quotations about apples
Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple.
J.K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
It is more pleasant to pluck an apple from the branch than to take one from a graven dish.
OVID
Epistulae ex Ponto
The apples lie scattered here and there, each under its own tree.
VIRGIL
Eclogues
By the middle of July, green apples are so large as to remind us of coddling, and of the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with little ones which fall, still-born, as it were--Nature thus thinning them for us.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
"Wild Apples", The Atlantic Monthly, November 1862
Oh! happy are the apples when the south winds blow.
WILLIAM WALLACE HARNEY
Adonais
She is lost with an apple, and won with a nut.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
AMERICAN PROVERB
originated in the 1900s as a marketing slogan by growers concerned that the temperance movement would cut into sales of hard cider, the principal market for apples at the time
On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
Winesburg, Ohio
Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread.
WELSH PROVERB
To satisfy the sharp desire I had
Of tasting those fair apples, I resolv'd
Not to defer; hunger and thirst at once,
Powerful persuaders, quicken'd at the scent
Of that alluring fruit, urg'd me so keen.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Apples are thought to quench the flame of Venus, according to that old English saying, He that will not a wife wed, Must eat a cold apple when he goeth to bed, though some turn it to a contrary purpose.
THOMAS COGAN
Havens of Health
It's unsettling to meet people who don't eat apples.
AIMEE BENDER
The Color Master
There's a star inside my apple
I know it's hard to grapple
But if you cut it side to side
There's a star alone, no lie
And in my star inside my apple
Are sleepy little seeds
And in those seeds found in my star
Are could-be apple trees
ELLIS PAUL
"The Star Inside the Apple"
If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
"What the Black Man Wants"
I have upset my apple-cart; I am done for.
LUCIAN
Pseudolus
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
"Wild Apples", The Atlantic Monthly, November 1862
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,
All ashes to the taste.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is frequently tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually handsome one, whose blossoms are two-thirds expanded. How superior it is in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored nor fragrant!
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
"Wild Apples", The Atlantic Monthly, November 1862
An apple may happen to be better given than eaten.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie.
VERA NAZARIAN
The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration