"Fig leaf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... twilight of this new dawn of the love of nature, perhaps the first figure we may descry is Piero di Giovanni Tedesco (1386-1402), who carved the second south door of the Duomo about 1398, where amid so many lovely natural things, the fig leaf and the oak leaf and the vine, you may see the lion and the ox, the dog and the snail, and man too; little fantastic children peeping out from the foliage, or blowing through musical reeds, or playing with a kitten, tiny naked creatures full of life ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... whole appearance when he rejoined the party in the evening! He came skulking into camp like a beaten cur, with his tail between his legs. All his finery was gone; he was naked as when he was born, with the exception of a scanty flap that answered the purpose of a fig leaf. His fellow-travellers at first did not know him, but supposed it to be some vagrant Root Digger sneaking into the camp; but when they recognized in this forlorn object their prime wag, She-wee-she, whom they had seen depart in the morning ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... a smiling aspect instead of the dull and listless manner which she had just had. "You see my skirt? Well, my manager makes me wear it so long. These managers are too tiresome. As for me, the shorter the skirt the better I like it. There is always too much of it. A simple fig leaf! Mon Dieu, that is enough! You agree with me, don't you, my dear, that it is not necessary to have more than a fig leaf? Look then at this great dowdy ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... women find husbands from whom they would not continually turn with disgust? Modesty must be equally cultivated by both sexes, or it will ever remain a sickly hot-house plant, whilst the affectation of it, the fig leaf borrowed by wantonness, may give a zest to ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... moral standard and could be happy no longer, even in Paradise. According to this chapter the moral standard is the origin of all our woe. God himself summoned our first parents before him, and in what plight did they appear? We know how ridiculous the diminutive fig leaf makes a statue seem in our museums; think of the poor man and woman attired in fig leaves just plucked from the trees! I experienced a thrill of satisfaction that I should have been the first to understand a text that men have been studying for thousands of years, turning each word over ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore |
