"Forbidden fruit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Commons, and none but Members may go that way! It is the only gate before which I have ever stood filled with envy,—sorrowing to think that my steps might never pass under it. There are many portals forbidden to me, as there are many forbidden to all men; and forbidden fruit, they say, is sweet; but my lips have watered after no other fruit but that which grows so high, within the sweep of that ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... and to the unaided reason bears no weight—occasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant condition of his soul. And these men—the poets—living and perishing amid the scorn of the "utilitarians"—of rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a title which could have been ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... again, and think nothing about it. It does not exist for you. A nervous resistance to any sort of indigestion prolongs the attack and leaves, a brain-impression which not only makes the same trouble more liable to recur, but increases the temptation to eat forbidden fruit. Of course this is always preceded by a full persuasion that the food is not likely to disagree with us now simply because it did before. And to some extent, this is true. Food that will bring pain and suffering when taken by a tired stomach, may prove entirely ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... darkness, he felt it upon his shoulder, and he knew by its pressure that it was the hand of destiny. What made this sensation a shock was the element that was mixed with it; the fact that it came not simply and singly, but with an attendant shadow in which it immediately merged and lost itself. It was forbidden fruit—he knew it the instant he had touched it. He felt that he had pledged himself not to do just this thing which was gleaming before him so divinely—not to widen the crevice, not to open the door that would flood him with ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... for eating of the forbidden fruit, "She gave me of the tree and I did eat," is said to be thus ingeniously explained by the learned Rabbis: By giving him of the tree is meant that Eve took a stout crab-tree cudgel, and gave her husband (in plain English) a sound rib-roasting, until he complied ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... excluded the better half of the human race from its lodge-rooms. Man had ever been a selfish, conceited, cowardly tyrant from the day in which our father Adam disgraced his sex by taking without question the forbidden fruit; and, after eating it, crying with selfish, pusillanimous cowardice: "The woman thou gavest to be with me gave me of the tree and I did eat," and he has always sought to make and keep woman an inferior, dependent, submissive slave. To this end he has striven to keep her in ignorance, exclude ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... to church attired in her best and assume an air of worldly patronage towards the God of the poor—all this had for her special delights; the more so as her husband did not interest himself in religion, and her devotions thus had all the sweetness of forbidden fruit. Helene looked at her and answered with a nod; her face was ashy white with faintness, while the other's was lit up by smiles. There was a stirring of chairs and a rustling of handkerchiefs, as the priest quitted the pulpit with ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... of woe." Of all days Friday is universally regarded as the most unlucky. According to Soames in his work, The Anglo-Saxon Church, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit on a Friday and died on a Friday. And since Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday, it is naturally of small ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... gorgeous as an A.B.C., to be able to sit down and have one's tea or coffee or any other refreshment at one of those little white marble tables, seemed to her a degree of refinement scarcely to be thought about. The A.B.C. was a sort of forbidden fruit to Connie, but Agnes had been there before, and Agnes had described the delight ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... Biblical narrative, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons," or, as the Revised Version expresses it, "girdles". The girdle ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... you. We're so far from home. The good old moralities don't apply here. The hoary old Yukon won't tell on us. We've been a Sunday School Superintendent for ten years. For fifty more we've passed up the forbidden fruit. Every one else is helping themselves. Wonder what it tastes like? Wine is flowing like water. Money's the cheapest thing in sight. Cut loose, drink up. The orchestra's a-goin'. Get your partners for a nice juicy two-step. Come ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... daughters from the rigors of the law. Preachers, on finding out that the effort at verbal education could not convey Christian truths to an undeveloped mind, overcame the opposition in their localities and taught the colored people as before. Negroes themselves, regarding learning as forbidden fruit, stole away to secret places at night to study under the direction of friends. Some learned by intuition without having had the guidance of an instructor. The fact is that these drastic laws were not passed to restrain "discreet" southerners from doing whatever ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... inherit a nature depraved by original transgression, and disposed to every wicked indulgence. Instead of becoming more assimilated to God, as man had flattered himself he should be by partaking of the forbidden fruit, he became from that moment assimilated to the devil. Every dishonorable and hurtful passion took immediate possession of the breast, and to this hour reigns in the carnal man with unrivalled influence. Whatever misery results from the gratification of these passions, is solely ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... "Forbidden fruit!" said Diane, smiling. "Oh! how I wish I were the Government, for I have none of that fruit left—I have eaten ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... you especially, but all the world, you know. 