“I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very sensuous about it - overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.”

—  F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald411
American novelist and screenwriter 1896–1940

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“First, we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.”

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Cardinal Francis Spellman used this attribution in his speech to the 1954 National Convention of the American Legion. It has been debunked repeatedly, for example in They Never Said It (1999) by Paul F. Boller and John H. George. The last two sentences have also been misattributed to Nikita Krushchev. The metaphor of the ripe fruit appears much earlier in US policy discussions about Cuba:
If an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its unnatural connexion with Spain, and incapable of self-support, can only gravitate towards the North American Union.
John Quincy Adams, letter to Hugh Nelson (28 April 1823)
The fruit will fall into our hands when it is ripe, without an officious shaking of the tree. Cuba will be ours … in due season, without the wicked impertinence of war.
Parke Godwin, "Annexation" (February 1854)
Misattributed

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I'll never let your head hit the bed
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We'll make it.
Swim in a deep sea
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Take all your big plans
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