Fruits proverbs and quotes

This is a collection of proverbs and quotes about fruits from Apple to Watermelon.

Click on one of these links to jump to the fruit of your choice:

Apple | Apricot | Banana | Blueberry | Breadfruit | Cherry | Coconut | Coffee | Date | Durian | Fig | Fruit | Gooseberry | Grape | Jackfruit | Jujube | Kiwifruit | Lemon | Lime | Lychee | Mango | Mangosteen | Melon | Nut | Olive | Orange | Peach | Pear | Pineapple | Plum | Pomegranate | Prune | Pumpkin | Strawberry | Sugarapple | Tamarind | Watermelon

 

Apple

A bad tree does not yield good apples.

A pear tree cannot bear an apple.

A stone from the hand of a friend is an apple.

Adam ate the apple, and our teeth still ache.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

An apple never falls far from the tree.

An apple-pie without some cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze.

Anyone can count the number of seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed. (Robert H. Schuller)

Apple blossoms are beautiful, but rice dumplings are better.

Better an apple pie than apple blossom.

Different men have different opinions; some prefer apples, some onions.

Don't upset the apple cart.

For an apple and an egg.

Give an apple to the little ones, a book to the old.

Handsome apples are sometimes sour.

If the prince wants an apple, his servants take the tree.

If there is no apple one eats a little carrot.

If you want apples, you have to shake the trees.

Many a rose-cheeked apple is rotten at the core.

No apple tree is immune from worms.

One bad apple spoils the bunch.

One of the two partners always bites the best part of the apple.

One rotten apple spoils the whole barrel.

Small choice in rotten apples.

Sometimes it is better to give your apple away, than to eat it yourself.

The apple cannot be stuck back on the tree of knowledge.

The apple does not fall far from the tree.

The apple falls on the head that's under it.

The nice apples are always eaten by nasty pigs.

The night may be dark, but the apples have been counted.

The old monkey gets the apple.

The rotten apple injures its neighbour.

There are many who throw stones at a red apple.

There is nothing in the world more peaceful than apple-leaves with an early moon. (Alice Meynell)

There's no making apples of plums.

When the apple is ripe it will fall.

Who has tasted a sour apple, will have the more relish for a sweet one.

You are the apple of my eye.

You can count the apples on a tree but you can't count the trees from one apple.

You can't compare apples with pears.

Your neighbor's apples are the sweetest.

Poor Richard was to me as an eldest son, the apple of my eye. (Sir Walter Scott, in Old Mortality, 1816)

He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. (Bible, Deuteronomy 32:10, King James Version)

For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye. (Bible, Zechariah 2:8)

Flower of this purple dye, Hit with Cupid's archery, Sink in apple of his eye (Shakespeare, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1590)

A goodly apple rotten at the heart: O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath. (Shakespeare)

An apple cleft in two is not more twin than these two creatures (Shakespeare)

Kent, sir—everybody knows Kent—apples, cherries, hops, and women. (Charles Dickens)

There's small choice in rotten apples. (Shakespeare)

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. (George Bernard Shaw)

Apricot

If an ox doesn't know the size of his arse he won't eat an apricot stone.

Banana

An old banana leaf was once young and green.

Dogs don't like bananas, but can't bear to think chickens eat them.

Even without drumbeats, banana leaves dance.

Every fresh banana leaf should eventually become a dry banana leaf.

Little by little grow the bananas.

Lower your head modestly while passing and you will harvest bananas.

Man is like a banana: when he leaves the bunch, he gets skinned.

No sane person sharpens his machete to cut a banana tree.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. (Groucho Marx)

When a monkey doesn't get a banana, he eats chillies.

When the monkey can't reach the ripe banana with his hand, he says it is not sweet.

When the monkey can't reach the ripe banana, he says it is not sweet.

Blueberry

Other land blueberry; own land strawberry.

Breadfruit

Gather the breadfruit from the farthest branches first.

Cherry

A cherry year, a merry year; a plum year, a dumb year.

A dead cherry tree will not blossom.

A woman and a cherry are painted for their own harm.

Don't expect a cherry tree from an acorn.

He who eats cherries with gentlemen risks getting the pips in his nose.

He who likes cherries soon learns to climb.

In the cherry blossom's shade, there's no such thing as a stranger. (Issa)

Life is just a bowl of cherries.

Money buys cherries.

Neither give cherries to pigs nor advice to fools.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

The cherry blossom among flowers, the warrior among men.

The olive grove of your grandfather, the cherry trees of your father,and your grape vines.

Without wine, even beautiful cherry blossoms have small attraction.

Ye have a ready mouth for a ripe cherry.

You need plant only one cherry and one plum tree.

If you were looking at where you would like your career to go, then you would have to cherry pick The Stones. People love coming to see them. They are it, they are the most definitive rock n roll band ever. (Andy Taylor)

About the woodlands I will go, to see the cherry hung with snow. (A.E. Housman)

If life is a bowl of cherries, then what am I doing in the pits? (Erma Bombeck)

The man for me is the cherry on the pie. But I'm the pie and my pie is good all by itself. Even if I don't have a cherry. (Halle Berry)

I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees. (Pablo Neruda)

Kent, sir—everybody knows Kent—apples, cherries, hops, and women. (Charles Dickens)

Coconut

A coconut shell full of water is a sea to an ant.

A fly does not mind dying in coconut cream.

Eat coconuts while you have teeth.

He on whose head we would break a coconut never stands still.

He who plants a coconut tree plants vessels and clothing, food and
drink, a habitation for himself and a heritage for his children.

He who selects coconut with great care ends up getting a bad coconut.

If you had teeth of steel, you could eat iron coconuts.

It is the fate of the coconut husk to float, for the stone to sink.

Only the man who is not hungry says the coconut has a hard shell.

Coffee

A cup of coffee commits one to forty years of friendship.

And then there is coffee! (Dutch advertisement)

Coffee and love are best when they are hot.

Coffee and love taste best when hot.

Coffee from the top of the cup and chocolate from the bottom.

Coffee has two virtues, it's wet and it's warm.

Coffee is our bread. (Ethiopian proverb)

Coffee is to wake up, coffee is to work with, coffee is to live with,
coffee is life.

Coffee leads men to trifle away their time, scald their chops, and
spend their money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter,
stinking nauseous puddle water.

Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.

Conscience keeps more people awake than coffee.

Everybody needs something to believe. I believe I'll have another
cup of coffee!

Instant Human: Just Add Coffee.

Is there life before coffee?

This is coffee of yesterday. If you want coffee of today, please
come back tomorrow.

Too much coffee is bad for my health. I don't know if it will kill
me, but if it does I hope to come back as a coffee pot.

You can't take the milk back from the coffee.

Coffee is a beverage that puts one to sleep when not drank. (by:
Alphonse Allais)

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food
groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat. (by: Alex Levine)

Black as the devil, Hot as hell, Pure as an angel, Sweet as love.
(by: Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand)

It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine
medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently
view it as some kind of recreational activity. (by: Dave Barry)

I like my coffee strong and my women weak. (Alexander Pappas)

Date

Better a handful of dry dates and content therewith than to own the
gate of Peacocks and be kicked in the eye by a broody camel.

Don't show me the palm tree, show me the dates.

From little date seeds, great things are born.

He has fallen from the donkey, but has found a date.

If heaven drops a date, open your mouth.

Mock the palm tree only when the date harvest is over.

Swallow a date with its stone.

Durian

Encountering a fallen Durian. (= good luck)

Like a cucumber versus a durian. (This refers to the struggle between
the weak and the strong. The strong (i.e. the durian) will always win.).

Durian: tastes like heaven … smells like hell.

Fig

Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Half figs, half raisins.

He ate one fig and he thought the autumn had come.

He who tends the fig tree will eat its fruit, And he who cares for
his master will be honored. (New American Standard Bible, Proverbs 27:18)

If you have figs in your knapsack, everyone will want to be your
friend.

One eats figs whilst the other pays.

Peel a fig for your friend, a peach for your enemy.

Rather a single grape for me than a brace of figs for thee.

Sharing figs can leave you with none at all.

The most beautiful fig may contain a worm.

When the figs are ripe all the birds want to eat.

Fruit

A fruit tree that grows in a dung heap will certainly blossom.

A fruit-bearing tree is known by its flowers.

A good tree bears good fruit.

A good tree brings forth good fruit.

A lawsuit is a fruit-tree planted in a lawyer's garden.

A palm tree growing in the shade will not bear ripe fruit.

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a
man need to be happy. (Albert Einstein)

A tree is known by its fruit.

A woman's belly is a garden with many kinds of fruit.

All birds will flock to a fruitful tree.

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality. (John
Stuart Mill)

All the fruit is not found in just one field.

An ass does not appreciate fruit compote.

And the fruits will outdo what the flowers have promised. (Francois
de Malherbe)

As the tree, so the fruit.

As the tree, so the fruit; as the mistress, so the maid.

Avoid fruits and nuts. You are what you eat. (Jim Davis)

Away from home the girl picks forbidden fruit.

Beauty may have fair leaves, yet bitter fruit.

Big trees cast more shadow than fruit.

Bitter fruit will fall before the ripe.

Deeds are fruits, words are only leaves.

Education is only a ladder to gather fruit from the tree of knowledge,
not the fruit itself.

Elm trees have beautiful branches but hardly ever bear fruit.

Fast ripe, fast rotten

Forbidden fruit is sweet.

Forbidden fruit is sweetest.

Fruit should pay for the welfare of leaves.

Fruits of the same tree have different tastes; children of the same
mother have various qualities.

Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise
her in the gates.

Great trees give more shade than fruit.

He is a fool who praises the fruit of a tree and forgets its roots.

He that would eat the fruit must climb the tree.

He that would have fruit must climb the tree. (Thomas Fuller)

He who would enjoy the fruit must not spoil the blossoms.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
(Abraham Lincoln)

I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the
fruit falls to pick it up. (Mary Cassatt)

If you would enjoy the fruit, pluck not the flower.

In a tree that you can't climb, there are always a thousand fruits.

It is only the fruit-laden tree that receives the shower of stones
from passersby.

Late fruit keeps well.

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit. (Kahlil
Gibran)

Looking at a tree see its fruit; looking at a man see his deeds.

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every
hand. (Mother Teresa)

Love is often the fruit of marriage.

Many flowers, few fruits.

Men will only throw stones at trees that are laden with fruit.

Not all the tree's blossoms will bear fruit.

One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul. (Henry
David Thoreau)

Patience is a tree whose root is bitter, but its fruit is very sweet.

Patience is bitter but its fruits are sweet.

Patience is bitter, but it bears sweet fruit.

Pick your friends like you pick your fruit.

Ripe fruit falls by itself, but it does not fall into your mouth.

The better the fruit, the more wasps to eat it.

The branch bearing the most fruit bends itself thankfully towards
the ground.

The children eat the fruit and the father sleeps on the peel.

The fire is winter's fruit.

The fruit of silence is tranquility.

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who is wise
wins souls. (Bible: Proverbs 11:30)

The fruits of a tree on the roadside are never eaten ripe.

The hanging fruit is never too heavy for the creeper to bear.

The oldest trees bear the softest fruits.

The oldest trees often bear the sweetest fruit.

The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace.

The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit. (Moliere)

The trees with most leaves will not necessarily produce juicy fruit.\

They will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit
of their schemes (Bible: Proverbs 1:31)

Thought is the blossom, language the bud, action the fruit behind.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. (Groucho Marx)

To eat the bitter fruit of one's own doings.

Truth is a fruit which should not be plucked until it is ripe. (Voltaire)

Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look
for fruit on it in autumn. (Charles Hare)

Vanity blossoms but bears no fruit.