'It's against the rule!' That sentence has always been my greatest temptation. I do so long to try all those forbidden things; if I had been Eve, and if the forbidden fruit had been a delicious peach instead of a commonplace apple, I should certainly have taken it. Now there was Miss Sykes at Corry Institute; she was always saying, 'Young ladies, it is against the rule to go into the garret. ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... authorities, and welcomed as a rather unique means of doing honour to a new Lord Rector or some famous guest of the city or the University. In Mr Stevenson's time, a torchlight procession had all the joys of 'forbidden fruit' to the merry lads who braved the police and the professors for the pleasure of marching through the streets to the final bonfire on the Calton Hill, from the scrimmage round which they emerged with ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... principal cities of England, under the direction of the trading companies of that city, before a numerous assembly of both sexes, wherein Adam and Eve appeared on the stage entirely naked, performed their whole part in the representation of Eden, to the serpent's temptation, to the eating of the forbidden fruit, the perceiving of, and conversing about, their nakedness, and to the supplying of fig-leaves to cover it. Warton observes they had the authority of scripture for such a representation, and they gave matters just as they found ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... with the most solemn rites in the world. The gravity and concentration of every one astounded him—the firm vendeuse refusing to allow her cliente any freedom of choice. The pathetic cliente pining in vain for forbidden fruit—the hopelessly ugly and unrewarding, who alone were permitted to follow their fancies. Patterns were discussed in hushed but intense undertones, faint but all-important modifications were offered by the vendeuse to bridge the gulf between the figures of the mannequins and those of ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... the evening opened gayly. Newly arrived Frenchmen are apt to be so unused to the familiar society of unmarried girls, that the most innocent share in it has for them the zest of forbidden fruit, and the most blameless intercourse seems almost a bonne fortune. Most of these officers were from the lower ranks of French society, but they all had that good-breeding which their race wears with such ease, and can unhappily put off with ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... chums Tom Taylor and Charles Lamb had been O'er bottled porter and the Fairy Queen! In youth, one day, seeking forbidden fruit Tom tumbled from the branches with his loot, And broken bones compelled the lad to go On straddling crutches, warily and slow, Counting the pebbles on his path below. The noisy pleasures of the open air, The football kicked exuberant here and there. Cricket, beloved ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... family-circle of the olden time. It is a serviceable posset-pot, with a silver tip and lid, both of which are gilded, the cover, still playing faithfully on its hinge, being chased with the device of Adam and Eve in the garden partaking of the forbidden fruit. An accompanying record reads as follows:—"At ye Feast of St. Michael, Ano. 1607, my Sister, ye Lady Mildmay, did give me a Stone Pot, tipped & covered wth. a Silver Lydd." How many comforting concoctions and compounds, alternating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... image of God; but we think we are the children of the creation described in the second chapter; of the race that imagined sickness, sin, and death for itself. The tree of knowledge which caused Adam's fall, Mrs. Eddy says, was the belief of life in matter, and she suggests that the forbidden fruit which Eve gave to Adam may have been "a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... enjoyment. Are not most of these people Indians still, ready to trade away substantial lands of antique title for the playthings of a few brief hours? Yes, heaven itself was signed away by man and woman for the juices of one forbidden fruit. Here, where the good old pastor, like another William Penn, is running his stakes beyond the stars and peopling with angels his possessions there, the savage children are occupied with the trifles of lust, covetousness, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... should I not dance with whom I please? And what right hast thou to forbid me Alizon? Troth, lad, art thou so ignorant of human nature as not to know that forbidden fruit is the sweetest. It hath ever been so since the fall. I am now only the more bent upon dancing with the prohibited damsel. But I would fain know the principle on which thou erectest thyself into her guardian. Is it because she fainted when thy sword was crossed ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... taste freely of the fruit of that tree, which cost the first gardiner and posterity so dear; and where the most voluptuous inclinations to the allurements of the senses, may take, and eat, and still be innocent; no forbidden fruit; no serpent to deceive; none to ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... struck up his favorite drinking song: 'There's Henry Ward Beecher And Sunday-school teachers, All drink of the sassafras root; But you bet all the same, If it had its right name, It's the juice of the forbidden fruit.' ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... to our first parent, now for more than five thousand years in Paradise, but not walking amid forbidden fruit. Still, when he stretched out his hand to the tree of life, he seemed to remember that first sin, and to thank God more than others for the healing of the nations. His bright face glistened with a tear ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... yet ventured to kiss Elfride. Far slower was he than Stephen Smith in matters like that. The utmost advance he had made in such demonstrations had been to the degree witnessed by Stephen in the summer-house. So Elfride's cheek being still forbidden fruit ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... reconcile this with the scriptural story of the forbidden fruit? Do you think the apples referred to were figures of speech, the true import of which was that Adam and Eve had their eyes on the ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... he caught it; and she vanished, Waving her hand, a little floating moth, Between the pine-trees, into the warm dark night. He turned into his room, and quickly thrust Under his pillow that forbidden fruit; For the door opened, and the hot red face Of Otto Brahe, his father, glowered at him. "What's this? What's this?" The furious-eyed old man Limped to the bedside, pulled the mystery out, And stared upon the strangest apple of Eve That ever troubled Eden,—heavy as bronze, And delicately ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... the strawberries had their usual effect. The queen entered while he was undergoing the punishment for his self-indulgence; and he could not deny that he had eaten the forbidden fruit, as the proofs were too evident. The queen was much incensed, and wished to know who had disobeyed her; she alternately entreated and threatened the child, who still continued to reply with the greatest ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... approaches from Hell and draws Adam into conversation over the barrier. His attempt to lure Adam to his Fall is vain, nor is he more successful the first time with Eve. But as a serpent he over-persuades her to eat of the forbidden fruit, and she gives it to Adam, with the well-known result. In his guilt Adam now withdraws out of sight, changes his red tunic for a costume contrived out of leaves, and reappears in great grief. God enters from the church and, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... he passes on to the evils of idleness, in treating of which he supplies The Christian Advocate with the true cause of original sin. "Does any one imagine that the forbidden fruit would ever have been tasted if Adam had been daily occupied in tilling the earth, and Eve, like a good housewife, in darning fig-leaf aprons for herself and her husband? Never!" The observation would lead one to imagine that the Bible ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... favourable to liberty, and in this way is satisfied that double craving so characteristic of the Philistine, and so eminently exemplified in that crowned Philistine, Henry the Eighth,—the craving for forbidden fruit and the craving for legality. Mr. Hepworth Dixon's eloquent writings give currency, over here, to these important discoveries; so that now, as regards love and marriage, we seem to be entering, with all our sails spread, upon what Mr. Hepworth Dixon, its apostle and evangelist, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... exciting charm of the risky and dangerous naturally arises on a background of feminine shyness and timidity. We may trace its recognition at a very early stage of history in the story of Eve and the forbidden fruit that has so often been the symbol of the masculine organs of sex. It is on this ground that many have argued the folly of laying external restrictions on women in matters of love. Thus in quoting the great Italian writer who afterwards became ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... parents pawned a glorious inheritance for a taste of forbidden fruit, and Esau exchanged a legitimate birth-right for a mere mess ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... afternoon we visited the house of Mr. Leese, which is also furnished in American style. Mr. L. is the proprietor of a vineyard in the vicinity of the town, and we were regaled upon grapes as luscious, I dare say, as the forbidden fruit that provoked the first transgression. Nothing of the fruit kind can exceed the delicious richness and flavour, of ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... three reasons. First, because she was more puffed up than the man. For the woman believed in the serpent's persuasive words, namely that God had forbidden them to eat of the tree, lest they should become like to Him; so that in wishing to attain to God's likeness by eating of the forbidden fruit, her pride rose to the height of desiring to obtain something against God's will. On the other hand, the man did not believe this to be true; wherefore he did not wish to attain to God's likeness against God's ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... hundred yards away. There under the arching lights of its beautiful bridge, sparkling with the reflection of myriad stars, silently flowed the Rhine, and there lay the Deutscher Kaiser, with her well-stocked larder and wine-room. Thither went the boy in quest of forbidden fruit. A waiter to whom he had confided his desire had promised to have the cigarettes on hand, and kept his promise. For one small package he demanded a four-mark piece,—a silver coin of about the size and rather more than the value of the American dollar. Cary responded with "What you giving ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... his words too literally, and made no allowance for poetic imagination and figurative language. There is a sense in which he was correct. No orthodox Christian doubts the fact that sin came into the world through our ancestors eating the forbidden fruit. The antidote to sin is Christ, and for us to partake of the benefits of His death we must appropriate Him by faith, or, in other words, we must by faith feed on Him, which is the same as a spiritual participation. By "eating," Gordon meant, ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... Originally intended for the veil, she had been taught, early in life, that much feeling was synonymous with much sin; and she had so long and so carefully repressed in her heart every attempt of the forbidden fruit to put forth a single blossom, that the soil seemed at last to have become incapable of bearing it. If, in one corner of this barren but sacred spot, some green and tender verdure of affection did exist, it was, with a partial and petty reserve for my ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... first kiss. A man's lips upon her own are too contrary to her instinct and previous training to make them an unalloyed pleasure. The girl who is over-ready for her lover's first kiss, has tasted the forbidden fruit already, or has ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford |
