"Aesop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... personate characters that are not their own. Different men, in different ages of the world, have had recourse to different modes of writing, for the promotion of virtue. Some have had recourse to allegories, others to fables. The fables of Aesop, though a fiction from the beginning to the end, have been useful to many. But we have a peculiar instance of the use and innocence of fictitious descriptions in the sacred writings. For the author of the christian religion made use ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Velazquez, passing by his marvellous portraits of kings and dwarfs, saints and poodles,—among whom there is a dwarf of two centuries ago, who is too like Tom Thumb to serve for his twin brother,—and a portrait of Aesop, which is a flash of intuition, an epitome of all the fables. Before leaving the Spaniards we must look at the most pleasing of all Ribera's works,—the Ladder-Dream of Jacob. The patriarch lies stretched on the open plain in ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... that before his bedtime, seven o'clock, Hughie spent an hour in the library, alone with his father. A golden hour, sacred to memories of the world's own childhood. He brought with him the book that was his evening's choice—Grimm, or Andersen, or AEsop. Already he knew by heart a score of little poems, or passages of verse, which Rolfe, disregarding the inept volumes known as children's anthologies, chose with utmost care from his favourite singers, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... permitted to look at the wonderful pictures in her "Arabian Nights," or "Pilgrim's Progress," or "Mother Goose," had to sit with his hands behind his back while she carefully turned the leaves. Besides these three, there was "Alice in Wonderland," and "AEsop's Fables," there was "Robinson Crusoe," and "Little Women," and two volumes of fairy tales in green and gold with a gorgeous peacock on the cover. Eugene Field's poems had come in the last box, with Riley's "Songs of Childhood" and Kipling's jungle tales. Twelve ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Aesop knew human nature very well when he wrote his fable of the old man and his ass, who tried to please everybody and ended up by pleasing nobody. Bearing this in mind, Madame Midas determined to please herself, and take no one's advice but her own with ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... soon made the cat tumble over the cascade. This may be laughed at as too trifling to record; but it is a small characteristick trait in the Flemish picture which I give of my friend, and in which, therefore I mark the most minute particulars. And let it be remembered, that Aesop at play is one of the instructive apologues ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... The story of the birds welcoming a papoose, for example, is obtained in part from the Cherokee collection, and in part from Schoolcraft, who lived among the Ojibways, or Chippewas as they are often called. That certain tales are similar to fables of AEsop is explained by the theory that a primitive people, observing ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... training for his future life. He had no books at his home, and, of course, there were but few to be had in that wild country from other homes. But among those he read over and over again, while a boy, were the Bible, "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," "A History of the United States," and Weems's "Life of Washington," all books of ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... the sake of reading all the papers that came to town. He read everything he could lay his hands on; the Bible, Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, Life of Washington and Life of Franklin, Life of Henry Clay, AEsop's Fables; he read them over and over again until he could almost repeat them by heart; but he never read a novel in his life. His education came from the newspapers and from his contact with men and things. After he read a book he would write out an analysis of it. What a grand sight to see ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Squire Featherstone's, and not the inn for which he mistook it. Who does not know every story about Goldsmith? That is a delightful and fantastic picture of the child dancing and capering about in the kitchen at home, when the old fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness—and called him Aesop, and little Noll made his repartee of "Heralds proclaim aloud this saying—See Aesop dancing and his monkey playing". One can fancy a queer pitiful look of humour and appeal upon that little scarred ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sixpence. [Footnote: Do., Account of Mrs. Marion Nicholas with Tillford, 1802. On this bill appears also a charge for Hyson tea, for straw bonnets, at eighteen shillings; for black silk gloves, and for one "Aesop's Fables," at a cost of three shillings and ninepence.] The blacksmith charged six shillings and ninepence for a new pair of shoes, and a shilling and sixpence for taking off an old pair; and he did all the iron work for the farm and the house alike, from repairing bridle bits and sharpening ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... behold it. The Turnings and Windings, edged on both sides with green cropt hedges, are not at all tedious, by reason that at every hand there are figures and water-works representing the mysterious and instructive fables of Aesop, with an explanation of what Fable each Fountain representeth carved on each in black marble. Among all the Groves in the Park at Versailles the Labyrinth is the most to be recommended, as well for the novelty of the design as the number and diversity of the fountains that with ingenuity ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... edition. In the "Fables," Gay is happy in proportion to the innocence and simplicity of his nature. He understands animals, because he has more than an ordinary share of the animal in his own constitution. AEsop, so far as we know, though an astute, was an uneducated and simple-minded man. Phaedrus was a myth, and we cannot, therefore, adduce him in point. But Fontaine was called the "Fable-tree," and Gay is just the Fable-tree transplanted from France to England. In so doing we do not ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the contrast between these twin sisters, yet their resemblance to their former selves when, six years before, she had visited England. It was the same Janie who, at seven years old, devoured books of geography and history, but laid down Aesop's Fables in disgust, unable to detect truth embedded in fiction. It was the same Millie who used coaxingly to beg for stories "all about naughty children—very naughty children—and please, auntie, they mustn't improve." The same Janie and Millie, only ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... most sharp and mortifying realities? nuts in the Will's mouth too hard for her to crack? brick and stone walls in her way, which she can by no means eat through? sore lets, impedimenta viarum, no thoroughfares? racemi nimium alte pendentes?? Is the phrase classic? I allude to the grapes in Aesop, which cost the fox a strain, and gained the world an aphorism. Observe the superscription of this letter. In adapting the size of the letters which constitute your name and Mr. Crisp's name respectively, I had an eye to your different stations in life. ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... magnificent, but not what you would have cared for. At least, they were far from my taste. In honour of the occasion, certain veteran actors returned to the stage, which they had left long ago, as I imagined, in the interests of their own reputation. My old friend Aesop, in particular, had failed so much that no one could be sorry he had retired; his voice gave way altogether. AS for the rest of the festival, it was not even so attractive as far less ambitious shows generally are; the pageants were on such an enormous scale that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... this short passage, these few verses: parse, analyse, resolve into component parts! And now, will you maintain that it is good for Tommy, tear-stained, ink-bespattered little brat, to be given AEsop's Fables, Ovid's Metamorphoses to treat in like manner? Would it not be just as sensible to insist upon his practising his skinny little ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... idea of what they mean and far more frequently than you imagine he will receive a wrong impression by confusing words like zeal and seal of similar sound and totally different meaning. A teacher accidentally found out that her class supposed that the "kid" which railed at the wolf in Aesop's fable was a little boy, and I have had a child tell me that he saw at Rouen the place, where Noah's ark was burned, of course he meant Jeanne d'Arc. "The mastery of words," says Miss Arnold, "is an essential element in learning to read. Our common mistake ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... replied Felix, complacently. "Surely you don't want every song to have a moral, like a book of Aesop's Fables?" ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... splendid, but not to your taste. I judge from my own. For, to begin with, as a special honour to the occasion, those actors had come back to the stage who, I thought, had left it for their own. Indeed, your favourite, my friend AEsop, was in such a state that no one could say a word against his retiring from the profession. On the beginning to recite the oath his voice failed him at the words "If I knowingly deceive." Why should I go on with the story? You know ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... I do not think are affirmed with any detriment to the Church; for the Church does not suffer a loss on this account; who being the pillar {185} and ground of the truth, very far shrinks from seeking, like AEsop's Jackdaw, helps and ornaments which are not her own: the bare truth shines more beautiful in her own naked simplicity." Were this principle acted upon uniformly in our discussions on religious points of faith or practice, controversy would soon be drawn within ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... epithet "theological" to Jewish literature. Solomon ben Sakbel composes a satiric romance in the Makamat[12] form, describing the varied adventures of Asher ben Yehuda, another Don Quixote; Berachya Hanakdan puts into Hebrew the fables of AEsop and Lokman, furnishing La Fontaine with some of his material; Abraham ibn Sahl receives from the Arabs, certainly not noted for liberality, ten goldpieces for each of his love-songs; Santob de Carrion is a beloved Spanish bard, bold enough to tell unpleasant truths unto a king; Joseph ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... me!" exclaimed the licentiate, "are the times of AEsop come back to us, when the cock conversed with the fox, and one ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Fable," the introductory volume to my edition of Caxton's Fables of Esope (London, Nutt, 1889).] I have come to the conclusion that a goodly number of the fables that pass under the name of the Samian slave, Aesop, were derived from India, probably from the same source whence the same tales were utilised in the Jatakas, or Birth-stories of Buddha. These Jatakas contain a large quantity of genuine early Indian folk-tales, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... take you to the Summer Gardens, where you see the trees beyond the Marble Palace," said Mr Henshaw. "I wish to show you the statue of Kryloff, the Russian Aesop, as he ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... island, about two square miles in extent, it was formerly a separate state, and is said to have received the name of AEgina from the daughter of AEsop. It is supposed that the first money of Greece ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Aesop's fable about the mountain which gave birth to a mouse may be a relic of Totemism; so also may be the mountain symbols on the standards of Egyptian ships which appear on pre-dynastic pottery; the black dwarfs of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... 