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Quotations about
Vegetables & Greens
Welcome to my page of quotations about veggies and leafy greens. Here's to fresh vegetable gardens and good health!
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"
Eat more vegetables than anything else. You’ve really got to learn to love these guys. They can be the life of the party, I promise. You just have to invite them. ~Megan Kepferle, "Your Horse Deserves A Healthy Rider: Meg Kep's Dos & Don'ts," ChronOfHorse.com, 2013
Someone has to stand up and say that the answer isn't another pill. The answer is spinach. ~Bill Maher, 2007
Brussels sprouts: Belgian kindergarteners ~Mastroianni & Hart, "Wiley's Dictionary," B.C., 2010, johnhartstudios.com
Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. ~Doug Larson, 1989
A great deal has been written and said and sung in praise of green trees. And yet there are comparatively few green trees that are good to eat. Asparagus is probably the best of them, though celery is by no means to be despised. ~Ambrose Bierce
Beauty isn't something on the outside. It's your insides that count! You gotta eat green stuff to make sure you're pretty on the inside. ~Animal Crossing: Wild World, a 2005 Nintendo video game written by Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka, and Toshihiro Kawabata
I love you from my head tomatoes! ~Internet meme
The Liver & Broccoli Restaurant — Kids Eat Free! ~Tom
Divine Providence has spread her table everywhere, not with a juiceless green carpet, but with succulent herbage and nourishing grass, upon which most beasts feed. ~Thomas More (1478–1535)
Hence various trees their various fruits produce,
Some for delightful taste, and some for use.
Hence sprouting plants enrich the plain and wood,
For physic some, and some design'd for food.
~Richard Blackmore, "Wisdom of God in the Vegetable Creation," 1712
Half a loaf is better than vegetables. ~Student at Brookside School, Long Island, 1966, completing the first part of the proverb as given by Candid Camera, CBS
It doesn't matter what you do to kale: it still tastes like bitter spinach with hair. ~Jim Gaffigan, "Whole Foods Nation," Food: A Love Story, 2014
Wouldn't it be awful if spinach hain't really healthful after all th' trouble it takes t'git the sand out of it? ~Kin Hubbard, 1929
I love brussels sprouts. If you stand your asparagus on end, you can go bowling! ~Russell Myers, Broom Hilda, 2012
Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. ~Jim Davis
Sauerkraut may be reckoned among the wholesomest foods. ~Sebastian Kneipp, Thus Shalt Thou Live: Hints and Advice for the Healthy and the Sick on a Simple and Rational Mode of Life and a Natural Method of Cure, 1889, translated from the 19th German edition #fermented #probiotics
Sea vegetables are the ocean's mineral and vitamin bank... ~Kristina Turner, The Self-Healing Cookbook, 2002, originally published 1987 #seaweed
Greens are the primary food group that matches human nutritional needs most completely. ~Victoria Boutenko, Green for Life, 2010
There is no substitute for a diet rich in leafy greens. ~Sergei Boutenko, Wild Edibles, 2013
For happy health, fuel yourself with dreams and greens. ~Terri Guillemets
I don't know if you know much about mushrooms, but they're easy to raise... All you need is a place that's kind of damp and dark, like under a car or a wagon or in a cellar that hasn't got any heat. It's a lot of fun raising them. Maybe that's why they call them fungi. Anyway, Minerva Skybrow put the fun in fungi for us all right... Only you've got to be careful, because if you eat the wrong kind of mushroom, the first thing you know some fine day you'll wake up and find yourself dead. ~Percy Keese Fitzhugh, Roy Blakeley: Lost, Strayed or Stolen, 1921
The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants –
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop upon a Spot...
~Emily Dickinson, c. 1874
My idea of a perfect snack? A carrot, gently coerced from the soil, carefully wiped on my jeans, and eaten fresh. ~Annie Withey
All green vegetables are blood purifiers; they help to dissolve other food in the stomach and assist digestion. ~Marion Harris Neil, "The Proper Way to Cook Summer Vegetables," 1908
Fruits and vegetables are blood purifiers, appetizers, tonics; hence, save doctor's bills.
Keep as near as ever you can to the first sources of supply — fruits and vegetables. ~Benjamin Ward Richardson (1828–1896)
Lettuce is like conversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it. ~Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1870
As one who achieved the symmetry of a Humphrey Bogart and the grace of a jaguar purely on pastry, I have no truck with lettuce, cabbage and similar fronds. Any dietitian will tell you that a running foot of apple strudel contains four times the vitamins of a bushel of beans. In my own case, at least, greens are synonymous with poison. Every time I crunch a stalk of celery, there is a whirring crash, a shriek of tortured hemoglobin, and my metabolism goes to the boneyard. Yet come the middle of April, the family invariably gets an urge to see the old man beating his brains out in the garden patch. ~S. J. Perelman, Acres and Pains, 1943
To my gardener friend, in your
Linnet-haunted garden-ground,
Let the esculents abound.
