Pumpkins

Pumpkins

Pumpkins are a gourd-like squash of the genus Cucurbita and the family Cucurbitaceae (which also includes gourds). The name commonly refers to cultivars of any one of the species Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita mixta, Cucurbita maxima, and Cucurbita moschata. They typically have a thick, orange or yellow shell, creased from the stem to the bottom, containing the seeds and pulp.

Quotes

• I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness ; to be dissolved into something complete and great.
  • Willa Cather, My Ántonia (1918), p. 18.

• We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field, goes through every point of pumpkin history.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (1850), p. 236.

• I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
  • Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 60.

• If I could be a vegetable, I'd be a pumpkin. It's realistically the only vegetable you can use as a weapon, or in any manner of defense.
  • Chris Walla , 20 questions with Christopher Walla (2000).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 649.

• I don't know how to tell it—but ef such a thing could be
  As the angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me—
  I'd want to 'commodate 'em—all the whole-indurin' flock—
  When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
  • James Whitcomb Riley, When the Frost is on the Punkin.

• And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold,
  Through orange leaves shining the broad spheres of gold.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, The Pumpkin.

• O,—fruit loved of boyhood!—the old days recalling,
  When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
  When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
  Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
  When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
  Our chair a broad pumpkin,—our lantern the moon,
  Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam
  In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, The Pumpkin.