Sour Grapes Other Quotes & Sayings

Recall Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes. After trying in vain to reach the grapes, the fox gives up and wanders away, muttering, "They were probably sour anyway." The fox's change of heart is a perfect example of a common strategy we instinctively use to reduce dissonance. When we experience a conflict between our beliefs and our actions, we can't rewind time and take back what we've already done, so we adjust our beliefs to bring them in line with our actions. If the story had gone differently, and the fox had managed to get the grapes, only to discover they were sour, he would have told himself that he liked sour grapes in order to avoid feeling that his effort had been a waste. — Sheena Iyengar

I hate to cry and I hate to sound like sour grapes, but no one ever listens to me. No one ever hears what I have to say. — Mike Tyson

I was probably never going to get to do the kind of things dramatically that I really wanted to do, so I returned to theater from time to time, and to write, and produce. It's by no means sour grapes. — Larry Hovis

Dennis has not behaved well and the fact he has taken it with bad grace shows we made the right decision. It smacks of sour grapes. He said he would be happy to continue playing as long as the new manager wanted him so in no way was he misled. He said he was assured the job was his, but that is simply not true. — Rupert Lowe

A real fox calls sour not only those grapes that he cannot reach but also those that he has reached and taken away from others. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Bewildered is the fox who lives to find that grapes beyond reach can be really sour. — Dorothy Parker

There is stuff I would have liked to have done. But there are no sour grapes. — Frank Gehry

I have to tell you, and I don't mean this as sour grapes or anything, but it is hard to play for fans who see you all the time, makes it much harder. — Roger Daltrey

The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth have been set on edge. — Andrew Garve

Discs of umbrellas poured over suburban terraces with the smooth round ebullience of a Chopin waltz. They sat in the distance under the lugubrious dripping elms, elms like maps of Europe, elms frayed at the end like bits of chartreuse wool, elms heavy and bunchy as sour grapes. — Zelda Fitzgerald

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labour in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour. — Frederic Raphael

In the land of sour grapes, the half-eaten apple is the queen — Katerina Stoykova Klemer

Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it's against the rules, isn't it, to actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't. — Lionel Shriver

Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbridges from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes. — Zelda Fitzgerald

Right now everyone is drinking bad wine made of sour grapes and hysteria. Let them drink it, and let them regret it in the morning. — Sarah Addison Allen

Tate practically raised you from what I hear. You love him, don't you?"
Her face closed up. "For all the good it will ever do me, yes," she said softly.
"He won't have the excuse of pure Lakota blood much longer," he advised.
"I'm not holding out for miracles anymore," she vowed. "I'm going to stop wanting what I can never have. From now on, I'll take what I can get from life and be satisfied with it. Tate will have to find his own way."
"That's sour grapes," he observed.
"You bet it is. What do you want me to do to help?"
"It's dangerous," he pointed out, hesitating as he considered her youth. "I don't know ... "
"I'm a card-carrying archeologist," she reminded him. "Haven't you ever watched an Indiana Jones movies? We're all like that," she told him with a wicked grin. "Mild-mannered on the outside and veritable world-tamers inside. I can get a whip and a fedora, too, if you like," she added. — Diana Palmer

There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate; not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries. — Edith Wharton

You know what your problem is?" she'd say (that's how she always began). "You hate yourself and so you hate others. It's just sour grapes. You're too busy reading and thinking about big things. You don't care about the little things in your own life, and that means you're contemptuous of anyone who does. You've never struggled like they have, because you've never cared like they do. You don't really know what people go through. — Steve Toltz

One who can find lemons sweet and grapes sour is ready for Dame Fortune. — Mason Cooley

I've never had any delusions about being a leading man, and it's not sour grapes to say that in the best films that I've always enjoyed, the cliched leading man type isn't a part of the picture. — John Hawkes

This is agony cried Mr Salteena clutching hold of a table my life will be sour grapes and ashes without you. — Daisy Ashford

The grapes that my hands wouldn't reach were undoubtedly sour.
But I didn't need sweet fruits that were like a lie. I didn't need things like a fake understanding and a deceptive relationship.
What I wanted was that sour grape.
Even if it's sour, even if it's bitter, even if it's disgusting, even if it's full of poison, even if it didn't exist, even if I couldn't lay my hands on it, even if I wasn't allowed to wish for it. — Wataru Watari

I didn't watch the Emmys because - well, for one, I have been to awards shows, and I understand how it works. For another, sour grapes. Actually, that's probably number one. — Kurt Fuller

From cane reeds, sugar. From a worm's cocoon, silk. Be patient if you can, and from sour grapes will come something sweet. — Rumi

I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a good concentration of whom you find in glitzy ski resorts) without any sour grapes. It is even sweeter when these farts don't know that you are richer than they are. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The unforgivable political sin is vanity; the killer diet is sour grapes. — Neil Kinnock

I am sure the grapes are sour. — Aesop

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

Your wine is just sour grapes
Pour me a glass anytime I'm not there — Tom Verlaine

Sour grapes, the champagne of the intelligentsia. — Gregory Benford