We will be grateful to flowers only if they have born fruits.

What you give to others bears fruit for yourself.

When eating the fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.

When you're green, you're growing. When you're ripe, you rot. (Ray
Kroc)

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening
fruit. (Aristotle)

Year of snow fruit will grow.

You always pick the fruits of what you plant.

You don't have to cut a tree down to get at the fruit.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs
to no one. (Jean Jacques Rousseau)

You shake in vain the branch that bears no fruit.

Gooseberry

The words of elders are like the gooseberry: bitter at first, then
sweet.

Grape

A grape that sees another gets ripe.

Beautiful grapes often make poor wine.

Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Every raisin contains a pip.

Except the vine, there is no plant which bears a fruit of as great
importance as the olive. (Pliny)

Grapes are eaten one by one.

Grapes do not grow in a willow tree.

Grapes picked too early don't even make good vinegar.

He's hardly a sour grape, yet behaves like a raisin.

Homes among homes and grapevines among grapevines.

Leaves enough, but few grapes.

Like grape, like bud. Like father, like son.

One who plants grapes by the road side, and one who marries a pretty
woman, share the same problem.

Rather a single grape for me than a brace of figs for thee.

Some men will build a wine cellar when they have found just one grape.

The grape is not ripened by the rays of the moon.

The grapes are sour.

The olive grove of your grandfather, the cherry trees of your father,
and your grape vines.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent
on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in
the universe to do. (Galileo)

The sweetest grapes hang highest.

There is a devil in every berry of grape.

When the fox cannot reach the grapes he says they are not ripe.

It was like a species of the Tamarind tree, bearing fruit which

resembled grapes extremely fine; and its fragrance extended to a considerable
distance. I exclaimed, How beautiful is this tree, and how delightful
is its appearance! (Prophet Enoch about the tree of knowledge)

Jackfruit

Whoever eats the jackfruit, will be touched by the sap.

The world has always been like this: one man feasts on the jackfruit
and the other gets stuck in the sap.

Jujube

I have tied my goat to a jujube tree.

The good men seem to be like coconuts. Others are like the jujube
fruit. (Beautiful only on the outside but sour inside).

Kiwifruit

Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw
a wastebasket over it until it was dead. (Erma Bombeck)

I don't go for the nouvelle approach-serving a rabbit rump with coffee
extract sauce and a slice of kiwi fruit. (Jeff Smith)

Lemon

Fifty lemons are a load for one person, but for fifty persons they
are perfume.

Only when you have eaten a lemon do you appreciate what sugar is.

When life hands you a lemon, say, "Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else
ya got?" (Henry Rollins)

When life throws you lemons, make lemonade.

Lime

An orange never bears a lime.

It is the softness of the lime that is fatal to the bird.

Lychee

Beneath these green mountains where spring rules the year, the irbarbutus
and loquat in season appear, and feasting on lychee, 300 a day, I shouldn't
mind staying eternally here. (Su Shih, Chinese poet)

Mango

An ant guarding a mango.

Crime leaves a trail like a water beetle; like a snail, it leaves
its silver track; like a horse-mango, it leaves its smell.

If you don't eat mangos that fall on the ground, be sure to be strong
enough to pick ones on the tree.

Mango among fruits, pork among meats, tea among leaves.

You don't throw rocks at a green mango.

Mangosteen

Mangosteen is the Queen of Fruits.

Melon

A melon forced off its vine is not sweet.

A woman and a melon are hard to choose.

Avoid suspicion: when walking through your neighbor's melon patch,
don't tie your shoe.

If you plant melons, you get melons; if you plant beans, you get
beans.

Marriage is a little bit like buying melons, you need a little luck.

No melon peddler cries, "Bitter melons." No wine dealer says, "Sour
wine.”

One gives a melon, the other gets the stomach cramps.

Whether the knife falls on the melon or the melon on the knife, the
melon suffers.

