Our alienation, our boredom, our estrangement can be cured only by the recovery of a philosophical sanity that will allow us to meet things face to face. An egg is an egg, and must be saluted as such. And china is china, and all things are themselves: mushrooms and artichokes, wine and cheese, earth and stars and sky and ocean. It is things that matter, and our cure waits for the restoration of our ability to care about them.
— Robert Farrar Capon, Romancing the Word