Quotes & Sayings About Cabbages

Let death take me planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my garden not being finished. (tr. Charles Cotton) — Michel De Montaigne

It was a stamp. It was a yellowy-green color. It showed - Moist peered - a field of cabbages, with some buildings on the horizon. He sniffed. It smelled of cabbages. Oh, yes. "Printed with cabbage ink and using gum made from broccoli, sir," said Stanley, full of pride. "'A Salute to the Cabbage Industry of the Sto Plains,' sir. I think it might do very well. Cabbages are so popular, sir. You can make so many things out of them!" "Well, I can see that - " "There's cabbage soup, cabbage beer, cabbage fudge, cabbage cake, cream of cabbage - " "Yes, Stanley, I think you - " " - pickled cabbage, cabbage jelly, cabbage salad, boiled cabbage, deep-fried cabbage - " "Yes, but now can - " " - fricassee of cabbage, cabbage chutney, cabbage Surprise, sausages - " "Sausages?" "Filled with cabbage, sir. You can make practically anything with cabbage, sir. Then there's - " "Cabbage stamps," said Moist terminally. — Terry Pratchett

When they got there, the first thing they saw was the man himself, with a white stick burning away in his mouth, cutting row after row of frosted cabbages. Rowsby Woof was with him, wagging his tail and jumping about in a ridiculous manner. After — Richard Adams

Mr. Wang had found my interest in fen, the Mandarin word for excrement, peculiar. Nonetheless, he tried to be helpful. He would point out when he spotted a truck full of fen looming behind, though its odor preceded it by far. He would alert me when he saw a tiny figure in a roadside field bearing a tank and hose, spraying--by the smell of it--the contents of his toilets on his cabbages. This practice would horrify any public health professional, given the disease-load of feces, but it's what happens to 90 percent of China's excrement, and has been done forever. There are reasons not to eat salads in China, and why the sizzling woks are so sizzling. — Rose George

What are plants doing? What are plants all about? They serve human beings by being decorative, but what is it from its own point of view? It's using up air; it's using up energy. It's really not doing anything except being ornamental. And yet here's this whole vegetable world, cactus plants, trees, roses, tulips, and edible vegetables, like cabbages, celery, lettuce - they're all doing this dance. — Alan Watts

There's hidden sweeteness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and the belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, an ugly metal statue sits where your spirit should. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control, they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages. — Rumi

It will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all. — Wilkie Collins

Lady Maccon declined in horror. She enjoyed most foods, but brussels sprouts were nothing more than underdeveloped cabbages. — Gail Carriger

At the club, members gathered to peruse these broadsheets, and some approved of the way Karpushka was made to jeer at the French, saying that Russian cabbages will blow them up like balloons, Russian porridge burst their bellies and cabbage-soup finish them off. They are all dwarfs, and one peasant-woman will toss three of them at a time with — Leo Tolstoy

I will put gold in your room for the journey. And I will let it be whispered about that I have sent you out to a farm to hoe cabbages. Will Elayne be going with you?"
Nynaeve forgot herself enough to stare at the Amyrlin, then hurriedly put her eyes back on her hands. Her knuckles were white on the spit handle. "You scheming old ... Why all the pretense, if you knew? Your sly plots have had us squirming nearly as much as the Black Ajah has. Why?" The Amyrlin's face had tightened, enough to make her force a more respectful tone. "If I may ask, Mother. — Robert Jordan

Few and signally blessed are those whom Jupiter has destined to be cabbage-planters. For they've always one foot on the ground andthe other not far from it. Anyone is welcome to argue about felicity and supreme happiness. But the man who plants cabbages I now positively declare to be the happiest of mortals. — Francois Rabelais

I want us to be doing things, prolonging life's duties as much as we can. I want death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening. — Michel De Montaigne

Elves and Dragons! Cabbages and potatoes are better for me and you. Don't go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you'll land in trouble too big for you.

~Hamfast Gamgee (the Gaffer) — J.R.R. Tolkien

The full moon shone brightly between the trees, so I was able to see, a few yards in front of me, the origins of a distressing noise. It was two cabbages having a terrible fight. They were tearing each other's leaves off with such ferocity that soon there was nothing but torn leaves everywhere and no cabbages.
"Never mind," I told myself, "It's only a nightmare." But then I remembered suddenly that I'd never gone to bed that night, and so it couldn't possibly be a nightmare. "That's awful. — Leonora Carrington

He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages. — Mark Twain

Lima beans, watermelons, potatoes, eggplants, and cabbages are among the many other familiar crops whose wild ancestors were bitter or poisonous, and — Jared Diamond

It takes 16 lbs of grain to make 1 lb of beef. It takes 1 lb of grain to make 1 lb of bread. So, how many more plants are you eating if you eat a pound of beef? Secondly, I've harvested cabbages and pulled up carrots out of the ground and I've been in slaughter-houses and seen the animals have their brains bashed out with sledgehammers and their throats cut - the experiences are not comparable. — John Robbins

Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup for the rest of your life — Groucho Marx

There they sit, with everyone thinking no more of them than they might of a pretty odd lot of cabbages, yet half the time they're pattering and clattering away at one another. Why? What is it they patter about? That's what I want to know.' I — John Wyndham

Cabbages, whose heads, tightly folded see and hear nothing of this world, dreaming only on the yellow and green magnificence that is hardening within them. — John Haines

When we say that the West has brought us nothing but evil, do we mean that beef is evil, that cabbages are evil that the guisado is evil? — Nick Joaquin

24. Home Again Aunt Em had just come out of the house to water the cabbages when she looked up and saw Dorothy running toward her. "My darling child!" she cried, folding the little girl in her arms and covering her face with kisses. "Where in the world did you come from?" "From the Land of Oz," said Dorothy gravely. "And here is Toto, too. And oh, Aunt Em! I'm so glad to be at home again! — L. Frank Baum

Nils's gardens no longer bore any relationship to the needs of the house. Each spring he plowed and planted acres of vegetables and flowers. The coming up of the asparagus shoots was the signal for a hopeless race between the vegetables and Mrs. Garrison's table. Nils, embittered by the waste that he himself was the author of, came each evening to the kitchen door to tell the cook that unless they are more peas, more strawberries, more beans, more lettuce, more cabbages, the magnificent vegetables that he had watered with his sweat would rot.
- The Common Day — John Cheever

Wild geese fly south, creaking like anguished hinges; along the riverbank the candles of the sumacs burn dull red. It's the first week of October. Season of woolen garments taken out of mothballs; of nocturnal mists and dew and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs; of snapdragons having one last fling; of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now. — Margaret Atwood

My mum used to tell me to never boil my cabbages twice, and I think it's artistically valid. While I do find myself on similar themes in my books, I try not to repeat myself, and that's something which is all too easy to do in series books. — Geraldine McCaughrean

If the garden of Eden really exists it does so moment by moment, fragmented and tough, cropping up like a fan of buddleia high up in the gutter of a deserted warehouse, or in a heap of frozen cabbages becoming luminous in the reflected light of roadside snow. — Helen Dunmore

Only a fool will deny that an abundance of flowers can quicken a woman's blood, and that continuing sun can burn years off a man's back. The poverty of life here augments the power of those influences. We lose our vision, and move like wooden toys: one year we wash the curtains, the next we plant a row of cabbages behind the house; and then comes a summer like that one, with grass soft as rabbit fur, and flowers. — Joe Ashby Porter

It might have been brief, but so much of a kiss - a first kiss especially - is the moment before your lips touch, and before your eyes close, when you're filled with the sight of each other, and with the compulsion, the pull, and it's like...it's like...finding a book inside another book. A small treasure of a book hidden inside a big common one - like...spells printed on dragonfly wings, discovered tucked inside a cookery book, right between the recipes for cabbages and corn. That's what a kiss is like, he thought, no matter how brief: It's a tiny, magical story, and a miraculous interruption of the mundane. — Laini Taylor

Peter lost one of his shoes among the cabbages, and the other shoe amongst the potatoes. — Beatrix Potter

An infant is a seed. Is it an oak seed or a cabbage seed? Who knows. All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages. — Robertson Davies

Holy Men! Holy Cabbages! Holy Bean Pods! What do they do but live and suck in sustenance and grow fat? — Arthur Conan Doyle

Elves and Dragons! I says to him. Cabbages and potatoes are better for me and you. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Once our storyline gets under way, I just hope people don't throw cabbages at me in the market. — Alfre Woodard

Oh thrice and four times happy ... those who plant cabbages. — Francois Rabelais

Brains, like cabbages, are beautiful-but in a different way. Cabbage heads are dumb and sterile, whereas brains are personal, intelligent and vibrant. — Carl Pfeiffer

Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know. — David McCullough

But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that. — Edna Ferber

Write, if you must; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living ... Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Last summer I was staying at a house in Hampshire which was famous for the brilliance and the originality of its gardens. There were many of them, but the most beautiful of all was a walled garden in which every flower was blue. There were all the obvious things like delphiniums and acronitums and larkspurs, but the most beautiful blue of all came from the groups of cabbages - the ordinary blue pickling cabbage. Set against the blazing blue of the other flowers, it had a bloom and elegance which made it a thing of the greatest delight. — Beverley Nichols

People believe a little too easily that the function of the sun is to help the cabbages along. — Gustave Flaubert

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence — O. Henry

You get too much at last of everything: of sunsets, of cabbages, of love. — Harold Bloom

In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are a series of little silver waterfalls in the moon. — Carl Sandburg

Nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. — Abraham Lincoln

Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world's slander over a good name. You may kill them, it is true; but there is the slime. — Douglas William Jerrold

(Cabbages were a Kel idiosyncrasy. They were adamant about their spiced cabbage pickles.) Appearance-wise — Yoon Ha Lee

Please God, please Knut Hamsun, don't desert me now. I started to write and I wrote:
The time has come, the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes - and ships - and sealing-wax
Of cabbages - and kings - — John Fante

Sales is a business of relationships, and you must cultivate customers with tenderness and love, like cabbages in winter, even if the customer is an egomaniacal asshole you want to hit with a shovel. — Max Barry

The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages. — Cyrano De Bergerac

Being Necessary is food no less than cabbages and strawberry pies. — Catherynne M Valente

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you're young it's easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you're doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you're gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It's a big danger. — Charlie Munger

I'm awestruck that you had warm cabbages sitting around. — Rachel Hartman

I want death to find me planting my cabbages. — Michel De Montaigne

Ole Golly: The time has come, the walrus said ...
Harriet M. Welsch: To talk of many things ...
Ole Golly: Of shoes and ships and ceiling wax ...
Harriet M. Welsch: Of cabbages and kings ...
Ole Golly: And why the sea is boiling hot ...
Harriet M. Welsch: And whether pigs have wings! — Louise Fitzhugh

Agatha surveys the garden, its rows of crinkled spring cabbages and beanstalks entwining bowers of hawthorn and hazel. The rosemary is dotted with pale blue stars of blossom and chives nod heads of tousled purple. New sage leaves sprout silver green among the brittle, frost-browned remains of last year's growth. Lily of the valley, she thinks, that will be out in the cloister garden at Saint Justina's by now. — Sarah Bower

I was pregnable once," Merill thought to contribute. She remembered how troublesome it made getting around, having a ripe belly. Couldn't roll properly, couldn't hop properly, couldn't romp or flop properly. There were the cravings for roasted cabbage - she loathed cabbage, with its leaves and growing in rows. And labor! Merill passed out during childbirth. She'd endured burns, lacerations, rips, serrated teeth, nails, hooks and a trove of unmentionable harm-inflictors. Labor trounced them all and wriggled gleefully in the spray of blood and gore. "Being pregnable is no good. No good at all. Like growing a bitter melon in your belly. — Darrell Drake

Kings and cabbages go back to compost, but good deeds stay green forever. — Rick DeMarinis

I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden. — Michel De Montaigne

Asylums are nothing more than gardens of human cabbages, of miserable, grotesque, repugnant human beings watered with the fertilizer of injections. — Antonio Lobo Antunes