Sour Grapes Quotes

Right now everyone is drinking bad wine made of sour grapes and hysteria. Let them drink it, and let them regret it in the morning.

Faith that you will find a way to make wine out of your sour grapes.

Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbridges from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes.

Sometimes I think that love is one big fairy tale. I wonder if people who say they are in love, if – really – they’ve just talked themselves into it. They want it so badly, they kind of make it happen. They fake it until they start believing their own story. Maybe that’s just sour grapes or something. Maybe because it doesn’t happen to me, I don’t want to think it happens to anyone else.

I mean, I'm just tired of being wrong all the time just because I'm a guy. I mean how many times can everybody tell you that you're the oppressive, prejudiced enemy before you give up and become the enemy. I mean a male, chauvinist pig isn't born, hes made, and more and more of them are being made by women. After long enough you just roll over and accept the fact that you're a sexist, bigoted, insensitive, crude, cretinist cretin. Women are right. You're wrong. You get used to the idea. You live down to expectations. Even if the shoe doesn't fit, you'll shrink to fill it. I mean, in a world without god aren't mothers the new god? The last sacred unassailable position. Isn't motherhood the last perfect magical miracle? But a miracle that isn't possible for men, and maybe men say they're glad not to give birth, all the pain and blood, but really that's just so much sour grapes. For sure, men can't do anything near as incredible. Upper body strength, abstract thought, phalluses - any advantage men appear to have are pretty token. You can't even hammer a nail with a phallus. Women are already born so far ahead ability - wise. The day a men can give birth, that's when we can start talking about equal rights.

Bewildered is the fox who lives to find that grapes beyond reach can be really sour.

This is agony cried Mr Salteena clutching hold of a table my life will be sour grapes and ashes without you.

In the land of sour grapes, the half-eaten apple is the queen

You have forgotten the doctrine of your own church, is it not so? The cross…the bread and wine…the confessional…only symbols. Without faith, the cross is only wood, the bread baked wheat, the wine sour grapes.

I am sure the grapes are sour.

My life would be sour grapes and ashes without you

Some say if life hands you lemons, make lemonade. I say if you're dealing with sour grapes, drink lots of wine.

Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it's against the rules, isn't it, to actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't.

THE FOX AND THE GRAPES A hungry Fox saw some fine bunches of Grapes hanging from a vine that was trained along a high trellis, and did his best to reach them by jumping as high as he could into the air. But it was all in vain, for they were just out of reach: so he gave up trying, and walked away with an air of dignity and unconcern, remarking, "I thought those Grapes were ripe, but I see now they are quite sour.

I thought these grapes were ripe, but I see now they are quite sour.

And maybe men say they're glad not to give birth, all the pain and blood, but really that's just so much sour grapes. For sure, men can't do anything near as incredible. Upper body strength, abstract thought, phalluses—any advantages men appear to have are pretty token. You can't even hammer a nail with a phallus.

The older and wiser heads of the world have always described revolution and love to us as the two most foolish and loathsome of human activities. Before the war, even during the war, we were convinced of it. Since the defeat, however, we no longer trust the older and wiser heads and have come to feel that the opposite of whatever they say is the real truth about life. Revolution and love are in fact the best, most pleasurable things in the world, and we realize it is precisely because they are so good that the older and wiser heads have spitefully fobbed off on us their sour grapes of a lie. This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution.

Faith in our ability to write our own stories, regardless of what the Fates throw at us. Faith that you will find a way to make wine out of your sour grapes.

Discs of umbrellas poured over suburban terraces with the smooth round ebullience of a Chopin waltz. They sat in the distance under the lugubrious dripping elms, elms like maps of Europe, elms frayed at the end like bits of chartreuse wool, elms heavy and bunchy as sour grapes.

My! How the grapes are sour today!" -Rhett Butler

I verily believe all that is desirable on earth--wealth, reputation, love--will for ever to you be the ripe grapes on the high trellis: you'll look up at them; they will tantalize in you the lust of the eye; but they are out of reach: you have not the address to fetch a ladder, and you'll go away calling them sour.

You’re seventeen, not twelve. You’re old enough to drive and have sex, and next year you’re allowed to murder people in the military. I think you can handle a little bit of sour grape juice.

Subjective optimization complements sour grapes, the inclination to see that which you can’t have as that which you didn’t want in the first place. Subjective optimization makes whatever you get stuck with seem better than that which you can no longer obtain. Metaphorically, it is the process that makes lemons into lemonade.

She didn't look like any motel manager I had ever seen. More likely an actress who hadn't quite made the grade down south, or a very successful amateur tart on the verge of turning pro. Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn't begun to sour.

He supposed he was only one of several million persons of his generation who had grown up and, somewhere around thirty, made the upsetting discovery that life wasn't going to pan out the way you'd always expected it would; and why this realization should have thrown him and not them—or not too many of them—was something he couldn't fathom. Life offered none of those prizes you'd been looking forward to since adolescence (he less than others, but looking forward to them all the same, if only out of curiosity). Adulthood came through with none of the pledges you'd been led somehow to believe in; the future still remained the future-illusion; a non-existent period of constantly-receding promise, hinting fulfillment, yet forever withholding the rewards. All the things that had never happened yet were never going to happen after all. It was a mug's game and there ought to be a law. But there wasn't any law, there was no rhyme or reason; and with the sour-grapes attitude of “Why the hell should there be”—which is as near as you ever came to sophistication—you retired within yourself and compensated for the disappointment by drink, by subsisting on daydreams, by living in a private world of your own making (hell or heaven, what did it matter?), by accomplishing or becoming in fancy what you could never bring about in fact.

No one has expressed what is needed better than Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the London-based al-Arabiya news channel. One of the best-known and most respected Arab journalists working today, he wrote the following, in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (September 6, 2004), after a series of violent incidents involving Muslim extremist groups from Chechnya to Saudi Arabia to Iraq: "Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture... The mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life. Then came the neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry... We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women. We cannot redeem our extremist youth, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to reinvent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

Mind, I congratulate you. You jumped me to sex, translated it to aesthetics, and ended with sour grapes. How dishonest can I be? And all because I don't want to go to work. I'll work my head off to avoid work. Come, mind. This time you don't get away with it - back to the desk.

Revolution and love are in fact the best, most pleasurable things in the world, and we realize it is precisely because they are so good that the older and wiser heads have spitefully fobbed off in us their sour grapes of a lie. This I want to believe implicitly: man was born for love and revolution.

The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth have been set on edge.

Just because life gave her sour grapes didn't mean she had to stomp them into wine and get drunk.

The grapes that my hands wouldn’t reach were undoubtedly sour. But I didn’t need sweet fruits that were like a lie. I didn’t need things like a fake understanding and a deceptive relationship. What I wanted was that sour grape. Even if it’s sour, even if it’s bitter, even if it’s disgusting, even if it’s full of poison, even if it didn’t exist, even if I couldn’t lay my hands on it, even if I wasn’t allowed to wish for it.

You have forgotten the doctrine of your own church, is it not so? The cross... the bread and wine... the confessional... only symbols. Without faith, the cross is only wood, the bread baked wheat, the wine sour grapes.

You have forgotten the doctrine of your own church, is it not so? The cross . . . the bread and wine . . . the confessional . . . only symbols. Without faith, the cross is only wood, the bread baked wheat, the wine sour grapes.

Herbs carried in special baskets, bread wrapped in knotted, muslin cloths, thick stews soured with unripe grape juice, carrots boiled with sugar and rosewater, yoghurt hung from dripping bags, its whey dried in sheets on trays in the sun.

In a classic Aesop’s Fable, a hungry fox encounters grapes hanging from a vine. The fox desperately wants the grapes. But as hard as he may try, he can not reach them. Frustrated, the fox decides the grapes must be sour and that he therefore would not want them anyway.

Pierre mixed the salad. The romaine and cress he doused with walnut oil chilled to an emulsion, turning it with wooden forks so that the bruises showed on the green in dark lines. He poured on the souring of wine vinegar and the juice of young grapes, seasoned with shallots, pepper and salt, a squeeze of anchovy, and a pinch of mustard. At the Faison d’Or the salad was in wedlock with the roast.” (p.24)

During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is made to corroborate those claims. One ADA [Associate District Attorney] told me about inheriting a murder case, after the first jury deadlocked. He checked the raps for the jurors and found that four had criminal records. None of those jurors were prosecuted. Nor was it policy to prosecute defense witnesses who were demonstrably lying--by providing false alibis, for example--because, as another ADA told me, if they win the case, they don't bother, and if they lose, "it looks like sour grapes." A cop told me about a brawl at court one day, when he saw court officers tackle a man who tried to escape from the Grand Jury. An undercover was testifying about a buy when the juror recognized him as someone he had sold to. Another cop told me about locking up a woman for buying crack, who begged for a Desk Appearance Ticket, because she had to get back to court, for jury duty--she was the forewoman on a Narcotics case, of course. The worst part about these stories is that when I told them to various ADAs, none were at all surprised; most of those I'd worked with I respected, but the institutionalized expectations were abysmal. They were too used to losing and it showed in how they played the game.

Tate practically raised you from what I hear. You love him, don’t you?” Her face closed up. “For all the good it will ever do me, yes,” she said softly. “He won’t have the excuse of pure Lakota blood much longer,” he advised. “I’m not holding out for miracles anymore,” she vowed. “I’m going to stop wanting what I can never have. From now on, I’ll take what I can get from life and be satisfied with it. Tate will have to find his own way.” “That’s sour grapes,” he observed. “You bet it is. What do you want me to do to help?” “It’s dangerous,” he pointed out, hesitating as he considered her youth. “I don’t know…” “I’m a card-carrying archeologist,” she reminded him. “Haven’t you ever watched an Indiana Jones movies? We’re all like that,” she told him with a wicked grin. “Mild-mannered on the outside and veritable world-tamers inside. I can get a whip and a fedora, too, if you like,” she added.

Mother Nature has given us some defense mechanisms: as in Aesop’s fable, one of these is our ability to consider that the grapes we cannot (or did not) reach are sour. But an aggressively stoic prior disdain and rejection of the grapes is even more rewarding. Be aggressive; be the one to resign, if you have the guts.

Recall Aesop’s fable of the fox and the grapes. After trying in vain to reach the grapes, the fox gives up and wanders away, muttering, “They were probably sour anyway.” The fox’s change of heart is a perfect example of a common strategy we instinctively use to reduce dissonance. When we experience a conflict between our beliefs and our actions, we can’t rewind time and take back what we’ve already done, so we adjust our beliefs to bring them in line with our actions. If the story had gone differently, and the fox had managed to get the grapes, only to discover they were sour, he would have told himself that he liked sour grapes in order to avoid feeling that his effort had been a waste.

Literately’ was used in a novel by Elizabeth Griffiths. While no other examples of use have been forthcoming, it is, in my opinion, an elegant extension of ‘literate’. Dr. Murray agreed I should write an entry for the Dictionary, but I have since been told it is unlikely to be included. It seems our lady author has not proved herself a ‘literata’- an abomination of a word coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge that refers to a ‘literary lady’. It too has only one example of use, but its inclusion is assured. This may sound like sour grapes, but I can’t see it catching on. The number of literary ladies in the world is surely so great as to render them ordinary and deserving members of the literati.

The tartness of her face sours ripe grapes.

Learning is like grape must, which turns sour unless entered into a sound vessel.

Whether Whether anger quickens a lagging stride, and periodic burn-offs in the forest revitalize exhausted soil and flora—. Whether we should take pleasure in the wildcat jubilation of a lightning bolt that whips its silver vein of genesis through the night sky, flash-photo of a white birch upended, the root-system buckled to swollen thunderheads—. And whether naming an offense amounts to sour grapes and common bitterness, or even the conceited nonsense of unwashed yahoo multitudes, a yawping insult to civilized behavior—. Whether a July rainstorm, even when it drenches the unprepared pedestrian and befuddles traffic, might be extravagant, a joy, like the whoops and escalating bop glissandos of Gillespie’s upraised horn, cascading pitches a countersong to meteoric chalk marks Perseids burn across the House of Leo—. And whether peaceful ecstasy might float up from a fifteen-second avalanche reflected in the skier’s goggles, his jacket a spark of scarlet on the topmost slope, waiting for the homeward track to clear.

What possessed us? We were so happy! Why, then, did we take the stake of all we had and place it all on this outrageous gamble of having a child? Of course you consider the very putting of that question profane. Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it's against the rules, isn't it, to actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't.

Write horror. Don’t let ANYONE ELSE tell you how to conduct your muse. They’re all sour-grapes, wannabe, no-talent bums who WISH they had your skill and motivation. So go forth, my son, and write HORROR.

You know what your problem is?” she’d say (that’s how she always began). “You hate yourself and so you hate others. It’s just sour grapes. You’re too busy reading and thinking about big things. You don’t care about the little things in your own life, and that means you’re contemptuous of anyone who does. You’ve never struggled like they have, because you’ve never cared like they do. You don’t really know what people go through.

The Netflix documentary Sour Grapes is a fascinating insight into this world. A crooked, though brilliant, Indonesian wine connoisseur called Rudy Kurniawan was able to replicate great burgundies by mixing cheaper wines together, before faking the corks and the labels. He was rumbled only when he attempted to fake wines from vintages that did not exist. I am told that it is possible to detect a forged Kurniawan wine by analysing the labels, but not by tasting the wine. I hate to say this, but Rudy was an alchemist. Several experts I have talked to in the high-end wine business regard their own field as essentially a placebo market; one of them admitted that he was relatively uninterested in the products he sold and would sneak off and fetch a beer at premium tastings of burgundies costing thousands of pounds a bottle. Another described himself as ‘the eunuch in the whorehouse’ – someone who was valuable because he was immune to the charms of the product he promoted.

ARRIVAL And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom— feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind...!

