In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value. The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.

I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule. Clarence Birdseye

In nineteenth-century Russia, sauerkraut was valued more than caviar.

The egg creams of Avenue A in New York and the root beer float....are among the high points of American gastronomic inventiveness.

A superpower that no longer stands for anything, that no one believes in anymore, that is seen only as a bully, will fall despite its military might. If the Bush administration ever wanted to reflect on history, it might think about this.

If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod... But it has among its predators - man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod.

THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted.