triangle love bizarre

hese days I am reading this book "French Lessons" written by Peter Mayle, the author of "Encore Provence","A Dog's Life",and "A Year in Provence".

This book is an instruction of French food,so this book is also named"Adventures with Knife,Fork,and Corkscrew".

Before I read this book, I knew little about French food. Now,with the help of the author,I began to enjoy the travel of French food,although it is just vitual.

Here are some descriptions I like and I present them for you:

Even before sitting down,I could tell I was in a serious establishment,unlike anywhere I'd been before.It smelled different:exotic and tantalizing.There was the scent of the sea as we passed the display of oysters on their bed of crushed ice,the rich whiff of butter warming in a pan,and,coming through the air every time the kitchen door swung open,the pervasive-and to my untraveled nose,infinitely foreign-hum of garlic.

It wasn't only because of what I had eaten,although that had been incomparably better than anything I'd eaten before.It was the total experience:the elegance of the table setting,the ritual of opening and tasting the wine,the unobtrusive efficiency of the waiters and their attention to the detail,arranging the plates just so,whisking up bread crumbs from the tablecloth.For me,it had been a special occasion.I couldn't imagine people eating like this every day;and yet,in France,they did.It was the start of an enduring fascination with the French and their love affair with food.

Historically,the French have paid extraordinary-some would say excessive-attention to what they eat and how they eat it.And they put their money where their mouth is,spending a greater proportion of their income on food and drink than any other nation in the world.This is true not only of the affluent bourgeois gourmet;where food is concerned,interest,enjoyment,and knowledge extend throughout all levels of society,from the president to the peasant.

现在看的书,The picture of Dorian Gray

Preface

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.

This is a fault.Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated.

For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.

Books are well written,or badly written.

That is all.

The nineteenth-century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth-century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist,but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything.

Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies.

An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.No artist is ever morbid.

The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form,the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.From the point of view of feeling,the actor’s craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.It is the spectator,and not life,that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinon about a work of art shows that the work is new,complex,and vital.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.

The only excuse for making a uesless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.