Recipe Quotes

“When ambition outstrips ability, that is always a recipe for disaster.”

— Jan Siegel

“The Limoges set has brought us more joy in its absence than it ever did in our cupboards. Of course, we no longer own a set of china to pass down to our kids, but that's okay. Francois and I plan on giving our children something more valuable, the simple truth that the best way to go through life is to be a major donor of kindness. We'll tell them that it's possible to own a whole bunch of beautiful, valuable things and still be miserable. But sometimes just having a recipe for chocolate Bunt cake can make a person far, far happier.”

— Firoozeh Dumas

“See, the institutions and specialist, experts, you see. Yes, yes,
experts, indeed. See, they would have us believe that there is an order
to art. An explanation. Humans are odd creatures in that way. Always
searching for a formula. Yes, a formula to create an expected norm for
unexplainable greatness. A cook book you might say. Yes, a recipe
book for life, love, and art. However, my dear, let me tell you. Yes,
there is no such thing. Every individual is unique in their own design,
as intended by God himself. We classify, yes, always must we classify,
for if not, then we would be lost, yes lost now wouldn't we?
Classification, order, expectations, but alas, we forget. For what is art,
if not the out word expression of an artist. It is the soul of the artisan
and if his expectations are met, than who are we to judge whether his
work be art or not?”

— Cristina Marrero

“Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'
One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.
One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.
One fine day.”

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“One day I'll make it. Is your goal taking up so much of your attention that you reduce the present moment to a means to an end? Is it taking the joy out of your doing? Are you waiting to start living? If you develop such a mind pattern, no matter what you achieve or get, the present will never be good enough; the future will always seem better. A perfect recipe for permanent dissatisfaction and nonfulfillment, don't you agree?”

— Eckhart Tolle

“Calling for delivery is my favorite recipe.”

— Sarah Dessen

“You do not create ex nihilo. You rearrange and recombine. You are the same old flour and eggs in search of a new recipe.”

— Douglas Wilson

“We're not going to persuade people in the developing world to go without, but neither can we afford a planet on which everyone lives like an American. Billions more people living in suburbs and driving SUVs to shopping malls is a recipe for planetary suicide. We can't even afford to continue that way of life ourselves.”

— Alex Steffen

“Usually naive interviewers hover between two mutually contradictory convictions: one, that a text we call creative develops almost instantaneously in the mystic heat of inspirational raptus; or the other, that the writer has followed a recipe, a kind of secret set of rules that they would like to see revealed.
There is no set of rules, or, rather, there are many, varied and flexible rules ...”

— Umberto Eco

“The sacred dimension is not something that you can know through words and ideas any more than you can learn what an apple pie tastes like by eating the recipe. The modern age has forgotten that facts and information, for all their usefulness, are not the same as truth or wisdom, and certainly not the same as direct experience.”

— Adyashanti

“So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. They are momentum investors purchasing highly illiquid investments. That is a recipe for disaster.”

— Fred Wilson

“It's always good to go over the recipe beforehand, so you can easily think of the next thing that needs to be done.”

— Guy Fieri

“When what you do and care about is aligned with what the market wants and cares about, you've created a recipe for career success.”

— Lisa Gansky

“B2FH traces these various fusion reactions and explains the recipe for producing everything up to iron: it's nothing less than evolution for elements.”

— Sam Kean

“I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.”

— Margaret Thatcher

“In theory, food writing is an aid or a prelude to actual meals: you read a recipe, and then you cook. In practice - in a 'paradox' that Michael Pollan, among others, has identified - our current gastronomic fantasies, particularly on TV, have coincided with a decline in home cooking.”

— Bee Wilson

“Smartass Disciple: Master, what is the secret recipe of your happiness?
Master of Stupidity: If I tell you, there is nobody left to be made fun of.”

— Toba Beta

“Recipe for a dissatisfied adulthood is setting goals that are especially difficult to attain. Measured by life satisfaction 20 years later, the least promising goal that a young person could have was becoming accomplished in a performing art.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Sunshine and water-the perfect recipe for happiness.”

— Toni Sorenson

“I always think the recipe for success for a game or any sort of a fantasy experience is to think of a character that hasn't really been explored before, who is unique and has special abilities that not everybody has, and plop them into whatever is the most interesting situation to plop them into.”

— Tim Schafer

“The simple recipe for success that Mendel had instilled in his children from the cradle on consisted in never complaining, never asking for anything, striving to be the best in everything you do, and never trusting anyone.”

— Isabel Allende

“Why, for example, wasn't AIG required to reserve capital against them? Why, for that matter, were Moody's and Standard & Poor's willing to bless 80 percent of a pool of dicey mortgage loans with the same triple-A rating they bestowed on the debts of the U.S. Treasury? Why didn't someone, anyone, inside Goldman Sachs stand up and say, "This is obscene. The rating agencies, the ultimate pricers of all these subprime mortgage loans, clearly do not understand the risk, and their idiocy is creating a recipe for catastrophe"?”

— Michael Lewis

“Death is, perhaps, the only certainty in life that still manages to catch us off guard. And while browsing a headstone catalog (yes, they really have such a thing) over a glass of wine might not sound like a recipe for the perfect date night, taking time to address the small things (Does your wife know what all the keys on your key ring are for? Does your husband know how to make a pot of coffee, or even where you keep the filters?) and even the not-so-small things can make a big difference in how you will cope, should you one day find yourself in my shoes- dressed in black and”

— Anonymous.