Let first the onion flourish there,
Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,
Wine-scented and poetic soul
Of the capacious salad bowl...
Mountaineer thyme, wading cress,
Crisp and ruddy radish, speary heads
Of artichoke, beans of savoury green...
These tend, I prithee, for me...
And I, being provided thus,
Shall, with superb asparagus,
A book, a taper, and a cup
Of country wine, divinely sup.
~Robert Louis Stevenson, "To a Gardener" [altered
And why, indeed, did God leave all his vegetables raw? Pish! ~Edward Payson Powell (1833–1915), "An Old-Time Thanksgiving," 1904
Persons living very entirely on vegetables are seldom of a plump and succulent habit. ~William Cullen
Chlorophyll is as important as sunlight! No life is possible without sunshine, and no life is possible without chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is liquefied sun energy. Consuming as much chlorophyll as possible is like bathing our inner organs in sunshine. ~Victoria Boutenko, Green for Life, 2010
Our bodies run on the fresh green fuel of the land. ~Terri Guillemets, "Fresh & green," 2011
Ten years ago nobody ate kale. Then someone (probably a kale farmer or Satan) discovered that kale had some health benefits, and off kale went. Now we are in the middle of a full-fledged kale trend or, as I call it, a kale epidemic. There are kale chips, kale shakes, and even kale salads. I don't know much about grammar, but I think kale salad is what they call a "double negative." ~Jim Gaffigan, "Whole Foods Nation," Food: A Love Story, 2014
H-hi. I'm Kale.
Begone leaf of Lucifer!!
~Jane Zei, The Pigeon Gazette, 2015
Fritzi: I made pizza! It's a tofu gluten-free pizza with low-fat cheese, brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower!
Nancy: That's not a pizza! That's a communist plot! Thanks for ruining my appetite, my summer, and my faith in America!
~Olivia Jaimes, Nancy, 2016
Tuck a bit of green into every dinner. Even a platter of beans is in this way transformed into a thing of beauty. Of variety in garnishing there need be no lack with the garden, wayside, and woods abounding in beautiful leaves, vines, and flowers. There are foliage plant, geranium, and autumn leaves, ferns in variety, with lettuce, endive, spinach, parsley, chervil, carrot tops, and sprays of maidenhair fern. The variegated variety of beet leaves, as also the bright blossoms of nasturtiums make a brilliant garnish. ~Evora Bucknum Perkins, The Laurel Health Cookery, 1911
Ripe 'sparagrass,
Fit for lad or lass,
To make their water pass:
O, 'tis pretty picking
With a tender chicken!
~Jonathan Swift, "Asparagus"
There's a reason why tomatoes represent the best of summer: fat and sensual, like biting into a tiny beam of juicy red sunlight cooled in a stream. ~Edmond Manning, "The 2016 Gardening Awards," edmondmanning.com, 2016
The yellow orchid why discuss,
When you can eat asparagus!
What stained-glass window could repeat
The red-veined leafage of the beet?
What delicately mottled green
Is in the humble, honest bean,
And what a balm for sin and grief
The crisp and curly lettuce leaf!...
An onion, if you hold your nose,
Is marvellous as any rose!
~Christopher Morley, "My Favorite Flowers"
[Celery] is as fresh and clean as a rainy day after a spell of heat. It crackles pleasantly in the mouth.... it should be eaten alone, for it is the only food which one really wants to hear oneself eat. ~A.A. Milne (1882–1956), "A Word for Autumn," Not That It Matters
Celery, raw,
Develops the jaw,
But celery, stewed,
Is more quietly chewed.
~Ogden Nash (1902–1971), "Celery"
Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth. ~Calvin Trillin, 1983
Please understand the reason why Chinese vegetables taste so good. It is simple. The Chinese do not cook them, they just threaten them! ~Jeff Smith, 1986
Good health, yes, is partly genes
Really though it's more about greens
And other types of healthful things
~Terri Guillemets
Greens too have a complex history in the South. They were something that people could go and gather after working a long shift at the factory. So although greens were one of the earlier items to be canned and sold, people didn't choose to spend their grocery money on them when they first had money to do so. "Greens can be seen as a protest against the time clock that industrialization introduced," Engelhardt says. "Gathering greens served as a means for both men and women to resist new factory and mine-driven gender roles, as a walk in the woods did not involve company scrip or time clock." ~Vivé Griffith, "You Are What You Eat: Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt studies how your food choices can carry stories of race, class and culture," 2005
...the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers...
