Topical Guide 472
Mark Dorset
Contentment: Full Stomach as a Source of, Clear Conscience as a Source of
Fortune-Cookie Wisdom
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3:
Eating is such a great pleasure that the four of them speak very little, and when they do they talk only about the food. Were it not for the persistent whining of the boy at the next table, they might be in paradise. When they have finished they lean back, contented, regarding one another with the generosity of spirit a full stomach brings.
Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog):
How good one feels when one is full—how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.
Quotation: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3:
Whenever [Harold] feels especially content, after a meal, and particularly at the end of a fine evening when he has not only eaten well but supposes he has been clever, then, as Lucretius put it, “in the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.”
Bartlett gives the source as De Rerum Natura, Book 4, and adds the note “See Byron, page 352.” There we find “Still from the fount of joy’s delicious springs / Some bitter o’er the flowers its bubbling venom flings” from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
See also:
Fortune Cookie Wisdom TG 37; TG 74; TG 109; TG 126; TG 168
Quotation: Misquotation TG 448
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