“When a loaf of bread, for instance, is in the oven, cracks appear in it here and there; and these flaws, though not intended in the baking, have a rightness of their own, and sharpen the appetite. Figs, again, at their ripest will also crack open. When olives are on the verge of falling, the very imminence of decay adds its peculiar beauty to the fruit. So, too, the drooping head of a cornstalk, the wrinkling skin when a lion scowls, the drip of foam from a boar’s jaws, and many more such sights, are far from beautiful if looked at by themselves; yet as the consequences of some other process of Nature, they make their own contribution to its charm and attractiveness.”
Another translation
"Take the baking of bread. The loaf splits open here and there, and those very cracks, in one way a failure of the baker's profession, somehow catch the eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite.”
Another one
We ought to observe… that even the things which follow after the things that are produced according to nature contain something pleasing and attractive. For instance, when bread is baked, some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker’s art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite our appetite. And again, figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion’s eyebrows, and the foam that flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many other things – though they are far from being beautiful, if a man should examine them separately – still, because they follow from the things that are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they please the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and deeper insight with respect to the things that are produced in the universe, there is hardly one of those by-products that will not fail to give pleasure. And so he will see even the real gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than those that painters and sculptors show by imitation; and in an old woman and an old man he will be able to see a certain maturity and comeliness; and the attractive loveliness of young persons he will be able to look on with chaste eyes; and many such things will seem pleasing, but only to him who has become truly familiar with nature and her works.
All from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius