"Fable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grasped Schoppen of beer and Rhine wine hemmed in by an army of expectant throats, for the time was at hand when would sound Donner's motive from the balcony: music made by brass instruments warning the elect that "Rheingold" was about to unfold its lovely fable of water, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Prophet. It is believed by his followers that the body still lies in the coffin in the same state as when it was first buried. There is also a story that the coffin of Mohammed rests somewhere between heaven and earth, suspended in the air. But this fable was invented by enemies to bring ridicule on the prophet and ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... given them profitable employment for many a year." He speaks of a time {222b} "when the inventive head and the sustaining heart of trade were held in bondage by the unruly lower members." A pity that the English working-men will not let themselves be pacified so easily with thy fable as the Roman Plebs, thou modern Menenius Agrippa! Finally, he relates the following: At one time the coarse mule-spinners had misused their power beyond all endurance. High wages, instead of awakening thankfulness towards the manufacturers and leading to intellectual ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... first in the adjustment of the harmony of the individual stanza as a verse paragraph, and secondly in the management of their fable. Spenser has everywhere a certain romance-interest both of story and character which carries off in its steady current, where carrying off is needed, both his allegorising and his long descriptions. The Fletchers, unable to impart ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... haue read in some mappes, and descriptions of these countries, to be an idole after the forme of an old woman that being demanded by the Priest, giueth them certaine Oracles, concerning the successe, and euent of things, I found it to be a very fable. [Sidenotes: A fable. The Sea.] Onely in the Prouince of Obdoria vpon the sea side, neare to the mouth of the great riuer Obba, there is a rocke, which naturally (being somewhat helped by imagination) may seeme to beare the shape of a ragged woman, with a child in her armes (as the rocke by ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... without seeking to know the cause of the charm which amuses and seduces us. To anatomize love would be to enter upon its cure. Psyche lost it for having been too curious, and I am tempted to believe that this fable is a lesson for those who wish ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... the breed, unless it crosses with it. The common law of inheritance may be expected to keep both the original and the variety mainly true as long as they last, and none the less so because they have given rise to occasional varieties. The tailless Manx cats, like the curtailed fox in the fable, have not induced the normal breeds to dispense with their tails, nor have the Dorkings (apparently known to Pliny) affected the permanence of ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... uninteresting hole I then thought it! Having run the punt as far as we could into the opening, there still remained about six feet of water to cross before reaching the sandy mud beyond. A plank, however, that we brought with us served as a bridge. The story of the otters was no fable, for here were the footprints of the beasts all over the mud. We lighted candles and looked into the hole. The ground rose and the roof descended, so that to enter it was necessary to lie perfectly flat, and to crawl along by a movement very like that of swimming; then the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... poems, where the incidents are fictitious? The prosperity of no empire, nor the grandeur of no king, can so agreeably affect in the reading, as the ruin of the state of Macedon, and the distress of its unhappy prince. Such a catastrophe touches us in history as much as the destruction of Troy does in fable. Our delight, in cases of this kind, is very greatly heightened, if the sufferer be some excellent person who sinks under an unworthy fortune. Scipio and Cato are both virtuous characters; but we are more deeply affected by the violent death of the one, and the ruin ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... my view of the operations of the Colonization Society, in relieving the slave States of the evil which weighs them down more than a hundred tariffs, is illustrated by an old fable, in which it is stated, that a man was seen at the foot of a mountain, scraping away the dust with his foot. One passing by, asked him what he was doing? I wish to remove this mountain, said he. You fool, replied the other, you can never do it in that way. Well, said he, I ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... cover them, and let them swell in the hot water till they are soft. Then drain them, and extract the stones; spread the prunes on a large dish, and dredge them with flour. Take one jill or eight large fable-spoonfuls from a quart of rich milk, and stir into it, gradually, eight spoonfuls of sifted flour. Mix it to a smooth batter, pressing out all the lumps with the back of the spoon. Beat six eggs very light, and stir them, by degrees, ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... such as enuied the mans good fortune: euen so may it hereby appeare that in some cases euen Lions themselues may either be hindered by the contempt, or aided by the helpe of the poore mise, according vnto the fable of Esope. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... this it pleased God that he should fall asleep, and in his sleep Santiago appeared to him with a good and cheerful countenance, holding in his hand a bunch of keys, and said unto him, "Thou thinkest it a fable that they should call me a knight, and sayest that I am not so: for this reason am I come unto thee that thou never more mayest doubt concerning my knighthood; for a knight of Jesus Christ I am, and a helper of the Christians against the Moors." ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... that, from the repeated changes of belief which have taken place in the course of five or six thousand years, the memory of what happened at a remote date has perished, or, if any trace of it remain, has come to be regarded as a fable to which no credit is due; like the Chronicle of Diodorus Siculus, which, professing to give an account of the events of forty or fifty thousand years, is held, and I ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... national reputation, but I hardly cared for that, since he was the pleasantest companion I had ever met. I found myself gossiping to him about our village worthies, making him laugh heartily at their sayings passed into tradition and fable among us boys; for our one-eyed shoemaker and our corpulent grocer, like many other country wits to fortune and to fame unknown, surpassed either Douglas Jerrold or Sydney Smith in quip and drollery. And I did not omit George ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... exemplification of this; repeated columns of assault launched by Lee against our lines came up in succession and were defeated before the other parts of his army could arrive in time to sustain the attack. He realized the old fable. The peasant could not break the bundle of fagots, but he could break one at a ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... on the way who were going from Kumbakumba to Chama to beat up recruits for an attack on the Katanga people. The request was sure to be met with alarm and refusal, but it served very well to act the part taken by the wolf in the fable. A grievance would immediately be made of it, and Chama "eaten up" in due course for daring to gainsay the stronger man. Such is too frequently the course of native oppression. At last Kumbakumba's town came in sight. Already the large district of Itawa has tacitly ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... subject can be of universal, hardly can it be of general concern: but there are events and characters so popularly known in those countries where our art is in request, that they may be considered as sufficiently general for all our purposes. Such are the great events of Greek and Roman fable and history, which early education and the usual course of reading have made familiar and interesting to all Europe, without being degraded by the vulgarism of ordinary life in any country. Such, too, are the capital subjects of Scripture history, which, besides their general notoriety, become ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... of her husband's household, and declares that the narrative is quite true, the same subject had been dealt with by most of the old story-tellers prior to her time, and Deslongchamps points out the same incidents even in the early Hindoo fables (see the Pantcha Tantra, book I., fable vi.). A similar tale is to be found in the Gesta Romanorum (cap. cxxii.), in the fabliaux collected by Legrand d'Aussy (vol. iv., "De la mauvaise femme"), in P. Alphonse's Disciplina Clericalis (fab. vii.), in the Decameron (day vii., story vi.), and in ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to which he gave the title of La Legende des Siecles is thus described in the preface to the first scenes: 'Exprimer l'humanite dans une espece d'oeuvre cyclique; la peindre successivement et simultanement sous tous ses aspects, histoire, fable, philosophie, religion, science, lesquels se resument en un seul et immense mouvement d'ascension vers la lumiere; faire apparaitre, dans une sorte de miroir sombre et clair—que l'interruption naturelle ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... it, looks trustingly in his face and thrusts forth its paw to tear him? Who blames the gorilla? Torn from its dam, caged or chained, it owes its captor a grudge. To the serpent? The story of the warming of the serpent in the man's bosom, is a mere fable. No man was ever fool enough to warm a serpent in his bosom. And the serpent never crosses the path of man if he can help it. The most deadly is that which is too sluggish to get out of his way—therefore bites in self-defense. And the serpent generally ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... were started, When youth departed From the half-hearted Riccardi's bride; For, saith your fable, Great Love is able To slip the cable ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... called karos, made of sheep's skin, with the wool turned inwards. The women arrange it with a long point, which forms a sort of hood, in which they place their children. Both men and women wear leather rings upon their arms and legs—a custom, which gave rise to the fable that this race rolled puddings round their limbs, to feed on from time to time. They also wear copper and iron rings, but these ornaments ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... in strict metaphysical reality, a son of Venus. Having satisfied the rural mind, which thus, unconsciously, accepts an absolute truth under a physical disguise, the metaphysical thinker, the philosopher, also accepts the same fable, knowing and realizing its ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... from the foam of the sea, and the fabled groves of the mysteries of Venus gave place to primitive shrines of Christian worship, while innumerable Grecian legends were merged in early Christian traditions, imparting some of their own tint of fable, yet baptizing anew the groves and hillsides to sanctity. Beautiful hillsides, rippling down to the sea-coasts; and plains, nestling among the mountain slopes, littered with remnants of vast temples ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... The mythological fable which existed among the Indians as to the manner in which this plant was first bestowed upon mankind, is extremely whimsical, somewhat discreditable, and withal of such a nature as to preclude the propriety of our introducing it in this place to the acquaintance of our readers. But writers ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... become English. But they did become Christians, and indeed showed a particular disposition to become monks. Moderns who talk vaguely of them as our hardy ancestors never do justice to the real good they did us, by thus opening our history, as it were, with the fable of an age of innocence, and beginning all our chronicles, as so many chronicles began, with the golden initial of a saint. By becoming monks they served us in many very valuable and special capacities, but not notably, perhaps, in the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... he, what would nine bring in a month? Amazingly, they brought nothing, and the rest was silence. Here was a matter of intricate diplomacy never to come within that youth his ken. The morning voyage to the post-office, long mocked as a fable and screen by the families of the sages, had grown so difficult to accomplish for one of them, Colonel Flitcroft (Colonel in the war with Mexico), that he had been put to it, indeed, to foot the firing-line against his wife (a lady of celebrated determination and hale-voiced at seventy), and ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... we have the naked legend of the negro's origin, one of those nursery tales in which the ignorant of Christendom still believe But the deduction from the fable and the testimony to the negro's lack of intelligence, though unpleasant to our ignorant ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... fable answers very well as a hit at the critics; but I am by no means sure that the god was in the right. I am by no means certain that the true limits of the critical duty are not grossly misunderstood. Excellence, in a poem ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the "True Story" Mark Twain had sent the "Fable for Good Old Boys and Girls"; but this Howells returned, not, as he said, because he didn't like it, but because the Atlantic on matters of religion was just in that "Good Lord, Good Devil condition when a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... peoples space With life and mystical predominance; Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love This visible nature, and this common world, 115 Is all too narrow: yea, a deeper import Lurks in the legend told my infant years Than lies upon that truth, we live to learn. For fable is Love's world, his home, his birth-place; Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans, 120 And spirits; and delightedly believes Divinities, being himself divine. The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... day-beam, and the star of night, And every rolling planet of the sky, Around their circling orbits. O my love! Guided by thee, has not my daring soul, O'ertopt the far-off mountains of the east, Where, as our fathers' fable, shad'wy hunters Pursue the deer, or clasp the melting maid, 'Mid ever blooming spring? Thence, soaring high From the deep vale of legendary fiction, Hast thou not heaven-ward turn'd my dazzled sight, ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... defined as the historical animal. The faculty which, in after ages, was to chronicle the realities developed by time, had at first no employment but to place on record the productions of the imagination. Hence, fable blossomed and ripened in the remotest antiquity. We see it mingling itself with the primeval history of all nations. It is not improbable that many of the narratives which have been preserved for ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... marry me. Don't look like that, Aunt Sarah. It is true;—it is, indeed." She had now dragged her chair close to her aunt's seat upon the sofa, so that she could put her hands upon her aunt's knees. "All that about Miss Brownlow has been a fable." ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... verse is more striking than the sweetness of particular lines. We have not mentioned all the phases of Mr. Taylor's genius. Some of the smaller poems in his volume border on the sensuous; and in "Hylas" he has paid a tribute to ancient fable worthy of its refined inventors; but scenes of moral and natural sublimity are those in which he succeeds best, and by them he ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... me say for myself, that I will not yield to the king of minstrels, Geoffrey Rudel, though the King of England hath given him four manors for one song. I would be willing to contend with him in romance, lay, or fable, were the judge to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of his soul. He beheld himself to be as the dog in the fable that had dropped the substance to snatch ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... pantomimi was then revived, to add to the attractions of court-dances. Under the Roman empire the pantomimi had represented either a mythological story, or perhaps a scene from a Greek tragedy, by mute gestures, while a chorus, placed in the background, sang cantica to narrate the fable, or to describe the action of the scene. The question is whether mute pantomimic action, which is the essence of modern ballet, was carried through those court entertainments, in which kings, queens, princes and princesses, took parts with the courtiers; or whether it is of later growth, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... after luncheon, the Duke broached the subject of the ransoms again, still maintaining the fable of selling ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... with the Bible, as giving us the earliest historical point at which Christianity is assailable. What then has modern criticism accomplished on the Bible? The Biblical account of the creation it has shown to be, in its literal sense, an impossible fable. To passages thought mystical and prophetic it has assigned the homeliest, and often retrospective meanings. Everywhere at its touch what seemed supernatural has been humanized, and the divinity that hedged ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... banged faintly, and in the great room rose the busy silence of those minutes which precede repasts. Suddenly the four men by the breakfast fable stood back. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would say; especially when I reflected how he would misdoubt my words, nor deem the tale true when I should tell him that a kite had carried off my turband with the gold pieces, but rather would he think that I had practised some deceit and had devised some amusing fable by way of excuse. Howbeit I hugely enjoyed what had remained of the ten Ashrafis and with my wife and children fared sumptuously for some days. Presently, when all the gold was spent and naught remained ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... that time a thing happened in Skane which created a good deal of discussion and even got into the newspapers but which many believed to be a fable, because they had not been ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the continent Atlantis. Perhaps its very existence is but a fable now: it has been many centuries since we have had instruments to record thought force from Earth, and we have lost touch. But, my friends, even then we of Venus had conquered space, and it was we who visited Atlantis to find ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... think that many times it helps to get a different view of things. You remember the fable of the golden windows, do you not? A little boy who had very few pretty things in his own home because his parents were poor, used often to stand in his own doorway at sunset time and look longingly at the big house at the ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... in his early ambition, wished to pass himself off as a gentleman, and called himself Brissot de Warville, as Danton did D'Anton, and Robespierre de Robespierre; but when these worthies were endeavouring to send M. de Warville to the scaffold as an aristocrat, he invented this fable of his father's having some landed property at Ouarville en Beauce (not Beance), and that he was called, according to the custom of the country, from this place, where, it seems, he was put out to nurse. When the dread of the guillotine made M. de Warville anxious ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... two-twenty or less would bring American Match crumbling about their ears. When it was selling at one-fifty or less he could buy it back, pocket his profit, complete his deal with Mr. Stackpole, pocket his interest, and smile like the well-fed cat in the fable. It was as simple as twiddling his thumbs, which he ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... It was, therefore, composed almost simultaneously with Eugene Aram, and afforded to me at least some relief from the gloom of that village tragedy. It is needless to observe how dissimilar in point of scene, character, and fable, the one is from the other; yet they are alike in this—that both attempt to deal with one of the most striking problems in the spiritual history of man, viz., the frustration or abuse of power in a superior intellect originally inclined ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to a regular examination of the tragedy before us, in which I shall treat separately of the Fable, the Moral, the Characters, the Sentiments, and the Diction. And ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... prisoner by the Turks during his tour in the Holy Land, and could be ransomed only by an enormous sum. The extensive travels of the Duke probably originated this tale. The people at large still preserve that traditional fable-loving train of ideas which is so pleasantly shown in their "Duke Ernest." The narrator of this news was a tailor, a neat little youth, but so thin that the stars might have shone through him as through Ossian's misty ghosts. Altogether, he was made up of that eccentric mixture of humor and melancholy ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sale, And each fall'n nation's melancholy tale. Lo! where of late the Book of Martyrs stood, Old pious tracts, and Bibles bound in wood; There, such the taste of our degenerate age, Stand the profane delusions of the STAGE: Yet virtue owns the TRAGIC MUSE a friend, Fable her means, morality her end; For this she rules all passions in their turns, And now the bosom bleeds, and now it burns; Pity with weeping eye surveys her bowl, Her anger swells, her terror chills the soul; She makes the vile to virtue yield applause, ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... that nothing can be known, yet will not give up the unprofitable pursuit, because, even while making the discovery, he still hopes vainly that he may yet, in his own person, give the maxim the lie. For ever soaring to the sun, he was for ever realizing the fine Grecian fable of Icarus; and the sea of disappointment into which he perpetually fell, with its tumultuous tides and ever-chafing billows, bearing him on from whirlpool to whirlpool, for ever battling and for ever lost. He was unconscious, as we ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... why then may they not continue justly to partake of the same Privileges and Advantages that are enjoyed by England, which may truly be esteemed their Head, to which they are inseparably joined, as being essential Parts of the same Body Politick? I need not relate the Fable of the Head and Members, for every one knows the Moral inferred from it; how that unless the Members travel and labour for the Service of the Head and Body, and the Head contrives, and the Body conveys Nourishment and ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... to doubt. Here, in the desert, the buried treasure was an intangible thing. In England, the promises of the Greek's dying message were satisfying by their very vagueness. In Africa, face to face with the tremendous solitude, they became unbelievable, a dim fable akin to the legends of vanished islands and those mysterious races to be found only in unknown lands, which have tickled the imaginations of mankind, ever since the dawn of human intelligence. So, a live millionaire being a more definite asset than the hoard of a forgotten city, she ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... of Grecian history and even of Grecian fable. We are inspired by ancient poetry and eloquence, as well as by the bards and orators of modern times. Painting and sculpture are the equal admiration of every refined age. The virtue of patriotism ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... of red ink. In his little cyclist hand-book there is a diary, and in the diary there is an entry of these things—it is there to this day, and I cannot do better than reproduce it here to witness that this book is indeed a true one, and no lying fable written to while away ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... Mrs. Wesselhoeft's "Fable Stories" are proving themselves more and more acceptable to the children. "Old Rough" is a decided ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has flown—or in other no less ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... on that sort of research, little knowledge has been gained; and the most diligent inquirers have been compelled either to confess that they were baffled, or rather than own their disappointment, to substitute fable for fact, and pass the fictions of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... the door and dropped from the platform. Then he threw off his hat as he always did when excited, and ran. And how he ran! With his fists clenched and his arms tight against his sides he ran as though the hip-boots were the seven-league boots of fable. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... the best fertilizer of the soil. So old an authority as Aesop taught us that in his fable of 'The Buried Treasure,' but it was a terribly expensive sort of fertilizer in my day when it had to come out of the muscles of men and beasts. One plowing a year was all our farmers could manage, and that nearly broke ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... well as defiance in her voice—scorn because he stood before her so silently; scorn because the fierce torrent of her anger had flowed unchecked. She had only to stand up to him, it seemed, and like the giant of the fable he dwindled to a pigmy. She was no longer hurt by his passivity. She despised him ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and fable press hard upon us as we approach the famous Valley of Mexico and its fine capital. This is the region where that singular "stone age" flourished, of pyramid-building and stone-shaping peoples. Here both geology and history have written their ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... gold-fable was vastly exaggerated. To be sure there was gold, no one could deny that, but it occurred very rarely, and in terrible places to get at. One had to put in ten dollars' worth of work, to get out one dollars' worth of dust. And provisions were so high ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... because, within three days after they had appeared in print, the moralist who wrote them, walking home with a friend, heard a story about another friend, which story he straightway believed, and which story was scarcely more true than that sausage fable which is here set down. O mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! But though the preacher trips, shall not the doctrine be good? Yea, brethren! Here be the rods. Look you, here are the scourges. Choose me a nice long, swishing, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the shadows of our childishness, and they show that we have a long journey before us; and they gain their strength from the fact that we gather them together out of the future like the bundle of sticks in the fable, when we shall have the strength to snap ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... This fable teaches us that it is better to put up with a trifling loss, than to run the risk of losing all we have by going to ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... in the open and die there, if need be! To live in this rat hole, breathing plague, is dying already! Caonabo is a fable! These people! Spaniards have but to lift voice and ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... there is an old fable, which, as we say, is 'as true now as it ever was,' of a glorious creature with wings, and whoever mounts him gets a flying ride into the clouds. But the ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... Ascabart. "These two sons of Anak flourished in romantic fable. The first is well known to the admirers of Ariosto by the name of Ferrau. He was an antagonist of Orlando, and was at length slain by him in single combat.... Ascapart, or Ascabart, makes a very material figure in the History of Bevis of Hampton, by whom he was conquered. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... fable of Jupiter helping his son Hercules.] And by the order of this battell wee maye learne whereof the poets had their inuention, when they faine in their writings, that Jupiter holpe his sonne Hercules, by throwing ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (1 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... exact statements of truth? Not always. The primitive human mind could only lisp its wonderful glimpses of truth in legend and myth. And so in fable and allegory the early Israelites sought to show the power of good over evil, and thereby stimulate a desire for right conduct, based, of course, on right-thinking. And thus it is that the most significant thing in their sacred records is their many, many stories of the triumph of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Circassian Richard Garnett The Female Phaeton Matthew Prior The Lure John Boyle O'Reilly The Female of the Species Rudyard Kipling The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue William Watson Suppose Anne Reeve Aldrich Too Candid by Half John Godfrey Saxe Fable Ralph Waldo Emerson Woman's Will Unknown Woman's Will John Godfrey Saxe Plays Walter Savage Landor Remedy Worse than the Disease Matthew Prior The Net of Law James Jeffrey Roche Cologne Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epitaph on Charles II John Wilmot Certain Maxims of Hafiz Rudyard Kipling A Baker's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... you did, and letting that brother of mine get away sneering and sniggering at me, with his nose cocked up in the air, and swelling with pride till he's like the frog in the fable." ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... miracle of harmony!—a calm set in round the negro minstrel. Orpheus was no fable: the animals obeyed this new enchantment; and when Dick, on recovering from his terror, was unable to understand what was going on around him, he saw himself surrounded by an audience a hundred fold more attentive to the charms of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... fire-making, how fire-making led to the subjugation of electricity. Much of the most telling work of fire can be better done by its great successor, while electricity performs many tasks possible only to itself. Unwitting truth there was in the simple fable of the captive who let down a spider's film, that drew up a thread, which in turn brought up a rope—and freedom. It was in 1800 on the threshold of the nineteenth century, that Volta devised the first electric battery. In a hundred years ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... Maria Theresiens Leben, p. 44 n. (who cites the Vienna Pamphleteers, without much believing them); Mailath (a Hungarian), Geschichte des OEsterrichischen Kaiser-Staats (Hamburg, 1850), v. 11-13 (who explodes the fable). Cut down to the practical, it stands as above:—by no means a bad thing still. That of "bringing in Baby" was a pretty touch in the domestic-royal way;—and surely very natural; and has no "art" in it, or none to blame and not love rather, on the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories short and serial, article and essay; drama, verse, satire and sermon; dialogue, fable and fantasy, comment and review. It is written entirely by ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... been at the fellow's shop a fortnight, I began to suggest that their return would gratify me to the degree of rapture. Mr. Krome put us off with one excuse and another (all equally plausible) and presently a month had rolled by. Like the man in the fable who tried brickbats when kind words were no longer of avail, I threatened to turn the work of glazing over to another glazier who was not so busy with his lying as to prevent him from attending to the duties of his legitimate trade. This served as a mild remedy, for ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths even under the patches of fiction's harlequinade. This fable about the Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu books, and has likewise the same occult meaning. But then like ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... some other thing. For, so far as our consciousness is concerned, things are merely groups of actual and potential reactions on our own part, that is to say of expectations which experience has linked together in more or less stable groups. The practical man and the man of science in my fable, were both of them dealing with Things: passing from one group of potential reaction to another, hurrying here, dallying there, till of the actual aspect of the landscape there remained nothing in their thoughts, ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... satisfy me! The systems devised by the sages are but tales imagined to amuse the eternal childishness of men. We divert ourselves with them, as we do with the stories of The Ass, The Tub, and The Ephesian Matron, or any other Milesian fable." ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... a nymph in the fable he was wrong; but he never addressed to me a word in French that was not in good taste. Before we condemn him, uncle, let us see for ourselves. It is a habit you have always recommended to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurl'd Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides. Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou to our moist vows deny'd, Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, 160 Where the great vision of the guarded Mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold; Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth. And, O ye Dolphins, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... that gave a new turn of the fables into choliambics. Nobody that I know of mentions him but Suidas, Avienus, and Tzetzes. There's one Gabrias, indeed, yet extant, that has comprised each fable in four sorry iambics. But our Babrius is a writer of another size and quality; and were his book now extant, it might justly be opposed, if not preferred, to the Latin of Phaedrus. There's a whole fable of his yet preserved at the end of Gabrias, of 'The Swallow and the Nightingale.' Suidas ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... call Lamb's religion that helped him to enjoy life so humbly, heartily, and delicately, and to give to others the sensation of all that is most enjoyable in the things about us. It may be said of him, as he says of the fox in the fable: 'He was an adept in that species of moral alchemy, which turns everything into gold.' And this moral alchemy of his was no reasoned and arguable optimism, but a 'spirit of youth in everything,' an irrational, casuistical, 'matter-of-lie' persistence ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the old fable of "The Man and the Lion," where the lion complained that he should not be so misrepresented "when the ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... abounding sense of humor, and always employed it in illustration of his argument—but never for the mere sake of provoking merriment. In this respect he had the wonderful aptness of Franklin. He often taught a great truth with the felicitous brevity of an Aesop fable. His words did not flow in an impetuous torrent, as did those of Douglas; but they were always ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... that it was probably among his papers at Brussels, but that he doubted whether it would be possible to find it in his absence. Whether such a document ever existed, it is difficult to say. To perpetrate such a fraud would have been worthy of Charles; to fable its perpetration not unworthy of the Cardinal. In either case, the transaction was sufficiently high-handed and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... true. No ward in all the hospital would take him in to lie side by side with the most miserable white wreck there. Like the bat in Aesop's fable, he belonged to neither race; and the pride of one, the helplessness of the other, kept him hovering alone in the twilight a great sin has brought to ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... believe the Egyptians so perished, or that God ever appeared in a pillar of cloud, I reply, "Be it so—believe or disbelieve, as you choose;—This is yet assuredly the fact, that the author of the poem or fable of the Exodus supposed that, under such circumstances of Divine interposition as he had invented, the triumph of the Israelitish women would have been, and ought to have been, under the direction of a prophetess, expressed ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... from the other. It is practically the distinction used in the old-fashioned criticism of epic and drama, and it flows down, not unsullied, from Aristotle. Addison, for example, in examining Paradise Lost considers in order the fable, the characters, and the sentiments; these will be the substance: then he considers the language, that is, the style and numbers; this will be the form. In like manner, the substance or meaning of a lyric may be distinguished from ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... concerned, on all points which can be tested, the Pentateuchal writer states that which is not true. What, therefore, is his authority on the matter—creation by a Deity—which cannot be tested? What sort of "inspiration" is that which leads to the promulgation of a fable as divine truth, which forces those who believe in that inspiration to hold on, like grim death, to the literal truth of the fable, which demoralises them in seeking for all sorts of sophistical shifts to bolster up the fable, and which finally is discredited and repudiated when the fable is finally ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... manifestation of what is in the man for the man himself. It is the deepest, it is the best in him, but it may not be in the least his own yet. It is one thing to have a mine of gold in one's ground, know it, and work it; and another to have the mine still but regard the story as a fable, throw the aureal hints that find their way to the surface as playthings to the woman who herself is but a plaything in the owner's eyes, and mock her when she takes them for precious. In a word, every man in love shows better than he is, though, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... would not!" But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his example, but having got in, could only stay ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... for a madman, and laughed him to scorn. Notwithstanding which, the wiser sort could not let it sink into their belief, that a stranger, who had no interest to deceive them, should undergo so many hardships and dangers, and come so far, on set purpose to cheat them with a fable. In these considerations, they