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

  Xenophanes

  Men, Thinking, Honey

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

  Martin Luther

  People, Needs, Mouths

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

  Joe Hart

  Newton, Inches, Force

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• Secrecy is the original sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love.

  Timothy Leary

  Garden, Eden, Sin

  Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, George A. Koopman (1988). “Neuropolitique”, New Falcon Publications

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• Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.

  Kate Douglas Wiggin

  Success, Two, World

  Kate Douglas Wiggin (2015). “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”, p.146, Booklassic

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• When the Jewish people, after nearly 2,000 years of exile, under relentless persecution, became a nation again on 14 May 1948 the 'fig tree' put forth its first leaves. Jesus said that this would indicate that He was 'at the door,' ready to return.

  Hal Lindsey

  Jesus, Doors, Years

  Hal Lindsey, Carole C. Carlson (1972). “The late great planet earth”

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• There was an Old Person of Bray, Who sang through the whole of the day To his ducks and his pigs, whom he fed upon figs, That valuable Person of Bray.

  Edward Lear

  Pigs, Ducks, Feds

  Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear (2004). “Utter Nonsense: Selected Poems of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear”, p.29, Lonely Scribe

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• The type of figleaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.

  Freda Adler

  Social Taboos, Culture, Morality

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• National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.

  Ralph Nader

  Information, Leafs, National Security

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• Nature also forges man, now a gold man, now a silver man, now a fig man, now a bean man.

  Paracelsus

  Men, Gold, Silver

  Paracelsus, Jolande Jacobi (1951). “Selected Writings”, p.125, Princeton University Press

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