Figs Quotes

• No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

  Epictetus

  Life, Patience, Time

  Epictetus (1866). “The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments”, p.48

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• Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.

  Charles Dickens

  Tree, Shade, Way

  1846-8 Captain Cuttle. Dombey and Son, ch.19.

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• A fig for a care, a fig for a woe!

  John Heywood

  Care, Woe, Fruit

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• To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.

  Elizabeth David

  Morning, Food, Tree

  Elizabeth David (1999). “Italian Food”, p.261, Penguin

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• Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig.

  Epictetus

  Inspirational, Patience, Greek Philosopher

  Epictetus (1866). “The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments”, p.48

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• O excellent! I love long life better than figs.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Long, Excellent

  'Antony and Cleopatra' (1606-7) act 1, sc. 2, l. [34]

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• I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree.

  Sylvia Plath

  Beautiful, Sleep, Tree

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.30, Hamilton Books

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• Shape is a good part of the fig's delight.

  Jane Grigson

  Food, Cooking, Delight

  Jane Grigson (2007). “Jane Grigson's Fruit Book”, p.160, U of Nebraska Press

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• Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

  Florence King

  Democracy, Leafs, Chinks

  Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.97, Macmillan

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• Fig tree, how long it's been full meaning for me, the way you almost entirely omit to flower and into the seasonably-resolute fruit uncelebratedly thrust your purest secret. Like the tube of a fountain, your bent bough drives the sap downwards and up: and it leaps from its sleep, scarce waking, into the joy of its sweetest achievement.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Flower, Sleep, Long

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• Some people need a fig-leaf on their mouths.

  Martin Luther

  People, Needs, Mouths

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• I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant loosing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

  Sylvia Plath

  Wrinkles, Feet, Tree

  1963 The Bell Jar, ch.7.

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• I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.

  Menander

  Spades

  Unidentified fragment 545 K (K = T. Kock, "Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta", 3 vols. (Leipzig 1880/8)), as translated in ‪"Menander: The Principal Fragments"‬‎ by Francis Greenleaf Allinson, 1921.

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• If God had not made brown honey, men would think figs much sweeter than they do.

  Xenophanes

  Men, Thinking, Honey

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• God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown, But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown. And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live, And said "To you, my children, These lovely flowers I give. Prune ye my vines and fig trees, With care my flowers tend, But keep the pathway open Your home is at the end." God's Garden

  Robert Frost

  Children, Flower, Home

  Robert Frost (1992). “Selected Poems”, Gramercy

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• I am once more seated under my own vine and fig tree ... and hope to spend the remainder of my days in peaceful retirement, making political pursuits yield to the more rational amusement of cultivating the earth.

  George Washington

  Hope, Peace, Retirement

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1796). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”

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• I am against marriage, and I don't give a fig for society.

  Brigitte Bardot

  Giving

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• Clothes are nothing more than a fig leaf. And the bodies beneath are just another layer of clothing, an outfit of flesh with an impractically thin leather exterior, in various shades of pink, yellow and brown. The souls alone are real. Seen in this way, there can never be any such thing as social unease or shyness or embarrassment. All you need do is greet your fellow soul.

  Michel Faber

  Real, Yellow, Clothes

  Michel Faber (2014). “The Book of Strange New Things”, p.77, Canongate Books

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• Here is a rural fellow that will not be denied your Highness' presence: he brings you figs.

  William Shakespeare

  Food, Cooking, Culinary

  William Shakespeare (1868). “The Works of William Shakspeare. Life, Glossary, &c. Reprinted from the Original Edition, and Compared with All Recent Commentators”, p.531

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• May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants-while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.

  George Washington

  Children, Father, Light

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1792). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”, p.93

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• Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches/sec.

  Joe Hart

  Newton, Inches, Force

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• I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.

  Saul Bellow

  Price Tag, Two Sides, Leafs

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

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• Fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.

  George F. Kennan

  Procedures, Democratic, Dictatorship

  Of postwar agreements to govern Eastern Europe. Quoted in Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas TheWise Men (1986).

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• Well there are a lot of things I like to eat but at this time of year I'm finding I'm making fig and chèvre salad at least once a week and that's a combo that's hard to beat.

  Karen Walker

  Years, Salad, Week

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• Let the world slide, let the world go;
  A fig for care, and a fig for woe!
  If I can't pay, why I can owe,
  And death makes equal the high and low.

  John Heywood

  Death, World, Care

  "Be Merry Friends". "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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