Welcome to The Blogosphere Home of The Cheese Snob. If you would like to know more about who I am and what I do, I recommend you check out my Website, www.cheesesnob.com

Monday, September 18, 2006

"Cheese"

For some reason, which I won't get into here, I was doing an internet search on cheese quotations. Well, I guess, considering it's ME, that's probably not too much of a surprise.

I didn't find too many, but I found some good ones. Of course, they each appeared on about 10 different websites. I'm noticing that in internet-land, everyone just repeats what everyone else has already written. So why change a good thing? Here's my contribution.

Anyway, since each quote appeared so many damn times, I feel relieved from the obligation to give the websites credit, as it does not seem to be due. So take that, copiers! I will, however, give credit to the person who said or wrote it, when known.

Let's go right to the quotes:

"Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?"
- Job, speaking to God


(I guess the Bible is as good a place to start as any.)

"Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese -- toasted, mostly."
Robert Louis Stevenson

"A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains, cheese, milk's leap toward immortality."
- Clifton Fadiman

"People who know nothing about cheeses reel away from Camembert, Roquefort, and Stilton because the plebeian proboscis is not equipped to differentiate between the sordid and the sublime."
- Harvey Day

"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
- G.K. Chesterton

"Blue cheese contains natural amphetamines. Why are students not informed about this?"
- Mark E. Smith

"Stop calling me names you cheese head!"
- Michelle Tanner (played by Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen)

(Yeah, it's a Full House quote. I don't know what to say about that. "Sorry" doesn't suffice.)

"I don't want the cheese, I just want out of the trap."
- Spanish proverb
"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."
-
Unknown


"It's nice to get out of the rat race, but you have to learn to get along
with less cheese."

-Gene Parret, on retirement

And what would a post about cheese quotes be without Charles de Gaulle's
famous quote:


Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six
variétés de fromage?

(How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six
varieties of cheese?)


I've also found quite a few good cheese quotes in Steve Jenkins' "Cheese Primer."
If you are into cheese and you don't have that book, you aren't really into cheese.
And all your caseophile friends will know it and laugh at you, so get the book NOW!
So, since I'm getting these quotes from Jenkins, I'll cite 'em all...

"Cheese and bread make the cheeks red."
- German proverb (p. 422)

"Apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze."
- Old English saying (p. 311)

"Fromage et pain est medecin au sain."
(Bread and cheese is medicine for the well.)
- French proverb (p.125)

"S'il qui mange du fromage, s'il ne le fait, il enrage."
(He who does not eat cheese will go mad.)
- French proverb (p. 176)


"Clifton Fadiman wrote that cheese is like milk's leap toward immortality, which is witty, but untrue.
Velveeta is immortal, but it is not cheese; cheese is milk's leap toward a life of its own."

- John Thorne, Serious Pig (p.368)

"The spirit of a country, if it is to be true to itself, needs continually to draw great breaths of inspiration
from the simple realities of the country; from the smell of its soil, the pattern of its fields, the beauty of its
scenery and from the men and women who dwell and toil in the rural areas."

- Sir George Stapledon, as quoted in The Great British Cheese Book by Patrick Rance
[and then quoted in Jenkins' book, and then quoted in my blog...]

That last one really is a beautiful sentiment, and why I dedicate my life, in my own way, to farmhouse
and artisan-made cheese.


"I am grateful to have learned young that cheese has an important place in a menu. It isn't something to
serve with apple pie, and it isn't something to cut into nasty little cubes and serve with crackers. Early in
life I learned to see the beauty of great slabs of cheese or rounds of cheese on the table, and I still respond
to the sight of a well-stocked cheese tray properly presented."

- James Beard, Delights and Prejudices (p. 22)

I don't know at what age James Beard learned what he did about cheese (8? 13? 25?), but I started learning
about cheese, and I mean
really learning about cheese, at the age of 21. And his quote above is what makes
me the Cheese Snob, and keeps me fighting the good fight, as it were. All in the name of Cheese.


Yours in Cheese,
-Wendy

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Wendy!

Just say cheese Gromit! from the animated Wallace & Gromit series. Wallace has an obsession with his Wensleydale. And Wallace is now VERY populair in Wensleydale...

Cheese!

Bas.

The Writer said...

Hi Bas,
Yes, and there's even an industrial-made "Wallace & Gromit" Brand Wensleydale. My opinion is divided on that: one the one hand, it's good to promote the eating of cheese and Wallace and Gromit are cute; on the other, why does it have to be more factory cheese? wahh!

-Wendy

Martha Marin said...

CHEESE!
WENDY!
wendy and cheese?
Oh heavens. What a glorious day.
Hi!

The Writer said...

Martha! Hi! It's so nice to see you on my blog. Go to my website www.cheesesnob.com and email me through there. click "contact" and it goes right to me. Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

I do hope you will continue your blog!

I have two cheese quotes to share from "The World of Cheese" by Evan Jones, 1977.

"Even though it may have been ineptly cut, cheese is too precious ever to throw out."

"For reasons of flavor, as well as aesthetics and conservation, it is important to treat cheese with respect at home, or in a public eating place..."

kimberlymason AT gmail.com

The Writer said...

Hey "Anonymous" - Thanks for writing. Yeah, I guess I fell off the blogging cheese cart. A good place to read my stuff is here: http://www.xomba.com/user/cheesesnobwendy

I suppose I should start posting more blogs one of these days.

-The Cheese Snob