Life is like a box of chocolates. It's a cheap thoughtless perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable becuase all you ever get back is another box of chocolates, so you're stuck with this unidentifiable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing left to eat. Sure, once in a while there's a peanut butter cup or an English toffee, but they're gone too fast and the taste is fleeting. So you end up with up with nothing but broken bits with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts. If you're desperate enough to eat that, all you have left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper wrappers.'
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Never would it occur to a child that a sheep, a pig, a cow or a chicken was good to eat, while, like Milton's Adam, he would eagerly make a meal off fruits, nuts, thyme, mint, peas and broad beans which penetrate further and stimulate not only the appetite but other vague and deep nostalgias. We are closer to the Vegetable Kingdom than we know; is it not for man alone that mint, thyme, sage, and rosemary exhale crush me and eat me! -- for us that opium poppy, coffee-berry, tea-plant and vine perfect themselves? Their aim is to be absorbed by us, even if it can only be achieved by attaching themselves to roast mutton.
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Matthew 23:23:
'Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.'
(NIV)
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you give a tenth of your mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected and omitted the weightier (more important) matters of the Law--right and justice and mercy and fidelity. These you ought [particularly] to have done, without neglecting the others.
(AMP)
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
(KJV)
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A man in all the world's new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.
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