Chocolate Wisdom

Good Living
is an act of intelligence,
by which we choose things
which have an agreeable taste
rather than those which do not.
~ Brillat-Savarin

Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces. ~ Judith Viorst

Giving chocolate to others is an intimate form of communication, a sharing of deep, dark secrets. ~ Milton Zelman, publisher of "Chocolate News"

A chocolate in the mouth is worth two on the plate.

If it ain't chocolate, it ain't breakfast!

There's nothing better than a good friend, except a good friend with CHOCOLATE. ~ Linda Grayson, "The Pickwick Papers"

Chocolate: Here today .... Gone today!

Chocolate causes certain endocrine glands to secrete hormones that affect your feelings and behavior by making you happy. Therefore, it counteracts depression, in turn reducing the stress of depression. Your stress-free life helps you maintain a youthful disposition, both physically and mentally. So, eat lots of chocolate! ~ Elaine Sherman, Book of Divine Indulgences

Forget love-- I'd rather fall in chocolate!!!

I never met a chocolate I didn't like. ~ Deanna Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation

Nobody knows the truffles I've seen!

Caramels are only a fad. Chocolate is a permanent thing. ~ Milton Snavely Hershey

A true chocolate lover finds ways to accommodate his passion and make it work with his lifestyle. One key, not just to keeping weight down and staying guilt-free, but also to keeping taste buds sharp (essential for the professionals who evaluate new products as well as judge recipes), Is being discriminating. ~ Julie Davis of the Los Angeles Times

This guy found a bottle on the ocean, and he opened it and out popped a genie, and he gave him three wishes. The guy wished for a million dollars, and poof! there was a million dollars. Then he wished for a convertible, and poof! there was a convertible. And then, he wished he could be irresistible to all women... poof! he turned into a box of chocolates.

All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt! ~ Lucy Van Pelt (in Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz)

The 12-step chocoholics program:
NEVER BE MORE THAN 12 STEPS AWAY FROM CHOCOLATE!

~ Terry Moore

Chocolate is good for three things. Two of 'em cannot be mentioned on public television.
"Las cosas claras y el chocolate espeso." (Ideas should be clear and chocolate thick.) ~ Spanish proverb

Nuts just take up space where chocolate ought to be.

I don't understand why so many "so called" chocolate lovers complain about the calories in chocolate, when all true chocoholics know that it is a vegetable. It comes from the cocoa bean, beans are veggies, 'nuff said.

I could give up chocolate but I'm not a quitter.

Put the chocolate in the bag and nobody gets hurt.

A day without chocolate is a day without sunshine.

Life without chocolate is like a beach without water.

I have this theory that chocolate slows down the aging process.... It may not be true, but do I dare take the chance?

I am a serious chocoholic. For the serious chocoholic, chocolate is better than sex. If you believe that, you REALLY need to meet that special someone who can change your mind. If you HAVE met that special someone and still believe that, I REALLY NEED to know where you get your chocolate!!!

Chocolate is the best when it melts so creamy and soft in your mouth and it slides down your throat.

Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty. Chocolate isn't like premarital sex. It will not make you pregnant. And it always feels good. ~ Lora Brody, author of Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet

Life is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. ~ Forrest Gump in "Forrest Gump" (1994)

If life is like a box of chocolates, then its time for me to buy another box, I seemed to have already devoured all the good ones!

Life is like a box of chocolates, the best ones are half eaten!!

In the beginning, the Lord created chocolate, and he saw that it was good. Then he separated the light from the dark, and it was better.

Chocolate - The breakfast of champions!

Carob is a brown powder made from the pulverized fruit of a Mediterranean evergreen. Some consider carob an adequate substitute for chocolate because it has some similar nutrients (calcium, phosphorus), and because it can, when combined with vegetable fat and sugar, be made to approximate the color and consistency of chocolate. Of course, the same arguments can as persuasively be made in favor of dirt. ~ Sandra Boynton, author of Chocolate: the Consuming Passion

Chocolate in the morning is what makes moms get through their day!

If not for chocolate, there would be no need for control top pantyhose. An entire garment industry would be devasated.

Put "eat chocolate" at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you'll get one thing done.

Chocolate flows in deep dark, sweet waves, a river to ignite my mind and alert my senses.

Chocolate doesn't make the world go around ... but it certainly makes the ride worthwhile!

Everything I eat should contain either garlic or chocolate, but rarely both.

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produced some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two, but can't remember what they are. ~ Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show

Chocolate: luscious, lumpy. load of love...

All of the evil that people have thrust upon chocolate is really more deserved by milk chocolate, which is essentially contaminated. The closer you get to a pure chocolate liquor (the chocolate essence ground from roasted cacao beans) the purer it is, the more satisfying it is, the safer it is, and the healthier it is. ~ Arnold Ismach, "The Darker Side of Chocolate"

... the taste of chocolate is a sensual pleasure in itself, existing in the same world as sex... For myself, I can enjoy the wicked pleasure of chocolate... entirely by myself. Furtiveness makes it better. ~ Dr. Ruth Westheimer

Simply put... everyone has a price, mine is chocolate!

What Others Have Said

"If not now, when?" ~ The Talmud

"All appears to change when we change." ~ Henri Amiel, 19th-century Swiss writer

"Everything is connected...no one can change by itself." ~ Paul Hawken, environmentalist and author

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." ~ Joseph Campbell, author

"Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent." ~ Krishnamurti, spiritual teacher

"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk and poet

"Follow your bliss." ~ Joseph Campbell

"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." ~ Psalm 30:5

"Joy is not in things; it is in us." ~ Richard Wagner

"Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile." ~ Sir Wilfred Grenfell

"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with." ~ Mark Twain

"Learning to live inthe present moment is part of the path of joy." ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

"Joy is prayer—Joy is strength—Joy is love—Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls."
~ Mother Teresa

"Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I m doing." ~ Phil Jackson

"We read, frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own." ~ Harold Bloom, literary critic

"Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city." ~ Anne Michaels, citing a Hebrew saying, in Fugitive Pieces

"I cannot live without books." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"When I only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts." ~ Anzia Yezierska, novelist

"To grow mature is to separate more distinctly, to connect more closely." ~ Hugo von Hofmannsthal, poet and dramatist

"The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before." ~ Samuel Johnson, lexicographer and author

"Perfection is a road, not a destination. Every time I live, I get an education." ~ Burke Hudson, songwriter

"I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get." ~ Anne Tyler, author

"Only the hand that erases can write the true thing." ~ Meister Eckhart, 13th-century mystic

"That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing." ~ Simone de Beauvoir

"The only gift is a portion of thyself." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Giving is a necessity sometimes...more urgent, indeed, than having." ~ Margaret Lee Runbeck

"We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give." ~ Winston Churchill

"If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass
without sharing it in some way." ~ Buddha

"The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give." ~ Walt Whitman

"There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most." ~ Mary Sarton

"Anything that is of value in life only multiplies when it is given." ~ Deepak Chopra

"It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding." ~ Kahlil Gibran

"Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within." ~ Franz Kafka

"Just trust yourself then you will know how to live." ~ Goethe, Faust

"I could be whatever I wanted to be if I trusted that music, that song, that vibration of God that was inside of me." ~ Shirley Maclaine, It's All In The Playing

"It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself." ~ Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

"Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide." ~ Marva Collins

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

"Don't just lower your expectations. If you truly want to live a joyous and adventurous life, you should relinquish them." ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

"Nothing that once made you happy is ever lost. A golden thread of pleasure runs through your life. You just need to rediscover this thread before the joy of living completely unravels." ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

". . .Let me call Heaven's blessing on thine eyes, my sudden adoration, my great love!" ~ Keats

Thoughts of the Day

"I learned . . . that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness." ~ Brenda Ueland, 1891-1986

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."
~ Vincent van Gogh

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."
~ Mark Twain

"If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822

"Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist so long as she manages to also be a good wife, mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed and unaggressive." ~ Marya Mannes (1904-1990), journalist and writer

"All things must change to something new, to something strange." ~ Longfellow

"Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons." ~ Ruth Ann Schabacker

"If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance."
~ George Bernard Shaw

"To change one's life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions."
~ William James, 1842-1910

To My Friends

To My Friends
If you should die
before me, ask if you
could bring a friend.
~ Stone Temple Pilots

If you live to be a hundred,
I want to live to be
a hundred minus one day,
so I never have to live
without you.
~ Winnie the Pooh

True friendship is
like sound health;
the value of it is
seldom known
until it is lost.
~ Charles Caleb Colton

A real friend
is one who walks in
when the rest
of the world walks out.
Don't
walk in front of me,
I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me,
I may not lead.
Walk beside me and
be my friend.
~ Albert Camus

Strangers are
just friends waiting to
happen.
Friends are the Bacon
Bits in the Salad
Bowl of Life.
Friendship is one mind
in two bodies.
~ Mencius

Friends are God's way of taking care of us.
I'll lean on you and
you lean on me and
we'll be okay
~ Dave Matthews

If all my friends were
to jump off a bridge,
I wouldn't jump with them,
I'd be at the bottom to
catch them.
Everyone hears
what you say.
Friends listen to
what you say.
Best friends
listen to what you don't say.
We all take different
paths in life,
but no matter where we go,
we take a little of each
other everywhere.;
~ Tim McGraw

My father always used
to say that when you die,
if you've got five real friends,
then you've had a great life.;
~ Lee Iacocca

Hold a true friend with both your hands.
~ Nigerian Proverb

A friend is someone who knows
the song in your heart
and can sing it back to you
when you have forgotten
the words.
~ Unknown