I painted prettily like Bouguereau, people would not be ashamed to let themselves be painted, but I think that I have lost models because they thought that they were “badly done,” because “it was only pictures full of painting” that I did. The poor little souls are afraid of being compromised and that people will laugh at their portraits. But it is almost enough to make you lose heart when you think that you could do something if people had more good will. I cannot resign myself to saying - “sour grapes

BOWLS OF FOOD Moon and evening star do their slow tambourine dance to praise this universe. The purpose of every gathering is discovered: to recognize beauty and love what’s beautiful. “Once it was like that, now it’s like this,” the saying goes around town, and serious consequences too. Men and women turn their faces to the wall in grief. They lose appetite. Then they start eating the fire of pleasure, as camels chew pungent grass for the sake of their souls. Winter blocks the road. Flowers are taken prisoner underground. Then green justice tenders a spear. Go outside to the orchard. These visitors came a long way, past all the houses of the zodiac, learning Something new at each stop. And they’re here for such a short time, sitting at these tables set on the prow of the wind. Bowls of food are brought out as answers, but still no one knows the answer. Food for the soul stays secret. Body food gets put out in the open like us. Those who work at a bakery don’t know the taste of bread like the hungry beggars do. Because the beloved wants to know, unseen things become manifest. Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation: bury your seed and wait. After you die, All the thoughts you had will throng around like children. The heart is the secret inside the secret. Call the secret language, and never be sure what you conceal. It’s unsure people who get the blessing. Climbing cypress, opening rose, Nightingale song, fruit, these are inside the chill November wind. They are its secret. We climb and fall so often. Plants have an inner Being, and separate ways of talking and feeling. An ear of corn bends in thought. Tulip, so embarrassed. Pink rose deciding to open a competing store. A bunch of grapes sits with its feet stuck out. Narcissus gossiping about iris. Willow, what do you learn from running water? Humility. Red apple, what has the Friend taught you? To be sour. Peach tree, why so low? To let you reach. Look at the poplar, tall but without fruit or flower. Yes, if I had those, I’d be self-absorbed like you. I gave up self to watch the enlightened ones. Pomegranate questions quince, Why so pale? For the pearl you hid inside me. How did you discover my secret? Your laugh. The core of the seen and unseen universes smiles, but remember, smiles come best from those who weep. Lightning, then the rain-laughter. Dark earth receives that clear and grows a trunk. Melon and cucumber come dragging along on pilgrimage. You have to be to be blessed! Pumpkin begins climbing a rope! Where did he learn that? Grass, thorns, a hundred thousand ants and snakes, everything is looking for food. Don’t you hear the noise? Every herb cures some illness. Camels delight to eat thorns. We prefer the inside of a walnut, not the shell. The inside of an egg, the outside of a date. What about your inside and outside? The same way a branch draws water up many feet, God is pulling your soul along. Wind carries pollen from blossom to ground. Wings and Arabian stallions gallop toward the warmth of spring. They visit; they sing and tell what they think they know: so-and-so will travel to such-and-such. The hoopoe carries a letter to Solomon. The wise stork says lek-lek. Please translate. It’s time to go to the high plain, to leave the winter house. Be your own watchman as birds are. Let the remembering beads encircle you. I make promises to myself and break them. Words are coins: the vein of ore and the mine shaft, what they speak of. Now consider the sun. It’s neither oriental nor occidental. Only the soul knows what love is. This moment in time and space is an eggshell with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in belief-yolk, under the wing of grace, until it breaks free of mind to become the song of an actual bird, and God.

Liberty is the first condition of growth. Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress, and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others. We talk foolishly against material civilisation. The grapes are sour.

According to Mark 11:12-13, God's messengers were not the only ones who were incompetent: 'He [Jesus] was hungry. And on seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.' Imagine Jesus, the divine, holy, wisest of the wise not knowing that figs were out of season. Now allegedly Jesus could have performed a miracle and made figs magically appear, but he preferred sour grapes instead: Then he said to the tree, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' (Mark 11:14)

The Fox and the Grapes ONE hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. “Just the things to quench my thirst,” quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.” “IT IS EASY TO DESPISE WHAT YOU CANNOT GET.

I mean, in a world without God, aren’t mothers the new god? The last sacred unassailable position. Isn’t motherhood the last perfect magical miracle? But a miracle that’s impossible for men. And maybe men say they’re glad not to give birth, all the pain and blood, but really that’s just so much sour grapes. For sure, men can’t do anything near as incredible. Upper body strength, abstract thought, phalluses—any advantages men appear to have are pretty token. You can’t even hammer a nail with a phallus. Women are already born so far ahead ability-wise. The day men can give birth, that’s when we can start talking about equal rights.

A hungry Fox saw some fine bunches of Grapes hanging from a vine that was trained along a high trellis, and did his best to reach them by jumping as high as he could into the air. But it was all in vain, for they were just out of reach: so he gave up trying, and walked away with an air of dignity and unconcern, remarking, "I thought those Grapes were ripe, but I see now they are quite sour.

HIGH-ALKALINE FOODS Vegetables Beets, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Celery, Cucumbers, Kale, Lettuce, Mushrooms, Onions, Peas, Peppers, Pumpkin, Spinach, Sprouts, Wheatgrass Fruits Apples, Apricots, Avocados, Bananas, Blueberries, Cantaloupe, Cherries (sour), Grapes, Melon, Lemon, Oranges, Peaches, Pears, Pineapple, Raspberries, Strawberries, Watermelon Protein Almonds, Chestnuts, Whey Protein Powder, Tofu Spices Cinnamon, Curry, Ginger, Mustard, Sea Salt

As a general rule, sour or acidic fruits (grapefruits, kiwis, and strawberries) can be combined with “protein fats” such as avocado, coconut, coconut kefir, and sprouted nuts and seeds. Both acid fruits and sub-acid fruits like apples, grapes, and pears can be eaten with cheeses; and vegetable fruits (avocados, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers) can be eaten with fruits, vegetables, starches, and proteins. I’ve also found that apples combine well with raw vegetables.

So did he me: and he no more remembers his mother now than an eight-year-old horse. The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes: when he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading: he is able to pierce a corslet with his eye; talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits in his state, as a thing made for Alexander. What he bids be done is finished with his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in.

Seeing the Bible as a book of wisdom, which doesn’t hand us answers but invites us to accept our journey of faith with courage and humility, is a new idea, I suspect, for some reading this book. And that’s why I’ve tried to give some examples and go into some detail, so we can see for ourselves how the Bible actually works—even though, truth be told, we are just scratching the surface. I hope too that another vital point—perhaps the point—I am trying to make hasn’t been too obscured by talking on and on about Assyrians, slave laws, and eating sour grapes. Watching how the Bible behaves as a book of wisdom rather than a set-in-stone rulebook is more than just a textual curiosity to be noted and set aside. Rather, it models for us the normalcy of seeking the presence of God for ourselves in our here and now. Like that of the biblical writers themselves, our sacred responsibility is to engage faithfully and seriously enough the stories of the past in order to faithfully and seriously reimagine God in our present moment. The Bible doesn’t end that process of reimagination. It promotes it.

Eating was a welcome distraction, not for us but for them. However the piles on the plates clashed (macaroni cheese sauce oozing orangely under the spinach salad), however sour the mixtures they made (runaway grapes rolling in the gravy!), our guests chewed to prove that their existence hadn't been diverted. For the price of a quick casserole, they bribed us into agreeing that this was God's plan, life was going on. Their cliches were breath mints: they wanted us to suck away to sweeten the bad taste our misfortune left in their mouths. And so we did.

It’s not that I want us to understand one another, be friends, talk, or be together. I don’t need them to understand me. I know they won’t, and I don’t wish them to. What I’m looking for is something harsher and more severe. I want to know. I want to understand. I want to know so I can feel relief. I want peace of mind, because ignorance is absolutely terrifying. Complete understanding is such a self-righteous, selfish, and arrogant thing to wish for. It’s despicable and repulsive, really. I’m beyond disgusted with myself for wanting it. But if—if we could feel the same way… If we could impose that ugly self-satisfaction on one another, if there’s some sort of relationship that could permit that arrogance… I know something like that is absolutely impossible. I bet I’ll never attain something like that. I’m sure the grapes out of my reach are sour. But I don’t need fruit sweet like lies. I don’t need false understanding or phony relationships. What I want is those sour grapes. Even if it’s sour, even if it’s bitter, even if it tastes bad, even if it’s pure poison, even if it doesn’t exist, even if I can’t acquire it, even if what I want cannot be allowed… “Still…” The word came out of me unbidden, and even I could hear it trembling. “Still, I…” I fought down the sob that nearly escaped and tried to swallow the sound along with the rest of the sentence, but they both came out in fragments. My teeth rattled, and my throat was tight as the words left my mouth anyway. “I want…something real.

Sirine learned about food from her parents. Even though her mother was American, her father always said his wife thought about food like an Arab. Sirine's mother strained the salted yogurt through cheesecloth to make creamy labneh, stirred the onion and lentils together in a heavy iron pan to make mjeddrah, and studded joints of lamb with fat cloves of garlic to make roasted kharuf. Sirine's earliest memory was of sitting on a phone book on a kitchen chair, the sour-tart smell of pickled grape leaves in the air. Her mother spread the leaves flat on the table like little floating hands, placed the spoonful of rice and meat at the center of each one, and Sirine with her tiny fingers rolled the leaves up tighter and neater than anyone else could- tender, garlicky, meaty packages that burst in the mouth.

This Compost" Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd, I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards, The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

Next, I drink a few more glasses of water containing liquid chlorophyll to build my blood. If I’m stressed, I’ll have some diluted black currant juice for an antioxidant boost to the adrenals. Once I’m hungry, I sip my way through a big green alkaline smoothie (a combination of spinach, cucumber, coconut, avocado, lime, and stevia is a favorite) or tuck into a fruit salad or parfait. And tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocados are fruits, too; a morning salad is a good breakfast and keeps the sugar down. But, this kind of morning regime isn’t for everyone. You can get really hungry, particularly when you first start eating this way. And some people need to start the day with foods that deliver more heat and sustenance. If that’s how you roll, try having fruit or a green smoothie and then waiting for 30 minutes (if your breakfast includes bananas, pears, or avocados, make it 45) before eating something more. As a general rule, sour or acidic fruits (grapefruits, kiwis, and strawberries) can be combined with “protein fats” such as avocado, coconut, coconut kefir, and sprouted nuts and seeds. Both acid fruits and sub-acid fruits like apples, grapes, and pears can be eaten with cheeses; and vegetable fruits (avocados, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers) can be eaten with fruits, vegetables, starches, and proteins. I’ve also found that apples combine well with raw vegetables. Leafy greens (spinach, kale, collard greens), along with the vegetable fruits noted above, are my go-to staples. They are the magic foods that combine well with every food on the planet. I blend them together in green smoothies, cold soups, and salads.

2. Users of bells and whistles such as grapes and milk in their starter vs. flour-and-water minimalists. (Lest you reflexively award moral victory to the purists, note that the grapes side includes such heavy hitters as Nancy Silverton and the man Anthony Bourdain describes as “[God’s] personal bread baker.”) 3. Protective vs. permissive starter parents. (“The California gold rush prospectors made sourdough from whatever they had at hand. River water and whole grain flour. Maybe some old coffee. Hell, throw in some grapes. They fed it whatever they had, however often they could. None of this coddling the sourdough, giving it regular feedings, just the right amount of pablum. You ruin a good sour that way. Turns out to be weak and citified. Doesn’t have the gumption to properly raise a little pancake much less a loaf of bread. Nope.”) .

Therefore, please remember this: my son Yehudi Menuhin is in no way responsible for any opinion expressed here on Jewish life. In fact, he knows nothing about this spiritual adventure of mine. He has not read my manuscript. At this stage of our lives we are two wholly independent persons, fully emancipated from each other, intellectually and spiritually. Neither of us is answerable for the other. If the “father has eaten sour grapes … the son shall not bear the sin of the father …

Even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the police. - Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894 Virginibus Puerisque The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. - Ezekiel, 18:2 The Bible

I've long been a fan of Hi-Chew, the Japanese fruit chews, for their resilient texture and uncannily accurate fruit flavors: sour cherry, apple, grape, pickled plum, and especially mango, which is closer to the flavor of an actual tropical mango than most imported mangoes.

The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children’s teeth are set on edge Ezekiel 18:2

those grapes are very sour to me. I am sure that they are indigestible, and that those who eat them undergo all the ills which the Revallenta Arabica is prepared to cure. And so it was now with the archdeacon.

Sour grapes, the champagne of the intelligentsia.

Sometimes life gives you sour grapes, sir,” Varus said. “It’s what I think they make cheap wine with.

You two don’t spend enough time around real people,” Vaslovik sighed. “Spite, gentlemen. Sour grapes. Whoever—whatever—this was, he had gotten clean away and someone shot him in the back just as the doors were swinging shut behind him. That’s a lot of anger, a lot of hate.

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking. You stand above the rat race and the pecking order, not outside of it, if you do so by choice. Quitting a high-paying position, if it is your decision, will seem a better payoff than the utility of the money involved (this may seem crazy, but I’ve tried it and it works). This is the first step toward the stoic’s throwing a four-letter word at fate. You have far more control over your life if you decide on your criterion by yourself. Mother Nature has given us some defense mechanisms: as in Aesop’s fable, one of these is our ability to consider that the grapes we cannot (or did not) reach are sour. But an aggressively stoic prior disdain and rejection of the grapes is even more rewarding. Be aggressive; be the one to resign, if you have the guts. It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself. In Black Swan terms, this means that you are exposed to the improbable only if you let it control you. You always control what you do; so make this your end.

Istanbul and find some way of getting to Balikesir. I would work my way through the city–the present population is 30,000–until I found the house Kitty’s grandmother had described to me. Her description was almost, but not quite, as good as a photograph. A very large house, three stories tall, on an elevation not far from the railroad station, and blessed with that extraordinary porch. There could not be too many houses of that description in Balikesir. If I found the house, I would have to investigate to see if the porch was still intact, then provide myself with an elementary metals detector and determine if there was anything inside. And, if the gold was there, then it would be simply a matter of digging it out and taking it away. A difficult matter, no doubt, but one that could be puzzled out later. It struck me as very likely that the gold was no longer there or had not been there in the first place. Still, one does not conclude that the grapes are sour without even attempting to see if the vine is within reach. Three million dollars–

O SUN, fill our house once more with light! Make happy all your friends and blind your foes! Rise from behind the hill, transform the stones To rubies and the sour grapes to wine! O Sun, make our vineyard fresh again, And fill the steppes with houris and green cloaks! Physician of the lovers, heaven's lamp! Rescus the lovers! Help the suffering! Show but your face - the world is filled with light! But if you cover it, it's the darkest night

If her son can forgive his mother for committing the worst mortal sin then it doesn’t make sense that the Son of God, whose job it is to be all-forgiving and all-loving, would send Mrs. Garfield to Hell for ending her life before He could. That’s nothing but all-sour-grapes in my book. The

Your wine is just sour grapes Pour me a glass anytime I'm not there

Friends, the ancient word is dead; the ancient books are dead; our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead; our poems have gone sour; women's hair and nights have gone sour; my grieved nation, in a flash, you turned me from a poet writing for love and tenderness to a poet writing with a knife; our shouting is louder than our actions; our swords are taller than us; friends, smash the doors; wash your brains; grow words, pomegranates and grapes; sail to countries of fog and snow; nobody knows you exit in your caves; friends, we run wildly through streets; dragging people with ropes; smashing windows and locks; we praise like frogs; turn midgets into heroes; in mosques, we crouch idly; write poems and proverbs; and pray God for victory.

