"The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its character"
About this Quote
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to Enlightenment self-image. Brillat-Savarin, a lawyer by training and a gastronome by fame, understood persuasion: juries and diners alike decide with their bodies long before they assemble arguments. By putting smell in the role of counsellor, he legitimizes instinct as a kind of evidence - unreliable in court, indispensable in life. The line also smuggles in a social code. Odor is classed, moralized, policed: perfume versus stench, cleanliness as virtue, the poor and the foreign stereotyped as "smelling" wrong. To say smell "foretells its character" is to admit how quickly we sort people and things into categories that feel natural but are culturally trained.
Contextually, this fits the early 19th-century French obsession with taste, refinement, and the body's education. Brillat-Savarin is selling an aesthetic philosophy where the senses are not indulgences but instruments of discernment - and where the nose, loyal and blunt, tells the truth polite society prefers to argue around.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme. (2026, January 17). The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its character. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-sense-of-smell-like-a-faithful-counsellor-80194/
Chicago Style
Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme. "The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its character." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-sense-of-smell-like-a-faithful-counsellor-80194/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its character." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-sense-of-smell-like-a-faithful-counsellor-80194/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.
