Quotes & Sayings About Figs

(And did I mention how in summer the streets of Smyrna were lined with baskets of rose petals? And how everyone in the city could speak French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, English, and Dutch? And did I tell you about the famous figs, brought in by camel caravan and dumped onto the ground, huge piles of pulpy fruit lying in the dirt, with dirty women steeping them in salt water and children squatting to defecate behind the clusters? Did I mention how the reek of the fig women mixed with pleasanter smells of almond trees, mimosa, laurel, and peach, and how everybody wore masks on Mardi Gras and had elaborate dinners on the decks of frigates? I want to mention these things because they all happened in that city that was no place exactly, that was part of no country because it was all countries, and because now if you go there you'll see modern high-rises, amnesiac boulevards, teeming sweatshops, a NATO headquarters, and a sign that says Izmir ... ) — Jeffrey Eugenides

In the past, the thought of being in my present situation had been a comfort, but now I did not even have this to look forward to, and so I lay down on my bed and dreamt I was eating a bowl of pink mullet and green figs cooked in coconut milk, and it had been cooked by my grandmother, which was why the taste of it pleased me so, for she was the person I liked best in all the world and those were the things I like best to eat also. — Jamaica Kincaid

Date rape is just plain moronic when you consider how slutty figs are — Josh Stern

The Donkey
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet. — G.K. Chesterton

The outside of the building was covered with faded poster advertising what was sold, and by the eerie light of the half-moon, the Baudelaires could see that fresh limes, plastic knives, canned meat, white envelopes, mango-flavored candy, red wine, leather wallets, fashion magazines, goldfish bowls, sleeping bags, roasted figs, cardboard boxes, controversial vitamins, and many other things were available inside the store. Nowhere on the building, however, was there a poster advertising help, which is really what the Baudelaires needed. — Lemony Snicket

Competition, free enterprise, and an open market were never meant to be symbolic fig leaves for corporate socialism and monopolistic capitalism. — Ralph Nader

A fig for your bill of fare; show me your bill of company. — Jonathan Swift

Poor Fred - he's actually working on a typo, and somebody ought to tell him. Twice in the New Testament Jesus withered fig trees, Isaiah withered a fig tree, and there's another place in the Old Testament - I think it-s in Psalms - where a fig tree was withered. God hates figs, not fags! — Thom Hartmann

Shebna scraped the tablet clean and began drawing circles in the soft clay. "Suppose you had six figs and you ate two. How many would
"
"Four." Hezekiah answered before Shebna finished, and the tutor's thick black eyebrows rose in surprise.
"And suppose I had five figs. How many would we
"
"Nine."
"Have you done this before?"
Hezekiah thought the question was ridiculous. "I've eaten figs lots of times. — Lynn Austin

And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white. The centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color: cherries and apples, peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight. — John Steinbeck

They were taken from Anacortes on a train to a transit camp - the horse stables at the Puyallup fairgrounds. They lived in the horse stalls and slept on canvas army cots; at nine p.m. they were confined to their stalls; at ten p.m. they were made to turn out their lights, one bare bulb for each family. The cold in the stalls worked into their bones, and when it rained that night they moved their cots because of the leaks in the roof. The next morning, at six A.M., they slogged through mud to the transit camp mess hall and ate canned figs and white bread from pie tins and drank coffee out of tin cups. — David Guterson

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

Quoyle remembered purple-brown seckle pears the size and shape of figs, his father taking the meat off with pecking bites, the smell of fruit in their house, litter of cores and peels in the ashtrays, the grape cluster skeletons, peach stones like hens' brains on the windowsill, the glove of banana peel on the car dashboard. In the sawdust on the basement workbench galaxies of seeds and pits, cherry stones, long white date pits like spaceships ... The hollowed grapefruit skullcaps, cracked globes of tangerine peel. — Annie Proulx

Therefore, if reason grows out of the primal energy that we are, then it means that the primal energy is at least reasonable, whatever else it may be. You can tell the tree by its fruits - for "by their fruits you shall know them" - and so it is that figs do not grow on thistles, or grapes on thorns, and a stupid universe does not create people. People are a manifestation of the potentiality in the energy of the universe, and if we are intelligent, then that which we express is also intelligent. By logical extension, that in which we express it is our central self. The world is not something external; it is what is most fundamentally you. — Alan W. Watts

Wow-Wow Sauce, a mixture of mature scumble, pickled cucumbers, capers, mustard, mangoes, figs, grated wahooni, anchovy essence, asafetida and, significantly, sulfur and saltpetre for added potency. Ridcully inherited the formula from his uncle who, after half a pint of sauce on a big meal one evening, had a charcoal biscuit to settle his stomach, lit his pipe and disappeared in mysterious circumstances, although his shoes were found on the roof the following summer. — Terry Pratchett

As we gather around the rough-hewn farm table made by my grandfather, I am reminded that my family has come together for generations in this same way. Summers were always our favorite times; we would eat outdoors under the shade of a tree - hand-rolled pasta with a sauce of fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden, cheese from my Aunt Carmella, olive oil sent by our cousin in Santa Margherita, and wine from our own jugs. After having our fill of food and laughter, we'd pluck ripe figs right off the trees, peel and eat them until the sun disappeared into the blue. I can still taste those summer days, and will always do everything in my power to re-create them. — Adriana Trigiani

I have an avocado tree at my place in Los Angeles - it's the smoother-skinned one, which tends to be a little stringy. Often the birds or raccoons get the avocados before I can harvest them. I have figs, too, which are great with prosciutto, of course. I have limes and lemons, which I use to make lemonade. — Kyle MacLachlan

The shaking had stopped, outwardly, but her mind couldn't hold a thought for any length of time without splintering apart. She took a deep breath, thought of a cliff above the sea, the taste of figs on her tongue, a man's finger touching the jut of her wrist, the sea so blue she thought it might drive her mad though she understood nothing of madness then — Kamila Shamsie

Figs: Bananas and apples may win the popularity contest, but figs are like the quiet girl next door who turns out to be a salsa-dancing neurosurgeon. And dried figs are even more remarkable. Figs have a tremendous amount of fiber, a thousand times more calcium than other common fruits (by weight), 80 percent more potassium than bananas, more iron than most other fruits, and a potent blast of magnesium - all for around 30 calories a fig. — Pete Magill

1. Classic Pine-Mint Smoothie This recipe is indeed a classic. Simple and reliably delicious and good for a newbie to green smoothies. Two cups is a lot of pineapple so it's best to use a sweet(ish) one. If it's too acid or sour then add more leaves and some sweetener. You could add dried figs or apricots or soft dates. See notes on the pages just before the recipes. 1 cup water 2 cups pineapple (fresh or frozen) 1 avocado 1 cup mint leaves 1 cup of spinach leaves or other mild green Ice and extra water to get to your desired temperature and consistency. — Gabrielle Raiz

December 21, 1970 well, the amateur drunks have taken over and will hold this town until Jan. 2 ... driving on the wrong side of the street, running red lights, bellowing the same songs. figs of people, twigs of people, shits of people ... MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY NEW YEAR. Christomighty, yeah. — Charles Bukowski

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism. — Florence King

Of course we will send postcards to Nutsawoo. And we shall bring him back a present as well. In fact,' she went on, with the instinctive knack every good governess has for turning something enjoyable into a lesson, and vice versa, 'I will expect all three of you to practice your writing by keeping a journal of our trip so that Nutsawoo may know how we spend our days. Why, by the time we return, he will think he has been to London himself! He will be the envy of all his little squirrel friends,' she declared.
Penelope had no way of knowing if this last statement was true. Could squirrels feel envy? Would they give two figs about London? Did Nutsawoo even have friends? — Maryrose Wood

Nothing important comes into being overnight; even grapes and figs need time to ripen. If you say that you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient. First, you must allow the tree to flower, then put forth fruit; then you have to wait until the fruit is ripe. So if the fruit of a fig tree is not brought to maturity instantly or in an hour, how do you expect the human mind to come to fruition, so quickly and easily? — Epictetus

I eat Fig Newtons by the sleeve! — Brian Regan

Maybe Christ will come again. Maybe seeds will be planted, maybe there'll be harvests then, maybe early figs to eat, maybe new life, maybe fresh blood, maybe companionship and love and protection, safety from what's outside, maybe the door will hold, or maybe ... Maybe the troubles will come, and the end will come, and the sky will collapse and there will be terrible rains and showers of poison light, or maybe my life is really fine, maybe Joe loves me and I'm only crazy thinking otherwise, or maybe not, maybe it's even worse than I know, maybe ... I want to know, maybe I don't. The suspense, Mr. Lies, it's killing me. — Tony Kushner

When I was born, my mother dressed me as a boy because she could not afford to feed any more daughters. By the mystic laws of gender and economics, it ruins a peasant to place half a bowl of figs in front of his daughter, while his son may gorge on the whole tree, burn it for firewood and piss on the stump, and still be reckoned a blessing to his father. — Jeanette Winterson

In a forest of stars and boughs, here is your face. In the garden, in the shipwreck, in sacred stones, in figs and roses. Through long nights of walking, what does not sing for us? — Anne Michaels

I don't know what I ate, but I felt immensely better after the first mouthful. It occurred to me that my vision of the fig-tree and all the fat figs that withered and fell to the earth might well have arisen from the profound void of an empty stomach. — Sylvia Plath

Between the inner and outer beaches, a strand of woods thrived: palms, palmettos, mahogany, figs, and calabash. Coconut palms and fig trees dropped enough fruit to feed the wildlife that swooped by in droves. It was so easy to catch a fish with your bare hands, Tristan and I had made a game of it during our weeks of lovemaking on the warm, supple sand. It truly was paradise. — A. Violet End

From dandelions to daffodils, from ferns to figs, from potatoes to pine trees - every plant growing on land is striving toward two prizes: light, which comes from above, and water, which comes from below. Any contest between two plants can be decided in one move, when the winner simultaneously reaches higher and digs deeper than the loser. — Hope Jahren

The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles. — Kate Douglas Wiggin

The chef outdid himself, as one delectable dish after another was brought up from the kitchens. For Gabriel, there was a succulent roast goose with figs and a tender glazed ham, while (Esme) dined on a pair of clever cheese dishes, one made with cream and potatoes and another from Italy that combined cheese-filled flat noodles smothered with a wonderful rosemary butter sauce.
Accompanying all of that was a plentiful array of vegetables, spiced and stewed fruits and freshly baked breads with creamy butter. And for dessert, there was a flaming plum pudding with a cognac whipped cream so strong it threatened to leave her tipsy. — Tracy Anne Warren

I'm often in a situation that I have to prepare a pudding for surprise guests, only to find that the only thing I have in my cupboard is a box of dried figs. — Clarissa Dickson Wright

A field is the most just possession for men. For what nature requires it carefully bears: barley, oil, wine, figs, honey. Silver-plate and purple will do for the tragedians, not for life. — Philemon

This year, of course, being 1936, there would be no figs. — Alan Furst

We will eat the figs of our own tree, and the grapes of our own garden. — Anne Rice

O excellent! I love long life better than figs. — William Shakespeare

We have been careless with our pie repertoire. The demise of apple-pear pie with figs and saffron and orengeado pies are tragic losses. — Janet Clarkson

When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out ... — Kingsley Amis

I ask you, is it the fig tree's fault that it's not the season for figs? What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent tree, wither it instantly? — Yann Martel

I would sooner look for figs on thistles than for the higher attributes of art from one whose ruling motive ... is money. — Asher Brown Durand

We might imagine that Jesus had many human faults. He failed most humanly, in my reckoning, when he killed the fig tree just because it didn't bear any figs for his breakfast; that was a disgraceful, bad-tempered thing to do, and to try and make a virtue of it by saying it was a demonstration of faith only made things worse. — Michael Leunig

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The Ripe Fig
Now that You live here in my chest,
anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.
And those other images,
which have enchanted people
like porcelain dolls from China,
which have made men and women weep
for centuries, even those have changed now.
What used to be pain is a lovely bench
where we can rest under the roses.
A left hand has become a right.
A dark wall, a window.
A cushion in a shoe heel,
the leader of the community!
Now silence. What we say
is poison to some
and nourishing to others.
What we say is a ripe fig,
but not every bird that flies
eats figs. — Rumi

The figs on the fig tree in the yard are green; Green, also, the grapes on the green vine Shading the brickred porch tiles. The money's run out. How nature, sensing this, compounds her bitters. Ungifted, ungrieved, our leavetaking. The sun shines on unripe corn. Cats play in the stalks. Retrospect shall not soften such penury - Sun's brass, the moon's steely patinas, The leaden slag of the world - But always expose The scraggy rock spit shielding the town's blue bay Against — Sylvia Plath

Juilin," she asked hesitantly, "what were you going to do with the salt and cooking oil? Not exactly," she added more quickly. "Just a general idea."
He looked at her for a moment. "I do not know. But they did not, either. That is the trick of it; their minds made up worse then I ever could. I have seen a tough man break when I sent for a basket of figs and some mice. — Robert Jordan

Vile Father's brown nipples, on the ends of his pendulous man-cans, were like dried figs. — Lev Grossman

Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears on a tree just below me. A fine crop coming in. May summer last a hundred years. — Frances Mayes

I'm mixed on figs. The fleshy quality feels spooky. In Italian, il fico, fig, has a slangy turn into la fica, meaning vulva. Possibly because of the famous fig leaf exodus from Eden, it seems like the most ancient of fruits. Oddest, too - the fig flower is inside the fruit. To pull one open is to look into a complex, primitive, infinitely sophisticated life cycle tableau. — Frances Mayes

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, [ ... ] and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attilla and a pack of other lovers with queer names [ ... ] 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 losing all the rest ... — Sylvia Plath

And look, my brother, we learned to talk
very quietly and simply.
We understand each other now - there is no need for anything more.
And I say tomorrow we will become still simpler;
we'll find those words that take on the same weight in all hearts, on all lips so that we can call figs figs, and a trough a trough, so that others will smile and say: 'We're making you a hundred poems an hour'. This is what we want too.
Because we do not sing to separate ourselves from people, my brother,
we sing to bring people together. — Yiannis Ritsos

People slice up tree trunks, nail the pieces together into boxy shapes, and then go inside to sleep. Trees use the wood in their trunks for a different purpose - namely, they use it to fight with other plants. From dandelions to daffodils, from ferns to figs, from potatoes to pine trees - every plant growing on land is striving toward two prizes: light, which comes from above, and water, which comes from below. Any contest between two plants can be decided in one move, when the winner simultaneously reaches higher and digs deeper than the loser. Consider the tremendous advantage that wood confers to one of the contestants during such a battle: armed with a stiff-yet-flexible, strong-yet-light prop that separates - and connects - leaves and roots, trees have dominated the tournament for more than four hundred million years. — Hope Jahren

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

Trees are good for contemplation: Plato and Aristotle did their best thinking in the groves of olives and figs around Athens, and Buddha found enlightenment beneath a peepul tree. — Colin Tudge

He understands that creating a meal means creating your own reality ... — Alice Waters

She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness. — Joe Hill

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

Blue!' she exclaimed. 'Violet blue. What are they made of?' 'Summer skies,' I said, 'and plums and figs, and the grape-blood of emperors.' 'No, — Vladimir Nabokov

Figs are delicious with soft cheese and ham,
Toast is quite scrumptious with butter and jam,
Eggs are improved by parsley and salt,
But milkshakes are best with strawberries and malt. — Angelica Banks

According to Mark 11:12-13, God's messengers were not the only ones who were incompetent: 'He [Jesus] was hungry. And on seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.'
Imagine Jesus, the divine, holy, wisest of the wise not knowing that figs were out of season. Now allegedly Jesus could have performed a miracle and made figs magically appear, but he preferred sour grapes instead: Then he said to the tree, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' (Mark 11:14) — G.M. Jackson

The fig tree had dropped its fruit all over the ground. Ripe figs lay in the dust, exploded, bloody, as if the sky had rained organs. — Rupert Thomson

Shazi,

I prefer the color blue to any other. The scent of lilacs in your hair is a source of constant torment. I despise figs. Lastly, I will never forget, all the days of my life, the memories of last night -
For nothing, not the sun, not the rain, not even the brightest star in the darkest sky, could begin to compare to the wonder of you.

Khalid. — Renee Ahdieh

Her gaze dims as her nostalgia for Palermo overcomes her. Those smells of seaweed dried by the sun, of capers, of ripe figs, she will never find them anywhere else; those burnt and scented shores, those waves slowly breaking, jasmine petals flaking in the sun. — Dacia Maraini

Stupidity is expecting figs in winter, or children in old age. — Marcus Aurelius

It tastes good, garlic and salt in it,
with the half-sweet white wine of Orvieto
on scanty grass under great trees
where the ramparts cuddle Lucca.
It sounds right, spoken on the ridge
between marine olives and hillside
blue figs, under the breeze fresh
with pollen of Apennine sage.
It feels soft, weed thick in the cave
and the smooth wet riddance of Antonietta's
bathing suit, mouth ajar for
submarine Amalfitan kisses.
It looks well on the page, but never
well enough. Something is lost
when wind, sun, sea upbraid
justly an unconvinced deserter. — Basil Bunting

In the moonlight David saw that Thoresby had become very peculiar indeed. Figs nestled among the leaves of beech-trees. Elder-trees were bowed down with pomegranates. Ivy was almost torn from walls by the weight of ripe blackberries growing upon it. Anything which had ever possessed any sort of life had sprung fruitfulness. Ancient, dried up frames had become swollen with sap and we putting out twigs, leaves, blossoms and fruit. Door-frames and doors were so distorted that bricks had been pushed out of place and some houses were in danger of collapsing altogether. The cart in the middle of the high street was a grove of silver birches. Its broken wheels put forth briar roses and nightingales sang on it. — Susanna Clarke

I know plenty of dances. My favorite is called Not Getting Your Legs Broken for Stealing Figs from That Baker on Pearl Lane." "That's sure to charm the princess right into a wedding pact. — Jessica Khoury

And never since harvests were ripened, / Or laborers born, / Have men gathered figs of the thistle, / Or grapes of the thorn! — Phoebe Cary

The near end of the street was rather dark and had mostly vegetable shops. Abundance of vegetables - piles of white and green fennel, like celery, and great sheaves of young, purplish, sea-dust-coloured artichokes ... long strings of dried figs, mountains of big oranges, scarlet large peppers, a large slice of pumpkin, a great mass of colours and vegetable freshness ... — D.H. Lawrence

Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches/sec. — Joe Hart

The forno in Cortona bakes a crusty bread in their wood oven, a perfect toast. Breakfast is one of my favorite times because the mornings are so fresh, with no hint of the heat to come. I get up early and take my toast and coffee out on the terrace for an hour with a book and the green-black rows of cypresses against the soft sky, the hills pleated with olive terraces that haven't changed since the seasons were depicted in medieval psalters. Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears on a tree just below me. — Anonymous

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

Michael, you shall have some syrup of figs. — P.L. Travers

National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information. — Ralph Nader

globalization and air transport mean that we are now exposed to a previously unheard-of overabundance of fruit. Pineapples from the tropics nestle on our supermarket shelves in the middle of winter, next to fresh strawberries from Mexico, and some dried figs from Morocco. So, what we label a food intolerance may in fact be nothing more than the reaction of a healthy body as it tries to adapt within a single generation to a food situation that was completely unknown during the millions of years of our evolution. — Giulia Enders

SNAPDRAGON 1. The dragon consists of half a pint of ignited brandy or alcohol in a dish. As soon as brandy is aflame, all lights are extinguished, and salt is freely sprinkled in dish, imparting a corpse-like pallor to every face. Candied fruits, figs, raisins, sugared almonds, etc., are thrown in, and guests snap for them with their fingers; person securing most prizes from flames will meet his true love within the year. — Mary E. Blain

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind. — John Jay Chapman

Halfway measures, such as loincloths or fig leaves, remain more titillating than complete nudity. — Paul-Ludwig Landsberg

choosing one meant losing 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. Constantin's — Sylvia Plath

Figs that drip with honey, sugar blown into curls and flowers. — Erin Morgenstern

Shape is a good part of the fig's delight. — Jane Grigson

For in that perfect garden when one day entered sin,
An animal was murdered for garments made of skin.
When figs of human effort produced religious strife,
The Father tailored clothing for Adam and his wife. — Joyce Rachelle

We walk past the house with the blue door. It has been made clear to us that we are to walk quietly by this house, never accept an invitation to step inside, never return the smile of the woman of the house, nor glance at the old man who sometimes looks out of the upstairs window; at our peril are we to be tempted by the flowers lying under the eaves, or by the figs that the storms shake loose. But our shadows dare each other. One of them is foolish enough to climb on to the doorstep but is pulled away just before it can reach the door bell. — Nadeem Aslam