~Marge Piercy, “Colors passing through us”
When commercially cultivated, this arugula tastes pleasantly nippy. The mature arugula sold at farmer's markets or homegrown turns startlingly hot as the summer goes on, becoming wasabi-sharp. When it bolts, cream-white flowers appear that are heavenly heat bombs. ~Dana Jacobi, The Power Greens Cookbook: 140 Delicious Superfood Recipes, 2015
Norm: Oh my God, what are these?
Paul: They appear to be orange and green sticks.
Cliff: Oh, I know what they are. You know when you go in a restaurant and you order a nice, big, thick, juicy steak, and they put this other stuff on the plate that you shove aside?
Paul: Oh, you mean vegetables.
Norm: These can't be vegetables, there's no batter.
~Cheers, "Rat Girl," 1991, written by Ken Levine and David Isaacs [S9, E25]
Steakhouses are really the perfect environment for eating a steak — dimly lit, covered in dark wood, and decorated with a combination of red leather and red leather. They always seem like throwbacks to another era. A time when kale was just a weed in your backyard. ~Jim Gaffigan, "Steak: The Manly Meat," Food: A Love Story, 2014 [a little altered
Every cloud has a silver lining and every plate of vegetable soup is filled with vegetables. ~W. C. Fields, 1934
I am broccoli, and I look like a tree.
I am a walnut, and I look like a brain.
I am a mushroom, and I hate this game.
~Internet meme
Greens feed our souls, refresh our minds, and nourish our grateful bodies. ~Terri Guillemets, "Ascending," 2007
If you don't know what's meant by God, watch a forsythia branch or a lettuce leaf sprout. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
Welcome to the Church of the Holy Cabbage. Lettuce pray. ~Author unknown
She is fond of greens who kisses the gardener. ~Author unknown
Golfer's diet: live on greens as much as possible. ~Author unknown
All mushrooms are edible — but some only once. ~Internet meme
Q: What's a cat's favorite vegetable?
A: As-purr-agus!
~Author unknown
An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh. ~Author unknown, May Irwin's favorite quotation, Saturday Evening Post, 1931, as quoted by Burton Stevenson
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education. ~Mark Twain
Apelles gave us supper as if he had butchered a garden, thinking he was feeding sheep and not friends. There were radishes, chicory, fenugreek, lettuces, leeks, onions, basil, mint, rue, and asparagus. I was afraid that after all these things he would serve me with hay, so when I had eaten some half-soaked lupins I went off. ~Ammianus (2nd century A.D.), in The Greek Anthology, Volume IV, "Book XI: The Convivial and Satirical Epigrams," epigram 413, translated by W.R. Paton, 1918
Verses of veggies
poems of fruit
dotted with seeds
raw green rhymes
in melodious bodies
~Terri Guillemets
Lettuce, greens and celery, though much eaten, are worse than cabbage, being equally indigestible without the addition of condiments. Besides, the lettuce contains narcotic properties. It is said of Galen, that he used to obtain from a head of it, eaten on going to bed, all the good effects of a dose of opium. ~William Andrus Alcott, The Young House-keeper: or, Thoughts on Food and Cookery, 1838
Did you ever stop to taste a carrot? Not just eat it, but taste it? You can't taste the beauty and energy of the earth in a
Large, naked, raw carrots are acceptable as food only to those who live in hutches eagerly awaiting Easter. ~Fran Lebowitz
I have so mushroom in my heart for you! ~Internet meme
Hey, a "Food Court"! Let's go file a lawsuit about brussels sprouts! ~Tom Thaves, Frank and Ernest, 2014, frankandernest.com
A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do. ~P. J. O'Rourke, The Bachelor Home Companion, 1987
Green tastes like life, feels like energy, looks like peacefulness, smells like earth's love, sounds like vibrant health (your body listens well). Eat your greens, go wild for greens, play in green, weave green into your colorful daily existence! ~Terri Guillemets, "Go wild for greens," 2008
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat? ~Author unknown
The roots most used as table vegetables are turnips, carrots, parsnips, beets, radishes and salsify. The onion is the bulb most generally used as a vegetable and a flavorer. Fruits used as vegetables include eggplant, cucumber, peppers, okra, tomatoes, squash and pumpkin, among others. ~Marion Harris Neil, "The Proper Way to Cook Summer Vegetables," 1908
According to the latest authorities spring fever, the cause of so much loss of energy, can be prevented by homemakers if they will feed their families in the winter season with plenty of green vegetables. ~Richard Gay Neville, M.D., "Spring Fever," The Forecast, 1921
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published 1998 Mar 18
revised 2020, 2021, 2022
last saved 2023 Feb 27
www.quotegarden.com/vegetables.html