You can't pick up two melons with one hand.

Nut

Are you nuts?

Avoid fruits and nuts. You are what you eat. (Jim Davis)

Olive

Don't call me a little olive until you've picked me.

Hold out the olive branch.

In the olive grove, a wise man at the feet and a wild man at the
head.

September brings acorn and olives.

The olive grove of your grandfather, the cherry trees of your father,
and your grape vines.

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in
the mercy of God for ever and ever. (Bible, Psalms 52:8)

England and the English. As a rule they will refuse even to sample
a foreign dish, they regard such things as garlic and olive oil with
disgust, life is unlivable to them unless they have tea and puddings.
(George Orwell)

His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree,
and his smell as Lebanon. (Bible)

Except the vine, there is no plant which bears a fruit of as great
importance as the olive. (Pliny)

Orange

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.
(Benny Green)

An orange never bears a lime.

California is a fine place to live – if you happen to be an orange.
(Fred Allen)

Half an orange tastes as sweet as a whole one.

Peach

Everything is not all peaches and cream.

Peel a fig for your friend, a peach for your enemy.

Prickly pear trees don't produce peaches.

Receive a plum, return a peach.

Pear

A pear tree cannot bear an apple.

A pear will fall to its root.

A pear will never fall into a closed mouth.

A ripe pear is more likely to fall in the shit than onto the clean
ground.

Don't shake the tree when the pears fall off themselves.

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear
by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of
revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge
originates in direct experience. (Mao Tse-Tung)

Prickly pear trees don't produce peaches.

The wild pear has blossomed: the kid goat no longer suffers.

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect
to eat.

You can't compare apples with pears.

When the pear is ripe, it falls.

Pineapple

Once you taste a pineapple, you'll never go for any other fruit.

Only the knife knows the heart of a pineapple.

Plum

A black plum is as sweet as a white.

A cherry year, a merry year; a plum year, a dumb year.

If heaven above lets fall a plum, open your mouth.

Receive a plum, return a peach.

The higher the tree, the sweeter the plum

There's no making apples of plums.

You need plant only one cherry and one plum tree.

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum
for want of courage to shake the tree? (Logan Pearsall Smith)

Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into
prunes. (Frank Lloyd Wright)

The end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner-party, must
be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums. (Anthony Trollope)

Pomegranate

In every pomegranate a decayed pip is to be found.

You can find no pomegranates on a willow tree, nor shame in the wicked.

Prune

Like a prune, you are not getting any better looking, but you are
getting sweeter. (N. D. Stice)

Pumpkin

The pumpkin vine never bears watermelons.

Strawberry

A strange land is a bilberry; one's own land is a strawberry.

A strawberry blossom will not moisten dry bread.

A strawberry blossom will not sweeten dry bread.

A strawberry doesn't ripen according to the wishes of a monkey.

Don't marry a girl who wants strawberries in January.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Other land blueberry; own land strawberry.

Real friends will share even a strawberry.

We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton
is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel. (Golda Meir)

Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never
did. (William Butler)

Sugarapple

Teeth as sugar apple seeds.

(This proverb in Vietnam originates from an old fashion of Vietnamese
ladies. In the 19th century and earlier, fashionable ladies used to
stain their teeth in black. The white teethed ladies were ordinary and
not so fashionable. So, "Teeth as sugarapple seeds" used to praise a
pretty woman who had nice teeth.)

Tamarind

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree. (Edgar Allan Poe)

It was like a species of the Tamarind tree, bearing fruit which resembled
grapes extremely fine; and its fragrance extended to a considerable
distance. I exclaimed, How beautiful is this tree, and how delightful
is its appearance! (Prophet Enoch about the tree of knowledge)

Watermelon

One armpit cannot hold two watermelons.

One hand can't hold two watermelons.

Pick up a sesame seed only to lose a watermelon.

The pumpkin vine never bears watermelons.

Two watermelons cannot be held in one hand.

Two watermelons cannot be held under one arm.

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