“I measure everything, because I always think that if I've spent so much time making sure this recipe was exactly the way I want it, why would I want to throw things into a pot?”

— Ina Garten

“The recipe to an unhappy life in Japan is to want to be Japanese if you are not. Anyone who wants to penetrate the country is setting themselves up for tears and disappointment.”

— Pico Iyer

“I used to love looking at a recipe, getting all the bits and pieces in the shops, getting them ready and prepared ... I don't really have the time to do that anymore.”

— Brian O'Driscoll

“I listen to a lot of podcasts, which are split down the middle between comedy and board game podcasts, and a couple of eclectic ones like 'The Dinner Party' from NPR, where they take an event that happened that week in history and give you a cocktail recipe inspired by it.”

— Rich Sommer

“Realizing that the majority of kids that get molested feel that it is their fault, along with shame, those kids have no idea what to say or do to try to report anything, and add that with the lack of education, it is a complete recipe for disaster that leads to non-reporting of molestation.”

— Sherri Shepherd

“Be sure to read a recipe all the way through before you cook. The time it saves you in the long run is invaluable.”

— Tom Douglas

“Every time you go out there to do something, you wonder if you can do it. There's no assured success. There's no secret recipe for success. Every time you go out there, you go out there with the possibility of great failure.”

— Mel Gibson

“I'll read a recipe but then decide, 'Well, it's sort of like this, then.' Or I'll go to the fridge and think, 'I'll see what I can put together,' and I'll combine beetroot and sausage and prawns with goat's cheese sprinkled on top and think, 'I like that they're all slightly pink. It looks fine and ... actually, it is fine.'”

— Tamsin Greig

“A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.”

— George Eliot

“There is, however, no universal recipe for scientific advance. It is a matter of groping forward into terra incognita of the outer world by means of methods which should be adapted to the circumstances.”

— Reinout Willem Van Bemmelen

“We have history as a guide, and history suggests that this brand of comprehensive reform ... is a recipe for failure.”

— David Vitter

“Open your mind up to things that have no connection with the problem you're trying to solve: subscribe to an unusual magazine; spend a morning at an elementary school; go to work two hours early; test drive an exotic car; attend a city council meeting; ... try an Indonesian recipe.”

— Roger Von Oech

“The recipe for success ... customers will get what they want, when they want it ... you will see more revenue, greater brand loyalty, real relationships, and a competitive edge.”

— Martin Zwilling

“My own recipe for world peace is a bit of land for everyone.”

— Gladys Taber

“If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything.”

— Michael Symon

“I'm often asked the same question: What in your work comes from your own culture? As if I have a recipe and I can actually isolate the Arab ingredient, the woman ingredient, the Palestinian ingredient. People often expect tidy definitions of otherness, as if identity is something fixed and easily definable.”

— Mona Hatoum

“Trying to do it all and expecting that it all can be done exactly right is a recipe for disappointment. Perfection is the enemy.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

“Try a recipe that uses leafy vegetables like kale, or switch to filling, high fiber grains like whole-wheat pasta.”

— Bob Harper

“When you're in an economic downturn, what you want is to create jobs and economic growth. And the recipe isn't Republican or Democrat. It's low taxes, low spending, less regulation, free trade.”

— Nancy Pfotenhauer

“Anytime I am doing something that will help someone in any way, whether it is a simple recipe, a tip, a decoration thing, or a life-change thing, it brings me to life and inspires me to do more of it.”

— Camila Alves

“Honestly, I don't try to guess at what most people want. I don't think I'd guess right, and I just think that that's not a good recipe for storytelling. I try to write what I like, what I think my friends would like.”

— Aaron Sorkin

“I was sent to sleepover camp since I was 6, and you know, it's a recipe for disaster.”

— Sarah Silverman

“The key, I would say to any fledgling humorist starting out, is to make sure that sloppiness is part of your recipe. That way they come to expect fumbling and clumsiness and they say, "Oh, it must be a charming part of his personality."”

— Nick Offerman

“You may say, "Oh, no. You can't touch a traditional recipe." But we ask: why can't you? Back in 1350, a vinaigrette was a stew, so we ask, why not? This can be applied to any kind of cooking, and that's the shocking part of it. It kind of bends all the traditions. It's a good thing.”

— Ferran Adria

“When winter fails to provide an adequate snow base, my boys bring their sleds in the house and ride them down the stairs. Just the other day, my wife found them with a rope out their second-story bedroom window, preparing to rappel down the side of the house. The recipe for fun is pretty simple raising boys: Add to any activity an element of danger, stir in a little exploration, add a dash of destruction, and you've got yourself a winner.”

— John Eldredge

“There is no patent recipe for getting good citizenship. You get it by applying the old, old rules of decent conduct, the rules in accordance with which decent men have had to shape their lives from the beginning .. fundamental precepts, put forth in the Bible and embodied consciously or unconsciously in the code of morals of every great and successful nation from antiquity to modern times.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Taxing less and spending more.. it's fun in the short run, but it's a recipe for disaster.”

— William J. Clinton