The Rubaiyat (1120)
“The grape of truth is often bitter, but not to taste it in its season would be to waste the vine.”
Book One, Part IV “The Cloud”, Chapter 5 (p. 208)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)
“The roots of education … are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Source: The Bhagavadgītā (1973), p. 169–70. (12.)
“The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself.”
Der Appetit nach einer schönen Frucht ist angenehmer als die Frucht selbst.
Christoph Martin Wieland (ed.) Der deutsche Merkur vol. 20 (1781) p. 214; cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin Weidmann, 1888) vol. 15, p. 307. Translation from Maturin M. Ballou Pearls of Thought (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1881) p. 13
Eating Grapes Downwards
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
Of Liberty and Necessity, Part II (http://www.bartleby.com/37/3/12.html)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
Context: THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious.
I am the Blues: the Willie Dixon Story (with Don Snowden, 1990), p. 4.
