“Diogenes compared them to fig-trees growing over precipices; for their fruit was devoured by daws and crows, not by men.”

— Galén

Galen, on Diogenes's views on the ignorant rich, in Exhortation to Study the Arts, Wakefield (1796), p. 217; cf. Stobaeus, iv. 31b. 48.
Latter day attributions

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Diogenes compared them to fig-trees growing over precipices; for their fruit was devoured by daws and crows, not by men." by Galén?

Galén 11

Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher 129–216

Related quotes

“Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

“It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit because there is no winter there.”

John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher

“Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

56 Phocion
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

“The first of men did no more than take the fruit of the tree, and that, we are told, was sin. Modern humanity "tortures the tree in order the sooner to obtain its fruit."”

Charles Baudouin (1893–1963) French-Swiss psychoanalyst

section 20
quote is from Prayer for the Departed by Armand Godoy
The Myth of Modernity (1946)

“Can someone eat the fruit that comes from the tree of action that grows from the seeds of your mind?”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

from E.J. Martin's website at http://morayeel.louisiana.edu/ejMARTIN/ejMARTIN-artist.html and http://www.neoimages.net/statement.aspx?id=1312

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch.7

“Brambles, in particular, protect and nourish young fruit trees, and on farms bramble clumps (blackberry or one of its related cultivars) can be used to exclude deer and cattle from newly set trees. As the trees (apple, quince, plum, citrus, fig) age, and the brambles are shaded out, hoofed animals come to eat fallen fruit, and the mature trees (7 plus years old) are sufficiently hardy to withstand browsing. Our forest ancestors may well have followed some such sequences for orchard evolution, assisted by indigenous birds and mammals.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 12.7

“It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

“Desire may be compared to a minute seed. It is like a big banyan tree growing out of a seed, which is no bigger than a dot.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 292]

“I do not love men: I love what devours them.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Source: Prometheus Illbound

Related topics