Sea Grapes" That sail which leans on light, tired of islands, a schooner beating up the Caribbean for home, could be Odysseus, home-bound on the Aegean; that father and husband's longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is like the adulterer hearing Nausicaa's name in every gull's outcry. This brings nobody peace. The ancient war between obsession and responsibility will never finish and has been the same for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore now wriggling on his sandals to walk home, since Troy sighed its last flame, and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough from whose groundswell the great hexameters come to the conclusions of exhausted surf. The classics can console. But not enough.

There is in nature a great deal of variability in quality and taste, otherwise we wouldn’t have idioms like sour grapes and rotten apples.

The Lord my God lightens my darkness. —Psalm 18:28 (RSV) Nursing a grouchy mood, it was with leaden feet I trudged up the hill that morning to check the newborn calves on our family ranch. I determined that nothing could cheer me up, but in an instant my sour grapes were forgotten. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw the calf with her mother standing over her proudly. Normally our calves are around seventy to ninety pounds. We weighed Mini, just to be sure. Full term and full of life…and only twenty pounds. As a precaution, Mini is spending the first few weeks of her life living in an insulated, heated room in the barn, breathing warm air and where her mother won’t accidentally squish her. Twice a day we carry her out to nurse the cow. She can just reach if she stands on her toes. Plus, we bottle-feed her periodically throughout the day and night.  We took pictures of Mini next to the cats, and they’re the same size! I told a friend that I don’t know why Mini is that size; all of the cow’s other calves were normal. “Every now and then,” she replied, “God sends us a present that will always make us smile.” She’s right. No matter what misery I’m dwelling on, whenever I see Mini, it all goes away and I can’t help but grin. There are times when I get caught up in negativity, Lord. Please don’t let me forget Your big blessings in however small a package. —Erika Bentsen Digging Deeper: Ps 21:6; Eph 3:20–21

If you're handed sour grapes take off your shoes and start dancing

PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY. [Jer. 31:29, 30] “In those days people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Instead, everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—their own teeth will be set on edge.

fast food” and “clamato juice”, “tackiness” and “wackiness”, “Christmas bonuses” and “customer service departments”, “wild goose chases” and “loose cannons”, “crackpots” and “feet of clay”, “slam dunks” and “bottom lines”, “lip service” and “elbow grease”, “dirty tricks” and “doggie bags”, “solo recitals” and “sleazeballs”, “sour grapes” and “soap operas”, “feedback” and “fair play”, “goals” and “lies”, “dreads” and “dreams”, “she” and “he” — and last but not least, “you” and “I”.

which people, in order to avoid inconsistent beliefs, rationalize that, say, the grapes they can’t reach got to be sour).

I pictured the eggs inside of my body like they were grapes gone bad. Sour, rotten fruit, skin bruised and fuzzy with mould, caving in on themselves.

I pictured the eggs inside of my body like they were grapes gone bad. Sour, rotten fruit, skin bruised and fuzzy with mold, caving in on themselves.

He knew that the plums were not for him; but it was genuinely consoling, and not merely sour grapes, to reflect that he had no taste for plums. He preferred the less formal and more picturesque jobs that were on offer, and as these were often not good ones, it had doubtless seemed to others that he was playing his cards rather badly. Actually, he felt he had played them rather well; he had had a varied and moderately enjoyable decade.

Intellectualization should not be confused with rationalization, which is the use of feeble but seemingly plausible arguments either to justify something that is painful to accept (‘sour grapes’) or to make it seem ‘not so bad after all’ (‘sweet lemons’).

I explained about Helen’s comments. “It could be sour grapes because she wasn’t picked to make the orbs, but then again she might have a genuine concern. In my hometown of Booruby, I either know of or have heard of all the glassmakers.” “We should keep an open mind and see how they do,” Kade said. He pulled me close. “Think the best until proven otherwise?” “Exactly. You should adopt it as your motto.” I liked my way better. Assume danger and be pleasantly surprised when proven wrong.

GOD MY RESCUER When life pins me against the wall, God brings me in the place of love and rest. When life throws stones at me, God surrounds me with His divine wings of protection. When life barks at me, God takes me to the zone of silence and peace. When life throws thorns in my pathway, God changes His divine direction. When life brings sour grapes to me to swallow, God turns sour to sweet. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him(Isaiah 59:19, KJV). God is my forever rescuer and I will never be afraid of anything that try to destroy me in Jesus name.

