Life's Pleasures Quote by Peter De Vries

De Vries nails a whole ecosystem of polite mediocrity in one tidy swap: restaurants, which should obsess over food, and museums, which should obsess over art. The line works because it’s not really about murals or museum cafes; it’s about the way institutions use “culture” as garnish. A mural in a restaurant is atmosphere pretending to be vision, just as museum food is nourishment pretending to be an experience. Each is a consolation prize offered where excellence is expected.

The joke runs on a cruel symmetry. By putting murals “on a par” with museum food, De Vries implies an unwritten rule: when an establishment dabbles outside its core competence, it doesn’t create an exciting hybrid; it produces a dead zone of ambition. The restaurant mural signals taste without demanding it, giving patrons something to look at while they wait - a harmless surrogate for risk or originality. Museum food does the same, turning a space built for contemplation into a place where you can buy a limp sandwich, as if commerce can’t stand to leave reverence alone.

Context matters: De Vries wrote in mid-century America, when mass affluence, themed leisure, and “nice” cultural consumption were expanding fast. His target isn’t high art or good cooking; it’s the safe middlebrow impulse to package both as lifestyle accessories. The line flatters nobody, which is why it endures: it punctures the idea that proximity to art, or a decorative nod to it, automatically upgrades the experience.