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FOOD QUOTES SECTION

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Vegetable Quotes

“If there is one vegetable which is God-given, it is the haricot bean.”
Jean Henri Fabre, French author, entomologist. (1823-1915)
 

“I am better off with vegetables at the bottom of my garden than with all the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream.”
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) 'Lord, I Thank Thee'

“These vegetables do not make a meal. They are just the trimmings. We need soup and a roast!”
Ned Land in Jules Verne's 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' (1870)
 

"An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh."
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
 

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie."
Jim Davis, 'Garfield'
 

"Our country friends, who have not yet paid their subscription, are respectfully informed that we have to buy all the vegetables for table use, and those who have cabbage, potatoes, or anything of that kind to spare can paid their indebtedness in that way."
Notice in the Marshall, Missouri Democrat, Nov 28, 1858.
 

“Botany, n.  The science of vegetables -- those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.”
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) 'The Devil's Dictionary' (1911)
 

"The greatest delight 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 (1803-1882)
 

“Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.”
Fran Lebowitz ('Metropolitan Life')
 

“Vegetables when not sufficiently cooked are know to be so exceedingly unwholesome and indigestible, that the custom of serving them 'crisp' should be altogether disregarded when health is considered of more importance than fashion.”
Eliza Acton, ‘Modern Cookery for Private Families’ (1845)
 

“Cabbage: A vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.”
Ambrose Bierce
 

“In the state of society in which we now find ourselves, it is difficult to imagine a nation which lived solely on bread and vegetables.”
Jean-Antheleme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)
 

“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.”
Doug Larson
 

“Sagebrush is a very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child the mule.”
Mark Twain (1835-1910) ‘Roughing It’
 

“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.”
Tom Robbins, ‘A Cook's book of Quotations’

“The cabbage surpasses all other vegetables. If, at a banquet, you wish to dine a lot and enjoy your dinner, then eat as much cabbage as you wish, seasoned with vinegar, before dinner, and likewise after dinner eat some half-dozen leaves. It will make you feel as if you had not eaten, and you can drink as much as you like.”
Cato (234-149 B.C.)
 

“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 (1947 - )
 

“Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the vegetables, the salad but bread is king.”
Louis Bromfield, American novelist  (1896-1956)

“Cabbage as a food has problems. It is easy to grow, a useful source of greenery for much of the year. Yet as a vegetable it has original sin, and needs improvement. It can smell foul in the pot, linger through the house with pertinacity, and ruin a meal with its wet flab. Cabbage also has a nasty history of being good for you.”
Jane Grigson (1928-1990) ‘Vegetable Book’ (1978)

“Persons living entirely on vegetables are seldom of a plump and succulent habit.”
William Cullen (1710-1790), Scottish physician & professor.

“The turnip is a capricious vegetable, which seems reluctant to show itself at its best.”
Waverley Root, 'Food' (1980)