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Quotations about Pie
There's no diet list I'll follow that would rule out cherry pie. ~Edgar A. Guest
I beg your pardon, my lord; promises and pie-crust are made to be broken. ~Jonathan Swift
A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero. He can say he doesn't like pie, when he sees there is not enough to go round. ~Author unknown, early 1900s
Pumpkin Pie is golden brown and rich as an old gold coin. Its smell is autumn made manifest. ~Hal Borland, "Pumpkin Pie," 1963 [a little altered
No matter what conditions
Dyspeptic come to feaze,
The best of all physicians
Is apple-pie and cheese!
~Eugene Field, "Apple-Pie and Cheese"
The doctor says that pies are harmful, I must eat them no more; and that is why they seem to charmful I'd like to eat a score. Before me there are wholesome vittles that I may safely try; I'll have of them no jots or tittles, my system shrieks for pie. ~Walt Mason (1862–1939), "Perversity"
I'll obey them in the winter when the doctors say to me
I must give up ham and spinach, and obedient I'll be.
To relieve my indigestion in December they can try,
But there's none of them can stop me when it's time for cherry pie.
~Edgar A. Guest
Oh, hazy month of glowing trees,—
And colors rich to charm our eyes!
Yet—not less fair than all of these
Are Mother's fragrant pumpkin pies!
~Louise Bennett Weaver & Helen Cowles LeCron, "October," A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband with Bettina's Best Recipes, 1917
Do you really want to know "whether oatmeal is preferable to pie as an American national food"? I suppose the best answer I can give to your question is to tell you what is my own practice. Oatmeal in the morning, as an architect lays a bed of concrete to form a base for his superstructure. Pie when I can get it... ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, in The Atlantic Monthly, July 1890
I suppose I will die never knowing what pumpkin pie tastes like when you have room for it. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
De gustibus, 't is stated,
Non disputandum est.
Which meaneth, when translated,
That all is for the best.
So let the foolish choose 'em
The vapid sweets of sin,
I will not disabuse 'em
Of the heresy they 're in;
But I, when I undress me
Each night, upon my knees
Will ask the Lord to bless me
With apple-pie and cheese!
~Eugene Field, "Apple-Pie and Cheese"
The pumpkin lies yellow, beneath the cold skies, it's luscious and mellow, and ready for pies. So tenderly bear it away from the vine, and slice it and pare it and mash it up fine; oh, put in the spices, surround it with crust, and then in three trices we'll eat till we bust! ~Walt Mason (1862–1939), "The Pumpkin"
To make an apple pie, you need wheat, apples, a pinch of this and that, and the heat of an oven. The ingredients are made of molecules, which in turn, are made of atoms. Except for hydrogen, the atoms are made in stars. A star is a kind of cosmic kitchen inside which atoms of hydrogen are cooked into heavier atoms. The hydrogen was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. ~Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980 [a little altered
The very inner being of a Pumpkin Pie is rich with eggs and cream and smooth to the tongue. It makes the taste buds rejoice with ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and secret spice. And it is tenderly enclosed, cupped like the precious thing it is, in a crust that melts in the mouth. ~Hal Borland, "Pumpkin Pie," 1963 [a little altered
Pie and coffee is approximately the third best social interaction a man can hope to have with a woman. ~Author unknown
Ah! on Thanksgiving Day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest...
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before;
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin Pie?
~John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), "The Pumpkin"
Pie... it fills the cracks of the heart. Go away, pain! ~Kevin James and Nick Bakay, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, 2009
O’ pumpkin pie, your time has come ’round again and I am autumnrifically happy! ~Terri Guillemets, "Flaky crust happiness," 2010
When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it's not, ummmm, boy. ~Jack Handey, Deeper Thoughts, 1993, deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com
As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples... great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty-pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies... ~Washington Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," 1820
One little thing can revive a guy
And that is a piece of rhubarb pie
Serve it up, nice and hot
Maybe things aren't as bad as you thought.
~Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie, "sponsor" of A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, prairiehome.org, garrisonkeillor.com
Pumpkin Pie is one of the great glories of autumn in our land. When you find it, you celebrate. You know then that the pumpkin was put into this world not to become a jack-o'-lantern or a dooryard decoration. You know that it was put here to become a very special pie, and that you were put here to discover it. ~Hal Borland, "Pumpkin Pie," 1963 [a little altered
The better a pie tastes, the worse it is for you. ~E. W. Howe
Whatever the Americans are proud of — whatever they consider to be peculiarly good, useful, brilliant, or characteristic of themselves or their climate, they designate, half in jest, though scarcely half in earnest, as an "institution." Thus the memory of General Washington... is an institution; the Falls of Niagara are an institution; the Plymouth Rock... "Sweet potatoes" are an institution, and pumpkin (or punkin) pie is an institution... ~Charles Mackay, "American Firemen," 1857
Full many a sinful notion
Conceived of foreign powers
Has come across the ocean
To harm this land of ours;
And heresies called fashions
Have modesty effaced,
And baleful, morbid passions
Corrupt our native taste.
O tempora! O mores!
What profanations these
That seek to dim the glories
Of apple-pie and cheese!
~Eugene Field, "Apple-Pie and Cheese"
Shedding late-summer tears for the end of cherry season. Patiently and hopefully waiting for pumpkin pie season. ~Terri Guillemets, "Seasonal emotions," 2011
There is a very odd prejudice against pie as an article of diet. It is common to hear every form of bodily degeneracy and infirmity attributed to this particular favorite food. I see no reason or sense in it. Mr. Emerson believed in pie, and was almost indignant when a fellow-traveller refused the slice offered him... If every Green Mountain boy has not eaten a thousands times his weight in apple, pumpkin, squash, and mince pie, call me a dumpling. And Colonel Ethan Allen was one of them, — Ethan Allen, who, as they used to say, could wrench off the head of a wrought nail with his teeth. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, in The Atlantic Monthly, July 1890
But see, in our open clearings, how golden the melons lie;
Enrich them with sweets and spices, and give us the pumpkin-pie!
~Margaret Junkin Preston, "The First Thanksgiving Day, A.D. 1622," 1887
...we must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie... It casts out stress as the heat of the hand repels quicksilver... Keep you your precious vapors, your fantods, your anxiety. Give me a pie. Give me a pie anyday. ~David Mamet, Boston Marriage
Who doesn't want pumpkin pie for breakfast? That's the breakfast of champions... ~Erika Jayne, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, "Grilling Me Softly," 2019, S9, E13 [I've had pumpkin pie for breakfast more often than I've had it for dessert! It goes great with iced tea or coffee.
The market is full of delights in July:
Fresh vegetables, berries, red cherries for pie!
~Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron, "July," A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband with Bettina's Best Recipes, 1917
May thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin Pie!
~John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), "The Pumpkin"
New England's diet line... journeying towards the White Mountains, a line passing through Bellows Falls, and bending a little south on either side, would mark northward the region of perpetual pie. In this region pie is to be found at all hours and seasons, and at every meal... The absence of pie would be more noticed than a scarcity of Bible even. ~Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1873 [a little altered
Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. ~Jim Davis, 2001
Give an American a newspaper and a pie and he will make himself comfortable anywhere. ~Ambrose Bierce
Thanksgiving day would be a side-play
Minus the golden Pumpkin;
No feast is complete, if they have not to eat,
A circle of yellow Pumpkin.
Oh! the Pumpkin pie will ever out-vie,
Johnny-cake, pone, or corn dodger,
You don't need to chew, it melts like the dew,
When the sun shines bright on the clover.
~Mrs. May C. Hanks (b. 1842), "Pumpkin is Queen" [Mrs. Hanks wrote under the pseudonym Minnehaha.
Apple-tree, apple-tree, crowned with delight,
Give me your fruit for a pie if you will;—
Crusty I'll make it, and juicy and light!—
Give me your treasure to mate with my skill!
~Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron, "September," A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband with Bettina's Best Recipes, 1917
But rooting against the Yankees is as American as a microwaved wedge of frozen apple pie topped with a slice of processed cheese. ~George F. Will, "The Golden Age"
EDEN. The garden where Adam and Eve baked the first apple pie and pied the human race. ~Noah Lott (George V. Hobart), The Silly Syclopedia, 1905
Your flavored creams and ices
And your dainty angel-food
Are mighty fine devices
To regale the dainty dude;
Your terrapin and oysters,
With wine to wash 'em down,
Are just the thing for roisters
When painting of the town;
No flippant, sugared notion
Shall my appetite appease,
Or bate my soul's devotion
To apple-pie and cheese!
~Eugene Field, "Apple-Pie and Cheese"
But the grand event of the meal was the pumpkin pie. None of your little, thin, emaciated, leather-bound pumpkin pies; but deep, thick, golden-yellow, baked in a brown crockery plate. ~David Grayson (Ray Stannard Baker), "We Are Thankful," Adventures in Understanding, 1925
One dish, that wakens memory's longing sigh —
The genuine, far-famed, Yankee pumpkin pie!
Who e'er has seen thee in thy flaky crust
Display the yellow richness of thy breast,
But, as the sight awoke his keenest gust,
Has own'd thee, of all cates the choicest, best?
Ambrosia were a fool, to thee compared,
E'en by the ruby hand of Hebe drest;
Thee, pumpkin pie, by country maids prepared,
With their white rounded arms above the elbow bared.
~Sophia Louisa Robbins Little (1799–1893), "Thanksgiving," 1828 [Mrs. Little wrote under the pseudonym Rowena.
Pie is a shorter word than indigestion, but it gets there just the same. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1906, George Horace Lorimer, editor
Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of Ichabod Crane as he entered the parlour... the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn... the doughty
[P]ie... the secret of our strength as a nation and the foundation of our industrial supremacy... ~"Editorial Comment: Hints in Gastronomy," Current Literature: A Magazine of Contemporary Record, June 1902
Pie is the American synonym of prosperity and its varying contents the calendar of the changing seasons. Pie is the food of the heroic. No pie-eating people can ever be permanently vanquished. It is a significant historical fact that England's glory was greatest in the days when her gallant sons ate pie.... True, there are doctors who preach against the pie habit and who profess to search for an antitoxin for the extinction of the pie microbe; but no one has ever known a doctor to refuse a second piece of pie. ~New York Times, 1902 May 3rd
In our own glad and fortunate country the seasons are known by their respective dominant pies — for each there is an appropriate pie, with apple pie for all the year round... The perfect days of June welcome the lip-painting berry pies... Then, as nature paints the forests with her magic brush, comes in the golden glory of the year, the royal pumpkin pie! ~The New York Times, 1902
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published 2000 Jun 22
revised 2020, 2021, 2022
last saved 2023 Jan 7
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