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
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
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,
All ashes to the taste.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
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
I have upset my apple-cart; I am done for.
LUCIAN
Pseudolus
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
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
It's unsettling to meet people who don't eat apples.
AIMEE BENDER
The Color Master
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
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"
The apples lie scattered here and there, each under its own tree.
VIRGIL
Eclogues
An apple may happen to be better given than eaten.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread.
WELSH PROVERB
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
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
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"
Still sittin' under the apple tree
With nobody else but me
DORIS DAY
"I'm Still Sitting Under the Apple Tree"
The apple was early so important, and so generally distributed, that its name traced to its root in many languages signifies fruit in general.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
"Wild Apples", The Atlantic Monthly, November 1862