Apples



Apples are the pomaceous fruit of apple trees, species Malus domestica in the rose family (Rosaceae). Apples are one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans.

Quotes

 * I like to think apples in Maine should be like cheeses in France, where you go 10 miles and you get a whole new cheese. In Maine there should be a different cider and apple in every town or county
 * John Bunker quoted in "DNA testing sheds light on the vast, mysterious world of heirloom apples" Portland Press Herald (September 25, 2022).


 * 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, and if they will not stay there, let them fall.
 * Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants" (1865)


 * There never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.
 * Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett in Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990).


 * Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered. Moreover, 'fact' doesn't mean 'absolute certainty'; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
 * Stephen J. Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981.


 * 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. Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire (2001), ISBN 0375501290, p. 22, cf. p. 9 & 50.


 * As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste
 * Song of Solomon 2:3.


 * As apples of gold in silver carvings is a word spoken at the right time for it.
 * Solomon, Book of Proverbs, 25: 11, NWT


 * Two-thirds of the apples and nine-tenths of the pears that we eat are imported, not to mention two thirds of the cheese. And that is a disgrace. From the apple that dropped on Isaac Newton’s head to the orchards of nursery rhymes, this fruit has always been a part of Britain. I want our children to grow up enjoying the taste of British apples as well as Cornish sardines, Norfolk turkey, Melton Mowbray pork pies, Wensleydale cheese, Herefordshire pears and of course black pudding.
 * Liz Truss, Speech delivered at the Conservative Party Conference (29 September 2014)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

 * Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 37-38.


 * What plant we in this apple tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs To load the May-wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard-row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,  We plant with the apple tree.
 * William Cullen Bryant, The Planting of the Apple Tree.


 * Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore, All ashes to the taste.
 * Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III (1816), Stanza 34.


 * Art thou the topmost apple The gatherers could reach, Reddening on the bough?  Shall I not take thee?
 * Bliss Carman, Translation of Sappho, 53.


 * There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and gruvvelling around when you've got an apple, and beg the core off you; but when they've got one, and you beg for the core, and remind them how you give them a core one time, they make a mouth at you, and say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core.
 * Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad, Chapter I.


 * Oh! happy are the apples when the south winds blow.
 * William Wallace Harney, Adonais.


 * And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising out of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer—apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of time's vicissitude.
 * Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse, The Old Manse, "Time's vicissitude".


 * The Blossoms and leaves in plenty From the apple tree fall each day; The merry breezes approach them,  And with them merrily play.
 * Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, Lyrical Interlude. No. 63.


 * 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, urged me so keen.
 * John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IX, line 584.


 * Like Dead Sea fruit that tempts the eye, But turns to ashes on the lips!
 * Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), The Fire Worshippers, line 1,018.


 * Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough A-top on the topmost twig—which the pluckers forgot, somehow— Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beauty, A combination from Sappho.


 * The apples that grew on the fruit-tree of knowledge By woman were pluck'd, and she still wears the prize To tempt us in theatre, senate, or college—  I mean the love-apples that bloom in the eyes.
 * Horace and James Smith, Rejected Addresses, The Living Lustres, by T. M. 5.


 * How we apples swim.
 * Jonathan Swift, Brother Protestants.


 * After the conquest of Afric, Greece, the lesser Asia, and Syria were brought into Italy all the sorts of their Mala, which we interprete apples, and might signify no more at first: but were afterwards applied to many other foreign fruits.
 * Sir William Temple, On Gardening.