Fruit

Fruit, in broad terms, is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state, such as apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, juniper berries and bananas.

Quotes

Generally

The kindly fruits of the earth.
- Book of Common Prayer (1662), "Litany"

Here mulberries bleed; the grape’s lithe cluster bends;
And blue the rush-bound cucumber depends.
- Appendix Vergiliana (Copa); translated by C. A. Elton, Specimens of the Classical Poets, vol. 2 (1814), pp. 132-4

Whig and whey whilst thou lust,
And bramble-berries,
Pie-lid and pastry-crust,
Pears, plums, and cherries.
- Anonymous, "Phillida Flouts Me; or, The Country Lovers Complaint", in in John Watts' Musical Miscellany, vol. 2 (1729)

The barberry and currant must escape
Though her small clusters imitate the grape.
- Abraham Cowley, History of Plants. Nahum Tate's translation (London: J. Smeeton, 1795), p. 147

Nothing great is produced suddenly, since not even the grape or the fig is. If you say to me now that you want a fig, I will answer to you that it requires time: let it flower first, then put forth fruit, and then ripen.
- Epictetus, Discourses, What Philosophy Promises, Ch. XV. George Long's translation (London: George Bell and Sons, 1890)

Plant Trees you may, and see them shoot
Up with your Children, to be serv’d
To your clean Boards, and the fair’st Fruit
To be preserv’d:
And learn to use their several Gums;
’Tis innocence in the sweet blood
Of Cherry, Apricocks and Plums
To be imbru’d.
- Sir Richard Fanshawe, "An Ode, upon occasion of His Majesties Proclamation in the Year 1630. Commanding the Gentry to reside upon their estates in the Countrey", in The Faithful Shepherdess (1664)

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
- Genesis 3:6 (KJV)

Eve, with her basket, was
Deep in the bells and grass
Wading in bells and grass
Up to her knees,
Picking a dish of sweet
Berries and plums to eat,
Down in the bells and grass
Under the trees.
- Ralph Hodgson, "Eve", Poems (1917), p. 8

Silver-pink peach, venetian green glass of medlars and sorb-apples.
- D. H. Lawrence, "Figs", Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923)

He it is Who produceth gardens trellised and untrellised, and the date-palm, and crops of divers flavour, and the olive and the pomegranate, like and unlike. Eat ye of the fruit thereof when it fruiteth, and pay the due thereof upon the harvest day, and be not prodigal.
- Muhammad, Koran 6:142. Marmaduke Pickthall's translation (1930)

Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
- Matthew 7:16–20 (KJV)

Each tree
Laden with fairest fruit, that hung to th' eye
Tempting, stirr'd in me sudden appetite
To pluck and eat.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), bk. 8, l. 30

But the fruit that can fall without shaking,
Indeed is too mellow for me.
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "Answered for Lord William Hamilton", Works, 6th ed., vol. 5 (1817), p. 194

Thus do I live, from pleasure quite debarred,
Nor taste the fruits that the sun's genial rays
Mature, john-apple, nor the downy peach.
- John Philips, The Splendid Shilling (1705), l. 115

I lose the sunlight, lovely above all else;
Bright stars I loved the next, and the moon’s face,
Ripe gourds, and fruit of apple-tree and pear.
- Praxilla, Fragment quoted by Zenobius, Proverbs, 4, 21; translated by T. F. Higham, Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (1938), p. 465

Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpeck’d cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries;— ...
Grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries, ...
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South.
- Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market (1862)

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst.
- Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (1997), ch. 1

Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries.
- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595), act 3, sc. 1

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality.
- William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), act I, sc. 1, l. 60

Fruits that blossom first will first be ripe.
- William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), act II, sc. 3, l. 383

Before thee stands this fair Hesperides,
With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched.
- William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre (c. 1607-08), act I, sc. 1, l. 27

The ripest fruit first falls.
- William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), act II, sc. 1, l. 153

Superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live.
- William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), act III, sc. 4, l. 63

My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was actually twelve miles from a lemon.
- Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Bros, 1855), p. 234

Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine.
- John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Corn Song", Poetical Works (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1871), p. 147

Specific types

Peach

A little peach in an orchard grew,—
A little peach of emerald hue;
Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew
It grew.
- Eugene Field, "The Little Peach", in The Argonaut, vol. 10, no. 24 (17 June 1882), p. 14

Why so velvety, why so voluptuous heavy?
Why hanging with such inordinate weight?
Why so indented?
Why the groove?
Why the lovely, bivalve roundnesses?
Why the ripple down the sphere?
Why the suggestion of incision?
- D. H. Lawrence, "Peach", Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923)

As touching peaches in general, the very name in Latine whereby they are called Persica, doth evidently show that they were brought out of Persia first.
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bk. 15, ch. 13. Philemon Holland's translation (1601)

The ripest peach is highest on the tree.
- James Whitcomb Riley, "The Ripest Peach", Afterwhiles (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1898), p. 71

Pear

"Now, Sire," quod she, "for aught that may bityde,
I moste haue of the peres that I see,
Or I moote dye, so soore longeth me
To eten of the smalle peres grene."
- Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Merchantes Tale", l. 2,330, Canterbury Tales (ed. Skeat)

The great white pear-tree dropped with dew from leaves
And blossom, under heavens of happy blue.
- Jean Ingelow, "Songs with Preludes: Wedlock", A Story of Doom, and Other Poems (Boston: Roberts Bros., 1867), p. 259

A pear-tree planted nigh:
'Twas charg'd with fruit that made a goodly show,
And hung with dangling pears was every bough.
- Alexander Pope, "January and May", l. 602 (paraphrasing Chaucer; see above), Works, vol. 3 (London: H. Lintot, 1736), p. 155

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)
- Nigel Morris, "Conservative Conference: An apple a day is good for the economy — if it's British", Independent (30 September 2014)

Citrus

Sharp-tasted citrons Median climes produce,
(Bitter the rind, but generous is the juice,)
A cordial fruit, a present antidote
Against the direful stepdame's deadly draught.
- Virgil, Georgics, bk. 2. John Dryden's translation (1697)