In The Kitchen

If you wish to grow thinner, diminish your dinner,
And take to light claret instead of pale ale;
Look down with an utter contempt upon butter,
And never touch bread till it’s toasted— or stale.

H. S. Leigh (1837–83), English author. A Day for Wishing.

To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality.

Naomi Wolf (b. 1962), U.S. author. The Beauty Myth, “Hunger” (1990).

To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.

François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), French writer, moralist. Sentences et Maximes Morales, no. 208 (ed. 1665; no. 56 of First Supplement, 1678).

’Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. The Conduct of Life, “Culture” (1860)