were desirous of clearing those doubts, which possessed them, in relation to those mysteries which they had heard. Xavier answered them so distinctly, and withal so reasonably, with the assistance of Paul de Sainte Foy, who served him for interpreter ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... he been so insignificant a person. And he, whose conversation was so sought after in the gay season in town, was thrown for companionship upon a scarce-grown boy whose talk was about as salted, and whose intellect as great, as those of the cockerouse in our fable. He stood it about a se'nnight, at the end of which space Philip was put on his horse, will-he-nill-he, and made ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Jews! Neither fable nor deception! Every man may test its reality for himself, for every man will carry over with him a portion of the Promised Land—one in his head, another in his arms, another ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... have set down, Only for this meridian, fit to be known Of your crude traveller.... First, for your garb, it must be grave and serious, Very reserv'd and lock'd; not tell a secret On any terms; not to your father: scarce A fable, but with caution: make sure choice Both of your company, and discourse; beware You never speak a truth— PEREGRINE. How! SIR P. Not to strangers, For those be they you must converse with most; Others I would not know, sir, but at distance, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... the arts in their infancy were, In a fable of old 'tis exprest, A wise Magpye constructed that rare Little house for young birds, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... How should you know anything about it? The young mouse in the fable thought the cat was a very fine gentleman. Con—found him!' said Mr. Falkirk, stopping short, 'how did he know? Was he at the ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... shortly he began to refuse to talk about the thing at all. The act was completed. Like the creature of fable, it had consumed itself. Out of that old man's consciousness it had departed. Amazingly. Like a dream ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... which had agitated the profoundest reasons, and to settle with a sneer, the mysteries before which the mightiest thinkers had veiled their eyes in reverence and awe; that he should profess to set aside Christianity as a childish fable not worthy a wise man's acceptance, and triumph over it as a defeated and deserted cause; this indeed filled De Vayne's mind with sorrow and disgust. So far from being impressed or dazzled by Bruce's would-be cleverness, he sincerely grieved over his ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... public, at festivals, for the instruction and delight of the audience; and rehearsed before battle, as incentives to deeds of glory. Thus tragedy and the epic muse were born, and, in the progress of taste, arrived at perfection. It is no wonder that the ancients could not relish a fable in prose, after they had seen so many remarkable events celebrated in verse by their best poets; we therefore find no romance among them during the era of their excellence, unless the Cyropaedia of Xenophon may be so called; and it was not till arts and sciences began to revive ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... curiosity which spurred Poe and Whitman to experiment with new forms. But Lowell revealed early extraordinary gifts of improvisation, retaining the old tunes of English verse as the basis for his own strains of unpremeditated art. He wrote "A Fable for Critics" faster than he could have written it in prose. "Sir Launfal" was composed in two days, the "Commemoration Ode" ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... nothing: [Greek: apethane de kai ho plousios kai etaphe], according to his riches; it is in hell only that he receives his reward. In opposition to Gesenius, Hitzig remarks: "That transition of the signification is a fable." Following the example of Martini he derives [Hebrew: ewir] from the Arabic. But in opposition to that, Gesenius again remarks in the Thesaurus: "Sed haud minoribus difficultatibus laborat ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Grecian fable, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a fountain, and, having pined away because he could not kiss it, was changed into the flower which bears his name.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... are! He said nothing of himself. He was absorbed in my stories concerning you. I told him as pretty a fable as La Fontaine related of the Avare qui avait perdu son tresor! I said you were a beautiful chatelaine besieged by an army of lovers, but the knight errant Fortunatus had alone won your favor, and would receive your hand! The brave Colonel! I could see he ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... true, and not a fable made by the weavers of words, he who doubts may know from the fisher-folk, who to-day ply their calling amongst the reefs and sandbanks of that lonely coast. For there are those among them who, peering from the ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... the old regime. The very chair on the back of which his hand rested seemed a part of the type—one of those beautiful white chairs of the period, on which, on snowy, glittering tapestry, was woven a Fable of ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... affections, and say, that good affections are one with wisdom, and evil affections are contrary to it." When they had ascended the hill Parnassus, some guards there brought water in crystal cups from a fountain in the mount, and said, "This is water from the fountain which, according to ancient fable, was broken open by the hoof of the horse Pegasus, and was afterwards consecrated to nine virgins: but by the winged horse Pegasus they meant the understanding of truth, by which comes wisdom; by the hoofs of his feet ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... principally from the Greeks is but like the boyhood of knowledge, and has the characteristic property of boys; it can talk, but it cannot generate; for it is fruitful of controversies but barren of works. So that the state of learning as it now is appears to be represented to the life in the old fable of Scylla, who had the head and face of a virgin, but her womb was hung round with barking monsters, from which she could not be delivered. For in like manner the sciences to which we are accustomed have certain general ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... bring art as an adjunct in impressing the young