and fruits. Human foods only partially provide subsistence, however: djinn must get most of their nourishment by absorbing various types of energy from living things. — Rosemary Ellen Guiley

I really want some meaning. It used to be easy to toss it off. Now it's harder and harder. You have to navigate just to find something that has nourishment. It's the absence of nourishment. What do you do in place of nourishment? It's usually junk. Either it's junk food or junk clothes or junk ideas. — Toni Morrison

Food brings people together on many different levels. It's nourishment of the soul and body; it's truly love. — Giada De Laurentiis

A balanced dieT to make you die with a tea, consists of holding two bags of cookies on each hand and a voracious hunger to consume. — Ana Claudia Antunes

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. — J. Donald Walters

Food and sex have been bound together for a long time. I guess this is due to the intimate connection between the two most powerful instincts that predominate in life: the instinct to survive and the instinct to multiply. Nourishment and sex give us a great sense of pleasure. Having the wisdom to satisfy both desires - for food and sex - is the art of living well. I truly believe that this wisdom lies within us all. — Ori Hofmekler

Our spirits ... require nourishment. Just as there is food for the body, there is food for the spirit. The consequences of spiritual malnutrition are just as hurtful to our spiritual lives as physical malnutrition is to our physical bodies. — Dallin H. Oaks

Nourishment is not just "nutrition." Nourishment is the nutrients in the food, the taste, the aroma, the ambiance of the room, the conversation at the table, the love and inspiration in the cooking, and the joy of the entire eating experience. — Marc David

With no navigational skills, her travels became aimless, and after several days she began to experience excruciating hunger, as she had not the foresight to pack food before she set out. She drifted through tiny villages and saw juicy fruits and vegetables growing in the gardens of the peasants, but could not bring herself to beg for food or attempt to steal it. She ate small beetles and grasshoppers, since she had no hunting skills. She chewed on the bitter roots of sassafras trees, which turned her stomach sour but provided a small amount of nourishment. How — Brian Edwards

Old age takes in part savoury wisdom for its food - see to that your old age will not lack in nourishment. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The table is a meeting place, a gathering ground, the source of sustenance and nourishment, festivity, safety, and satisfaction. A person cooking is a person giving: Even the simplest food is a gift. — Laurie Colwin

Muscles without strength, friendship without trust, opinion without risk, change without aesthetics, age without values, food without nourishment, power without fairness, facts without rigor, degrees without erudition, militarism without fortitude, progress without civilization, complication without depth, fluency without content; these are the sins to remember. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo whose nourishment comes in the blood, move to an infant drinking milk, to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom, to a hunter of invisible game. — Rumi

I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility. — Shauna Niequist

Food is first for nourishment, not just for taste or appearance, and this is an important thing to teach children. — Katie Wells

Eat food for the sake of eating food, and it'll never satisfy. Eat food for the sake of nourishment, and give thanks to God for creating food, and it strangely begins to satisfy. Am I the only one who's been caught in this cycle hundreds, if not thousands, of times? We short-circuit whenever we pursue the benefits and not the essence because it's God's way of getting our attention and showing us he's the true satisfaction. God wants us to pursue him first. — Jefferson Bethke

We do children an enormous disservice when we assume that they cannot appreciate anything beyond drive through fare and nutritionally marginal, kid-targeted convenience foods. Our children are capable of consuming something that grew in a garden or on a tree and never saw a deep fryer. They are capable of making it through diner at a sit-down restaurant with tablecloths and no climbing equipment. Children deserve quality nourishment. — Victoria Moran

When we look at things as simple as food, it's not about just nourishment and sustaining our life, it is really the seed of our ancestor. — Maya Tiwari

Christ is the meat, the bread, the food of our souls. Nothing is in him of a higher spiritual nourishment than his love, which we should always desire. — John Owen

Remember, too, that at a time when people are very concerned with their health and its relationship to what they eat, we have handed over the responsibility for our nourishment to faceless corporations. — Lynne Rossetto Kasper

Creativity is not so much a boundless well, but an all-you-can-eat buffet of elements for your creative endeavor.
Eventually you've eaten your fill, and it's time to digest and then make something.
But at some point, it will be time to return to the restaurant. — Vera Nazarian

Far more indispensable then food for the physical body is spiritual nourishment for the soul. One can do without food for a considerable time, but a man of the spirit cannot exist for a single second without spiritual nourishment. — Mahatma Gandhi

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that restricting calories by 30 percent significantly increased life span in monkeys.27 The experimental diet, while still providing adequate nourishment, slowed monkeys' metabolism and reduced their body temperatures, changes similar to those in the long-lived thin mice. Decreased levels of triglycerides and increased HDL (the good) cholesterol were also observed. Studies over the years, on many different species of animals, have confirmed that those animals that were fed less lived longest. In fact, allowing an animal to eat as much food as it desires can reduce its life span by as much as one-half. — Joel Fuhrman

And waiting means hurrying on ahead, it means regarding time and the present moment not as a boon, but an obstruction; it means making their actual content null and void, by mentally overleaping them. Waiting, we say, is long. We might just as well - or more accurately - say it is short, since it consumes whole spaces of time without our living them or making any use of them as such. We may compare him who lives on expectation to a greedy man, whose digestive apparatus works through quantities of food without converting it into anything of value or nourishment to his system. We might almost go so far as to say that, as undigested food makes man no stronger, so time spent in waiting makes him no older. But in practice, of course, there is hardly such a thing as pure and unadulterated waiting. — Thomas Mann

And how long would the life in me stay alive if it did not find new roots?
I behaved like a starving man who knows there is foot somewhere if he can only find it. I did not reason anything out. I did not reason that part of the food I needed was to become a member of a community richer and more various, humanly speaking, than the academic world of Cambridge could provide: the hunger of the novelist. I did not reason that part of the nourishment I craved was all the natural world can give - a garden, woods, fields, brooks, birds: the hunger of the poet. I did not reason that the time had come when I needed a house of my own, a nest of my own making: the hunger of the woman. — May Sarton