"Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale"
About this Quote
The subtext is social engineering. "Goodwill and happy companionship" suggests food as a medium of alliance-building - a table as a runway for intimacy, negotiation, and belonging. In interwar and postwar Europe, where Schiaparelli built her career amid scarcity, upheaval, and rigid class codes, insisting on the morale value of eating reads as quietly political. Morale is a word from factories and battlefields; she smuggles it into domestic life to argue that joy is not frivolous, it's infrastructure.
As a designer famous for surreal wit and for collaborating with artists, Schiaparelli also implies a worldview where the everyday can be made strange and radiant. Eating "well" isn't just luxury; it's attention, play, and a refusal to let anxiety dictate taste. The line flatters the senses while making a pragmatic claim: pleasure, properly arranged, lubricates society.
Quote Details
| Topic | Food |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Schiaparelli, Elsa. (2026, January 14). Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/eating-is-not-merely-a-material-pleasure-eating-144899/
Chicago Style
Schiaparelli, Elsa. "Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale." FixQuotes. January 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/eating-is-not-merely-a-material-pleasure-eating-144899/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale." FixQuotes, 14 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/eating-is-not-merely-a-material-pleasure-eating-144899/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.