Those who aim high know what it takes to feel the skies on the tip of their wings and would encourage you to fly with them. Those who sour grape from below would want nothing but for people to fall for that is their only means to feel taller.

A fox crept up to a vine. He gazed longingly at the fat, purple, overripe grapes. He placed his front paws against the trunk of the vine, stretched his neck and tried to get at the fruit, but it was too high. Irritated, he tried his luck again. He launched himself upward, but his jaw snapped only at fresh air. A third time he leapt with all his might – so powerfully that he landed back down on the ground with a thud. Still not a single leaf had stirred. The fox turned up his nose: ‘These aren’t even ripe yet. Why would I want sour grapes?’ Holding his head high, he strode back into the forest. The Greek poet, Aesop, created this fable to illustrate one of the most common errors in reasoning. An inconsistency arose when the fox set out to do something and failed to accomplish it. He can resolve this conflict in one of three ways: A) by somehow getting at the grapes, B) by admitting that his skills are insufficient, or C) by retrospectively reinterpreting what happened. The last option is an example of cognitive dissonance, or rather, its resolution.

Portrait of the Author" The birches are mad with green points the wood's edge is burning with their green, burning, seething—No, no, no. The birches are opening their leaves one by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold and separate, one by one. Slender tassels hang swaying from the delicate branch tips— Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word. Black is split at once into flowers. In every bog and ditch, flares of small fire, white flowers!—Agh, the birches are mad, mad with their green. The world is gone, torn into shreds with this blessing. What have I left undone that I should have undertaken? O my brother, you redfaced, living man ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon this same dirt that I touch—and eat. We are alone in this terror, alone, face to face on this road, you and I, wrapped by this flame! Let the polished plows stay idle, their gloss already on the black soil. But that face of yours—! Answer me. I will clutch you. I will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face into your face and force you to see me. Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest thing that is in your mind to say, say anything. I will understand you—! It is the madness of the birch leaves opening cold, one by one. My rooms will receive me. But my rooms are no longer sweet spaces where comfort is ready to wait on me with its crumbs. A darkness has brushed them. The mass of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken. Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed. I am shaken, broken against a might that splits comfort, blows apart my careful partitions, crushes my house and leaves me—with shrinking heart and startled, empty eyes—peering out into a cold world. In the spring I would be drunk! In the spring I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things. Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei! your hands, your lips to drink! Give me your wrists to drink— I drag you, I am drowned in you, you overwhelm me! Drink! Save me! The shad bush is in the edge of the clearing. The yards in a fury of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror. Drink and lie forgetting the world. And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one. Coldly I observe them and wait for the end. And it ends.

It is easy to write off anger as sour grapes… it was not about the grape; it was about the inequity.

Circulation of Song after Rumi Once again I'm climbing the mountain Circle on circle like a winding rose Below me the mountains fall away like rose-petals I wish to be at the centre of the mystic rose Where I shall meet Him He shall greet me: Beloved! So long in coming -- He shall be the lonely pine tree On the flattened promontory And I, the spider clinging to Him by a mere thread, against the sun and the wind Each dawn the sunrise tinting gold the burnt Sienna houses Each dusk the alpine rosy glow on the mountain Each afternoon such darkness in the glen Fold on fold in a foliage all the shades of green: They have crept into my dream He is the air I breathe Purest mountain-air: I'm cleaned He is the lark's descant And in the evening, the nightingale He is the star's ascent and the moon's cloud-hiding He is all the circles and in this circulation of song: I read you / you read me circulating In my blood from head to heel He is the fruit of my unfulfilled life The peach pooped with juice And running with the Argentine waters, the pear In the Chinese nectarine flecked like a child's cheek with red And in the sour loquat and the sweet cherry In the fragrance of the jasmine of India And the Shiraz rose that makes the bee mad for them In the grape that becomes wine to suffuse my cheek In the olive that becomes a lamp to shine through my cupped hands In these and not only in these does He circulate Pouring from the sun at 5' o'clock as if at noon Dancing on the lake, pure honey And all the chatter over tea! But in the quiet you find me out You find me out Plucking myself from Me So that I become you The breath in my nape-nerve Sweetly saying: I bow to the God in you

It is late, for the harvest is in. Before, we hoped that the full vines would bring a plenitude of fine grapes, but the clusters are slow to ripen and the landlords picked unripe bunches from the branch. We have many grapes now—green and sour.

The happiness of continual victory, the happiness of desire triumphantly gratified, the happiness of total satisfaction - is suffering. It is the death of the soul. It is a sort of permanent moral dyspepsia. Never mind the philosophers of the Vedas and the Sankhya, I, Gleb Nerzhin, I myself, a prisoner in harness for five years, have risen by my own efforts to a level of development at which the bad can also be seen as the good - and it is my firm belief that people do not know themselves or what they should aspire to. They squander their strength in the pointless scramble for a handful of material goods and die without even discovering their own spiritual riches.