mind were of the order already familiar in the New England Primer, ingenuous in their simple straightforwardness and of uncompromising faithfulness to nature. The fable of the Boy that stole Apples, which I have never been able to trace back of Webster, but through him has become a part of our mental furniture, is briskly set forth at one of its points in a queer wood-cut. The old man in his continental coat has only gone as far as words, and the ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... and ceremony, went into a learned discussion with my lord of Montacute and Master Sandy as to the origin of the snapdragon, which he, with his customary assumption of deep learning, declared was "but a modern paraphrase, my lord, of the fable which telleth how Dan Hercules did kill the flaming dragon of Hesperia and did then, with the apple of that famous orchard, make a fiery dish of burning apple brandy ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... fable or romance of Uther's son, Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore When Charlemain with all his peerage ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... poet that is—to abate the contention and at the same time cheer the meal with a pleasant tale: "it is a very old story, it has to be unearthed from the very oldest authors. I will tell you what I found about it in literature, if you will promise me first that you will not look upon it as a fable."' ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... call Kronos, and to him they sacrifice their own children, to him who had many sons by Rhea, and in a fit of madness ate his own children. And they say that Zeus cut off his privy parts, and cast them into the sea, whence, as fable telleth, was born Aphrodite. So Zeus bound his own father, and cast him into Tartarus. Dost thou mark the delusion and lasciviousness that they allege against their gods? Is it possible then that one who was prisoner and mutilated should be a god? What folly? What ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... It is a fable, written to show that it is of no use to expect people to do things which they have not the power to do. The wolf could catch lambs, but he could not learn his letters. So my little Alice can dress dollies, but she does not know how to take care ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... is, that there are so few natural chords between others' voices and this string in our souls, and that those which at first may have jarred a little by and by come into harmony with it.—But I tell you this is no fiction. You may call the story of Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what will you say to Mario and the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... circulation of the Spectator, which represents so perfectly the wit, humor, and satire of the early eighteenth century in England, was only about ten thousand copies. This limited audience smiled at the urbane delicate touches of Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison. They understood the allusions. The fable concerned them and not the outsiders. It was something like Oliver Wendell Holmes reading his witty and satirical couplets to an audience of Harvard alumni. The jokes are in the vernacular, but in a vernacular as spoken in a certain social medium. It ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... fully convinced that Claire was seeking to deceive him; but her confidence astonished him. He wondered what fable ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Infidelity was triumphant and religion was on the point of expiring. Something extraordinary seemed necessary to arrest the attention of a giddy people who were ready to conclude that Christianity was a fable and futurity a delusion. This revival has done it. It has confounded infidelity and brought numbers beyond ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... story "The Blue Ribbons," and a small blank book, in which, whenever the train stopped, Kate wrote with all her might. For Kate had a desire to convince Sylvia Joanna that one was much happier without being a countess, and she thought this could be done very touchingly and poetically by a fable in verse; so she thought she had a very good idea by changing the old daisy that pined for transplantation and found it very unpleasant, into ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... following the days in which the man had been away from his beloved oasis. The swift rush of naked feet, taking her as swiftly to the roof, where peeping between the carved marble she would look upon a distant scene, which could well have illustrated some Eastern fable. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... over infinitesimal successes. However, as I really believe there is some good done in the long run—gutta cavat lapidem non vi in this business—it is a useful and honourable career in which no one should be ashamed to embark. Always remember the fable of the sun, the storm, and the traveller's cloak. Forget wholly and for ever all small pruderies, and remember that you cannot change ancestral feelings of right and wrong without what is practically soul-murder. Barbarous as the customs ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bewailing this hardness of heart, in which he thought himself singular. "This much sunk me. I thought my condition was alone; but how to get out of, or get rid of, these things I could not." Again the very ground of his faith was shaken. "Was the Bible true, or was it not rather a fable and cunning story?" All thought "their own religion true. Might not the Turks have as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet Saviour as Christians had for Christ? What if all we believed in should be but 'a think-so' too?" So powerful and so real were his ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... with some ridiculous or evil association. The preparation had begun after the first performance of 'The Shadow of the Glen,' Synge's first play, with an assertion made in ignorance but repeated in dishonesty, that he had taken his fable and his characters, not from his own mind nor that profound knowledge of cot and curragh he was admitted to possess, but 'from a writer of the Roman decadence.' Some spontaneous dislike had been but natural, for genius like his can but slowly, amid what it has of harsh and strange, ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... a Dane, and I am English; There is a pleasant fable in old books, Ye take a stick, and break it; bind a score All in one faggot, snap it over ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson |
