“What came first, the fruit-tree or the stone?”

— Sören Kierkegaard

1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s
Context: Consciousness presupposes itself, and asking about its origin is an idle and just as sophistical a question as that old one, "What came first, the fruit-tree or the stone? Wasn't there a stone out of which came the first fruit-tree? Wasn't there a fruit-tree from which came the first stone? Journals and Papers, Hannay, 1996 1843 IVA49

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Sören Kierkegaard 309

Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813–1855

Charles Baudouin (1893–1963) French-Swiss psychoanalyst

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

“It is always necessary that the substance or essence of a person be good before there can be any good works and that good works follow and proceed from a person who is already good. Christ says in Matthew 7:18: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”… The fruit does not make the tree good or bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good or bad before doing a good or bad work.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 74-75

“To be international, you have to first be local. … When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree.”

Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer

http://nofilmschool.com/2016/07/abbas-kiarostami-death-cinema-lessons

“Learn to eat of the tree of Knowledge, and of the tree of Life enjoy the fruit.”

Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) German singer

IV. Defense and Support : Building blocks for the O.T.O. Temple
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)
Context: Closing Word
Learn to eat of the tree of Knowledge, and of the tree of Life enjoy the fruit. Seek both within yourself, and so you recognize them and know their place, you are come to the highest rung of the 12 step ladder.
Through this will the Divine-Love be awoken that does not have a place in the twisted minds of men, but dwells in his heart, from which the salvational current will be born which gives us the vision of the eternal light and annihilates all falsity.
"The eternal-feminine draws us up?!"

“The apple… came before Adam and Eve in the story of creation. It had to have been there at least three years because that's how long it takes for a new tree to bear fruit.”

Jodi Picoult book Songs of the Humpback Whale

Source: Songs of the Humpback Whale

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaf and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ in the poplar trees.”

Billie Holiday (1915–1959) American jazz singer and songwriter

"Strange Fruit" (1939). Though Holiday's renditions made this anti-lynching song famous, it was written by Abel Meeropol (using his pseudonym "Lewis Allen").
Misattributed

“Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified cross is a fruitful tree.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 10.

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

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

“A life without love is like a tree without fruit.”

Stephen King book Doctor Sleep

Source: Doctor Sleep

“And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)
Context: For sure the enchanted waters pour through every wind that blows.
I think when night towers up aloft and shakes the trembling dew
How every high and lonely thought that thrills my being through
Is but a ruddy berry dropped down through the purple air,
And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere.

“What came first, the fruit-tree or the stone?”

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