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When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him.

When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him.

Approximate author period: c. 1695 AD · renaissance

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Joseph Addison
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1695 AD · renaissance
author lifetime midpoint (1672–1719)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1896) (1896 AD)

Gluttony · anthology attribution: Addison

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.