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 ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... knowledge of the errors of an habit so excellent. Seek the good of other men, but be not in bondage to their faces or fancies; for that is but facility, or softness; which taketh an honest mind prisoner. Neither give thou AEsop's cock a gem, who would be better pleased, and happier, if he had had a barley-corn. The example of God, teacheth the lesson truly: He sendeth his rain, and maketh his sun to shine, upon the just and unjust; but he ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... have so dazzled their eyes and filled their imaginations with the outward lustre, as neither to regard nor consider the person or the parts of the owner within. A misfortune we undergo with somewhat less reluctancy, because it has been common to us with Pythagoras, AEsop, Socrates, and ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... Shadwell; Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco Revised (1674) by Elkanah Settle: and The Empress of Morocco. A Farce (1674) by Thomas Duffet, with an Introduction by Maximillian E. Novak. Already published in this series are reprints of John Ogilby's The Fables of Aesop Paraphras'd in Verse (1668) with an Introduction by Earl Miner and John Gay's Fables (1727, 1738), with an Introduction by Vinton A. Dearing. Publication is assisted by funds from the Chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles. Price ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... boyhood and his infrequent contact with schoolhouses, it is well to remember that he managed nevertheless to read every book within twenty miles of him. These were not many, it is true, but they included "The Bible," "Aesop's Fables," "Pilgrim's Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," and, a little later, Burns and Shakespeare. Better food than this for the mind of a boy has never been found. Then he came to the history of his own country since the Declaration of Independence and mastered it. "I am tolerably well acquainted ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... and offensive, or rather for being highly moral and correct. But there is no kind of doubt that the general legend of him may justly rank him with a race too easily forgotten in our modern comparisons: the race of the great philosophic slaves. AEsop may have been a fiction like Uncle Remus: he was also, like Uncle Remus, a fact. It is a fact that slaves in the old world could be worshipped like AEsop, or loved like Uncle Remus. It is odd to note that both ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... flattery, Your sex's much-lov'd enemy; For other foes we are prepar'd, And Nature puts us on our guard: In that alone such charms are found, We court the dart, we nurse the hand; And this, my child, an Aesop's Fable Will prove much better ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... this one question—and mind that you don't tell lies—you may not be aware of it, but you can't plead ignorance, for I now tell you that it is exceedingly wicked to tell lies, whether you be a frog or only a boy. Now, tell me, did you ever read 'Aesop's Fables?'" ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... 1828. Best plays mean secret plays; they are very nice ones. All our plays are very strange ones. Their nature I need not write on paper, for I think I shall always remember them. The 'Young Men's' play took its rise from some wooden soldiers Branwell had: 'Our Fellows' from 'AEsop's Fables;' and the 'Islanders' from several events which happened. I will sketch out the origin of our plays more explicitly if I can. First, 'Young Men.' Papa bought Branwell some wooden soldiers at ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... without knowing it, a born journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was endless, and his delight in doing so boundless. He had no difficulty for 'copy', though in those days contributors were few. He needed no contributors. He was 'Atlanticus'; he was 'Vox Populi'; he was 'Aesop.' The unsigned articles were also mostly his. Having at last, after many adventures and false starts, found his vocation, Paine stuck to it. He spent the rest of his days with a pen in his hand, scribbling his advice and obtruding his counsel ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... to these, her accumulation of pet specialities included a seven-fingered starfish, which is supposed by the ignorant to be peculiarly inimical to the adventurous cat that swalloweth it; and a ring-horned pandalus or 'Aesop prawn,' which queer creature Master Bob appropriately christened 'The Prawnee Chief,' much to the annoyance of Miss Nell, who had become quite grand now in her language, becoming 'puffed up,' as Bob said, with her newly-acquired 'knowledge'—a 'little' ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the world would have a matter hid, Since Truth is seldom friend to any crowd, Men write in fable, as old AEsop did, Jesting at that which none will name aloud. And this they needs must do, or it will fall Unless they please they are ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the man of supreme fortitude; the honest man, the truthful king, and the woman that knows how to wait for the man she loves; voices in the air, signs in the sky—in short, everything. Even poor old Aesop wasn't in time to grasp a reputation for originality. The modern story-teller may combine, extend, and elaborate; but all opportunity for a display of invention seems ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... her own thoughts made her to be hated. Therefore unto him hastily she goes And, like light Salmacis, her body throws Upon his bosom where with yielding eyes She offers up herself a sacrifice To slake his anger if he were displeased. O, what god would not therewith be appeased? Like Aesop's cock this jewel he enjoyed And as a brother with his sister toyed Supposing nothing else was to be done, Now he her favour and good will had won. But know you not that creatures wanting sense By nature have a mutual appetence, And, wanting organs to advance ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... accent, and corrected his elders who dropped the aspirate. With unconscious irony John Stuart Mill wrote in his "Autobiography," "I learned no Latin until my eighth year, at which time, however, I was familiar with 'AEsop's Fables,' most of the 'Anabasis,' the 'Memorabilia' of Xenophon, and the 'Lives of the Philosophers' by Diogenes Laertius, part of Lucian, and the 'Ad Demonicum' and 'Ad Nicoclem' of Isocrates." Besides these he had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... frightening them into "being good,"—tales of the spectral Lamie, or of the horrid witch Mormo who will catch nasty children; or of Empusa, a similar creature, who lurks in shadows and dark rooms; or of the Kabaloi, wild spirits in the woods. Then come the immortal fables of Aesop with their obvious application towards right conduct. Athenian mothers and teachers have no two theories as to the wisdom of corporeal punishment. The rod is never spared to the spoiling of the child, although during the first years the slipper is sufficient. Greek children ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Sir Kenelm Digby, then abroad; an edition of Buxtorf's Hebrew Grammar; an Essay by Lord Herbert of Cherbury; some metrical religious remains of Francis Quarles, then just dead; some attempts to introduce the mystic Jacob Bohme, by specimens of his works; a translation of AEsop's Fables and those of Phaedrus; the issue of the second and third parts of the Epistolae Hoelianae or James Howell's Letters, with a re-issue of his "Dodona's Grove;" and a re-issue of Randolph's comedy of "The Jealous Lovers." Clearly, as the Civil War was ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... support for it, and a strainer, to the Sigeans for the Prytaneum." The second, which says, "I also am the gift of Phanodicus," repeating the substance of the former inscription, adds, "if any mischance happens to me, the Sigeans are to mend me. AEsop and his brethren made me." The lower inscription is the more ancient. It is now nearly obliterated. Kirchhoff considers it to be not later than Olympiad ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Tragedy, which, though far inferior to Shakespeare's Hamlet, resembled it in many ways. This likeness has caused scholars to suspect that Kyd wrote the early Hamlet; and their suspicions are strengthened by an ambiguous and apparently punning allusion to AEsop's Kidde in the passage by Nash mentioned above. A crude and brutal German play on the subject has been discovered, which is believed by many to be a translation of Kyd's original tragedy. If this ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... classics. Most of the great Latin authors had been printed prior to 1500, the most important exception being the Annals of Tacitus, of which the editio princeps was in 1515. Between the years 1478 and 1500, the following Greek works had been published, and in this order: Aesop, Homer, Isocrates, Theocritus, the Anthology, four plays of Euripides, Aristotle, Theognis, and nine plays of Aristophanes. Follow the dates of the editiones principes of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... naturalists, render them piquant moralists; for they are not really interpreting animals, but under the mask of animals maliciously painting men. Such fables are morally interesting and plausible just because they are psychologically false. If AEsop could have reported what lions and lambs, ants and donkeys, really feel and think, his poems would have been perfect riddles to the public; and they would have had no human value except that of illustrating, to the ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... No, Barabas, this must be look'd into; And, since by wrong thou gott'st authority, Maintain it bravely by firm policy; At least, unprofitably lose it not; For he that liveth in authority, And neither gets him friends nor fills his bags, Lives like the ass that Aesop speaketh of, That labours with a load of bread and wine, And leaves it off to snap on thistle-tops: But Barabas will be more circumspect. Begin betimes; Occasion's bald behind: Slip not thine opportunity, for ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... when this order was going to be put in execution, Madame de Fleury was sitting in the midst of the children, listening to Babet, who was reading AEsop's fable of The old man and his sons. Whilst her sister was reading, Victoire collected a number of twigs from the garden: she had just tied them together; and was going, by Sister Frances' desire, to let her companions ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... give to Ajax the same commendation that the holy scripture gives to king Saul, with regard to his stature. He has been the subject of several tragedies, as well in Greek as Latin; and it is related that the famous comedian, AEsop, refused to act that part. The Greeks paid great honor to him after his death, and erected to him a noble monument upon the promontory of Rhoeteum, which was one of those Alexander desired ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... Lion in Love,' of AEsop's fable. He will let her draw his teeth yet," said Mr. Clarence, in a low tone, quite drowned in the joyous swell of ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... reached us, consists of nearly a hundred pieces. Of these three-fourths are fables proper; being not so much translations from the Greek of Aesop as versions of the traditional stories, written and unwritten, which were the common inheritance of the Aryan peoples. Mixed up with these are a number of stories which are not strictly fables; five of them ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... been AEsop," he said, slyly, "I would have added another touch to a certain tale. Observe, please!—even after the Lamb has been devoured he is still the object of calumny on the part of the Wolf! Well, well! Mademoiselle, come and ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... For then would he himself be likely to lack work. For surely the rich man's substance is the wellspring of the poor man's living. And therefore here would it fare by the poor man as it fared by the woman in one of AEsop's fables. She had a hen that laid her every day a golden egg, till on a day she thought she would have a great many eggs at once. And therefore she killed her hen and found but one or twain in her belly, so that for a ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... one boy to make a fight. Even your bully does not like to "pitch on" an inoffensive school-mate. You remember AEsop's fable of the wolf and the lamb, and what pains the wolf took to pick a quarrel with the lamb. It was a little hard for Pewee to fight with a boy who walked quietly to and from the school, without giving anybody cause ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... rest of his life. Since, therefore, he could not dispatch Memory, he sought to immure her. Since Valerie's sovereignty was so fast stablished that it could not be moved, he sought to rule his heart out of his system. Had it been possible, he would, like Aesop's Beaver, have ripped the member from him and gone heartless ever after. The Fabulous Age being dead, Anthony made the best shift he could, and strove to bury kingdom and queen together so deep within ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... courts of the barons? What should we do without the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' the 'Compleat Angler,' 'Pepys' Diary,' and all the rest of the ancient books? And, going back a few centuries, what an amount we should miss had we not 'AEsop's Fables,' the 'Odyssey,' the tales of the Trojan War, and so on. It is from the archaeologist that one must expect the augmentation of this supply; and just in that degree in which the existing supply is really a necessary part of ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... the world, who now they are unperched, and reduced to an equality with other people, and under strong and very just apprehensions of being further treated as they deserve, begin, with AEsop's cock, to preach up peace and union, and the Christian duties of moderation, forgetting that, when they had the power in their hands, these graces were strangers in ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... own the moral not exact, Besides, the tale is false, in fact; And so absurd, that could I raise up, From fields Elysian, fabling. Aesop, I would accuse him to his face, For libelling the four-foot race. Creatures of every kind but ours Well comprehend their natural powers, While we, whom reason ought to sway, Mistake our talents every day. The Ass was never known so stupid To act the part of Tray or Cupid; Nor leaps upon his ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... is, I find, promised with my story. If there are any among my readers who loved Aesop's Fables chiefly on account of the Moral appended, they will perhaps be pleased to turn backward and learn what I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... prejudice of childhood, which has never known doubt, which ignores science, which cannot respect or understand or tolerate different convictions—such a faith is a stupidity and a hatred, the mother of all fanaticisms. We may then repeat of faith what Aesop said ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... salvation, but the more they labored the more impatient, miserable, uncertain, and fearful they became. What else can you expect? You cannot grow strong through weakness and rich through poverty. People who prefer the Law to the Gospel are like Aesop's dog who let go of the meat to snatch at the shadow of the water. There is no satisfaction in the Law. What satisfaction can there be in collecting laws with which to torment oneself and others? One law breeds ten more until their number ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... against our rules; For they are fops, the other are but fools. Who would not be as silly as Dunbar? As dull as Monmouth, rather than Sir Carr?[52] The cunning courtier should be slighted too, Who with dull knavery makes so much ado; Till the shrewd fool, by thriving too, too fast, Like AEsop's fox becomes a prey at last. 60 Nor shall the royal mistresses be named, Too ugly, or too easy to be blamed, With whom each rhyming fool keeps such a pother, They are as common that way as the other: Yet sauntering ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... hand of a morning, and said, "And how is Miss Eliza's little beau?" And I laughed, and looked important, and talked rather louder, and escaped as often as I could from the nursery, and endeavoured to act up to the character assigned me with about as much grace as AEsop's donkey trying to dance. I must have become a perfect nuisance to any sensible person at this period, and indeed my father had an interview with ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 1520, or thereabouts, which he represents as if told him by an old wife and nurse, one Mother MAUD. Here are "The Wolf,"—"Brer Wolf"—and the simple-minded Jackass, both are going to confession to Father Fox—"Brer Fox." AEsop is, of course, the common origin of all such tales. The extracts which I have come across, are to be found in a small book compiled by the Rev. THOMAS BRIDGETT, entitled, The Wit and Wisdom of Sir Thomas More. The Baron ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... were fast slipping beyond his control, to be sure, as he engaged in these endless schemes; and ill-disposed people of the day said that the king was like Aesop's dog, lapping the river dry in order to get at the skins floating on the surface. The Duke of Parma was driven to his wits' ends for expedients, and beside himself with vexation, when commanded to withdraw his ill-paid and mutinous army from the Provinces for the purpose of invading ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... they chose to attribute to the Government Customs duties. To conciliate them, the Governor abolished Customs duties at Kororareka. Naturally a cry at once went up from other parts of the Colony for a similar concession. The unhappy Governor, endeavouring to please them all, like the donkey-owner in AEsop's Fables, abolished Customs duties everywhere. To replace them he devised an astounding combination of an income-tax and property-tax. Under this, not only would the rich plainly pay less in proportion than the poor, but a Government ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... to the age of sixteen he had read aloud to his mother—not once, but several times—the "Vicar of Wakefield", "Robinson Crusoe," the "Pilgrim's Progress," and "Tales of a Grandfather", "Aesop's Fables," and a variety of tales and stories and histories of lesser note—all of which he stored up in a good memory, and gave forth in piecemeal to his unlettered companions as opportunity offered. Better than all this, he had many and many a time read his Bible through, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... sister were learning still better things at their mother's knee, alternately hearing and reading stories from the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress," "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," and other books, common now, but rare enough in the backwoods in ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... By Ludovic Halevy. Abbott. By Sir Walter Scott. Adam Bede. By George Eliot. Addison's Essays. Edited by John Richard Green. Aeneid of Virgil. Translated by John Connington. Aesop's Fables. Alexander, the Great, Life of. By John Williams. Alfred, the Great, Life of. By Thomas Hughes. Alhambra. By Washington Irving. Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass. By Lewis ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the reeds, [p 7] And the WIDOW-BIRD came, though she still wore her weeds. Sir John HERON, of the Lakes, strutted in a grand pas, But no card had been sent to the pilfering DAW, As the Peacock kept up his progenitor's quarrel, Which AEsop relates, about cast-off apparel; For Birds are like Men in their contests together, And, in questions of right, can dispute ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... fable of AEsop, of the boy and the wolf, had then a literal application. Every child in the days of our fathers knew the story of Putnam, and the she-wolf which he dragged from its den. This and similar tales go far to make up the popular reputation of the hero, and it was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... Aesop, Rudyard Kipling, and Thompson Seton—had prepared the First Reader Class to accept garrulous and benevolent lions, cows, panthers, and elephants, and the exploring party's absolute credulity encouraged Isaac to higher and yet higher flights, until Becky ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... years, more or less, but as a fixture—No! "Tolerate" is too harsh a word; but another might be too weak. The truth is, men do not care half so much what they get, as how they get it. The wolf in Aesop's fable keenly wanted a share of the bones which made his friend the mastiff so sleek; but the hint that the bones and the collar went together drove him hungry but free back to his desert. It is of no avail to give a man all ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... by a pair of stars would not kindle to greater warmth than did those elderly orbs into which Harry poured his gaze. Nevertheless, he plunged into their blue depths, and fancied he saw heaven in their calm brightness. So that silly dog (of whom Aesop or the Spelling-book used to tell us in youth) beheld a beef-bone in the pond, and snapped at it, and lost the beef-bone he was carrying. O absurd cur! He saw the beefbone in his own mouth reflected in the treacherous pool, which dimpled, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and fables tell us, Or old folk lore whispers low, Of the origin of all things, Of the spring from whence they came, Kalevala, old and hoary, AEneid, Iliad, AEsop, too, All are filled with strange quaint legends, ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... Guardian, has given us the story of Androcles and the Lion. He prefaces it by saying that he has no regard "to what AEsop has said upon the subject, whom," says he, "I look upon to have been a republican, by the unworthy treatment which he often gives to the king of beasts, and whom, if I had time, I could convict of falsehood and forgery in almost every matter ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the usual column of 'The Argus', December 1852. Many could afford to laugh at it, the intelligent however, who had immigrated here, permanently to better his condition, was forced to rip up in his memory a certain fable of Aesop. Who would have dared then to warn the fatted Melbourne frogs weltering in grog, their colonial glory, against their contempt for King Log? Behold King Stork is your reward. ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... reach Our Lady, hide not from her that your end Is labour that would lessen wrong.'" Where it is to be observed that, as our Lord says, "We ought not to cast pearls before swine," because it is not to their advantage, and it is injury to the pearls; and, as Aesop the poet says in the first fable, a little grain of corn is of far more worth to a cock than a pearl, and therefore he leaves the pearl and picks up the grain of corn: reflecting on this, as a caution, I speak and give command to the ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... is a fable about as unjust to the ocean, as some of AEsop's are to the animals. The ocean is a magnanimous element, and would scorn to assassinate a poor fellow, let alone taunting him in the act. But I don't understand what you say about enmity couched in friendship, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... current, this operation was thought impracticable. He always constructs his bridges of wood, and endeavours to give as little resistance to the water as possible: his supporters are numerous, but slender; and there is an interval between each. He tells me this idea first struck him from reading Aesop's fable of the Reed and the Oak: the reed, by yielding, was unhurt by a tempest, which tore up the ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... obscurely, so as the learned only can understand him; that is to say, he teacheth them that are already taught. But the poet is the food for the tenderest stomachs; the poet is, indeed, the right popular philosopher. Whereof AEsop's tales give good proof; whose pretty allegories, stealing under the formal tales of beasts, make many, more beastly than beasts, begin to hear the sound of virtue from ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... announces a special publication, a reprint of JOHN OGILBY, The Fables of Aesop Paraphras'd in Verse (1668), with an Introduction by Earl Miner. Ogilby's book is commonly thought one of the finest examples of seventeenth-century bookmaking and is illustrated with eighty-one plates. Publication is assisted by funds from the Chancellor ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... that time Solomon had left to his foolish son, Rehoboam. Little did Solomon imagine that when he advanced Jeroboam he was preparing the instrument of his son's ruin, and that this Ephraimite would prove to be like the viper Aesop tells of, which a kind-hearted man took in from the cold, but which when roused by warmth from its torpor, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... stratagems. As to the crafty, they are ever in danger, either by being overreached one by another or of falling in a hurry into some snare of their own, where, as commonly happens, should they be caught, they are treated with a full measure of severity.—Aesop, Jr., in America. ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... AESOP, novelist, nature faker. Little is known of his childhood except that he was fond of dogs and played with the cat. Later he made animals his life's study. A. discovered the zoological principal that a turtle can run faster than a rabbit, and that foxes never eat sour grapes. Publications: Fables; ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... and History of Aesop is involved, like that of Homer, the most famous of Greek poets, in much obscurity. Sardis, the capital of Lydia; Samos, a Greek island; Mesembria, an ancient colony in Thrace; and Cotiaeum, the chief city of a province of Phrygia, contend for the distinction ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... well known that several of the most distinguished authors of antiquity, and amongst them Aesop and Terence, were, or had been slaves. Slaves were not always taken from barbarous nations, and the chances of war reduced highly civilized ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... were poets or fabulists, and could invest inanimate objects with all the qualities and feelings of animate ones; if, with all the magic of old AEsop, we could make pots and kettles talk, and endue barn-door fowls with the spirit of philosophy, we should be tempted to say that the great gates of Beaufort House, together with the stone Cupids on the tops of the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... turned by the success of his first volume, which was published at Kilmarnock in June 1786. It contained some of his most justly celebrated poems, the results of his scanty leisure at Lochlea and Mossgiel; among others "The Twa Dogs,"—a graphic idealization of Aesop,—"The Author's Prayer," the "Address to the Deil," "The Vision" and "The Dream," "Halloween," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the lines "To a Mouse" and "To a Daisy," "Scotch Drink," "Man was made to Mourn," the "Epistle to Davie," and some of his most popular songs. This epitome of a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... dignity of women." They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the sexes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while AEsop's fable of the Lion and the Man also explains ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the authors who are called profane, such as Xenophon, Plato, Cicero, the Emperor Antoninus, the Emperor Julian, Virgil, etc., to the books which we are told are inspired of God. I can truly say that the fables of Aesop, for example, are certainly more ingenious and more instructive than all these rough and poor parables which ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... erect, or no muscles by which they can be erected, enlarge themselves when alarmed or angry by inhaling air. This is well known to be the case with toads and frogs. The latter animal is made, in AEsop's fable of the 'Ox and the Frog,' to blow itself up from vanity and envy until it burst. This action must have been observed during the most ancient times, as, according to Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood,[21] the word toad expresses in all the languages ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... disgrace, backbite, rail, bear false witness, swear, forswear, fight and wrangle, spend their goods, lives, fortunes, friends, undo one another, to enrich an harpy advocate, that preys upon them both, and cries Eia Socrates, Eia Xantippe; or some corrupt judge, that like the [350]kite in Aesop, while the mouse and frog fought, carried both away. Generally they prey one upon another as so many ravenous birds, brute beasts, devouring fishes, no medium, [351]omnes hic aut captantur aut captant; aut cadavera quae lacerantur, aut corvi qui lacerant, either deceive ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Englished Galland and Richardson. The tale is very old. It appears as the Brahman and the Pot of Rice in the Panchatantra; and Professor Benfey believes (as usual with him) that this, with many others, derives from a Buddhist source. But I would distinctly derive it from AEsop's market-woman who kicked over her eggs, whence the Lat. prov. Ante victoriam canere triumphum to sell the skin before you have caught the bear. In the "Kalilah and Dimnah" and its numerous offspring it is the "Ascetic with his Jar of oil and honey;" in Rabelais ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... well till a watchman approaches, hiding himself under his gray coat, and trying to shoot the tiger. The donkey thinks it is a gray female donkey, begins to bray, and is killed. On a similar fable in AEsop, see Benfey, "Pantschatantra," vol. i., p. 463; M. M., "Selected Essays," vol. i., ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... entertain them, I fancy, or you. What a dreary thing a dinner party made up of such people must be—like "Aesop's Fables," where the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the French air! and what an etourdi bete is one of our untravelled islanders! When he would make his court to me, let me die but he is just AEsop's ass, that would imitate the courtly French in his addresses; but, instead of those, comes pawing upon me, and doing all things so mal ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... as in every other calling the first great requisite is self-reliance. The man who depends upon his neighbors, as Aesop illustrates in one of his fables, never has his work done. But when he says that he will do it himself on a certain day, then it is prudent for the bird that has been nesting in his grainfield to change ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Thracian sea-shore, she was stolen by some Phoenician mariners, carried to Samos, and bought by Iadmon, one of the geomori, or landed aristocracy of the island. The little girl grew day by day more beautiful, graceful and clever, and was soon an object of love and admiration to all who knew her. AEsop, the fable-writer, who was at that time also in bondage to Iadmon, took an especial pleasure in the growing amiability and talent of the child, taught her and cared for her in the same way as the tutors whom we keep ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... think he had? Just three: the Bible, Aesop's Fables, and The Pilgrim's Progress. Think of that, you boys and girls who have more books than you can read, and for whom the printing presses are always hard at work. The boy knew these three books almost by heart. He could repeat whole chapters ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... all less than a year, but this good step-mother encouraged him to study at home and he read every book he heard of within a circuit of many miles. He read the Bible, Aesop's Fables, Murray's English Reader, Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, A History of the United States, Weem's Life of Washington and the Revised Statutes of Indiana. He studied by the fire-light and practiced writing with a pen made from a buzzard's quill dipped ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... small things has been pointed out by philosophers over and over again from AEsop downward. "Great without small makes a bad wall," says a quaint Greek proverb, which seems to go back to cyclopean times. In an old Hindoo story Ammi says to his son, "Bring me a fruit of that tree and break it open. What ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... fables was based upon the combination of two ideas—that of the stiff dry moral apologue of AEsop, and that of the short story. By far the most important of these two elements was the latter. With the old fabulists the moral was the excuse for the fable; with La Fontaine it was the other way round. His moral, added ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the most complete history of the Esopic Fable, see vol. i of Mr. Joseph Jacobs' edition of The Fables of Aesop, as first printed by Caxton in 1484, with those of Avian, Alfonso, and Poggio, recently published by Mr. David Nutt; where a vast amount of erudite information will be found on the subject in all its ramifications. Mr. Jacobs, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... nearly thus, if we remember rightly, runs the story of the Sanscrit Aesop. The moral, like the moral of every fable that is worth the telling, lies on the surface. The writer evidently means to caution us against the practices of puffers, a class of people who have more than once talked the public into the most absurd errors, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eloquent orators, illustrious painters, renowned architects, great historians, immortal poets, and wonderful deities; Spartan mothers, Thermopylae defenders, and Persian invaders; beautiful Helen, muscular Hercules, crusty Diogenes, deformed AEsop, silver-tongued Demosthenes, fleet-footed Mercury, drunken Silenus, stately Juno, and lovely Venus,—a confused procession of mortals and immortals ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... peculiar to the Southwest will take their user to the Aztecs, to Spain, and to the border of ballads and Sir Walter Scott's romances. I found that I could not comprehend the coyote as animal hero of Pueblo and Plains Indians apart from the Reynard of Aesop ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... will do well enough when Aesop tells it of a serpent;—he, indeed, can change his skin and be a serpent still; but when the old Sufi, or any one else, tells it of a boy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Madame von Morien, with a bewitching smile, which displayed two rows of the most exquisitely white teeth, "dear friend, you should always leave open a way of retreat; even as Aesop in descending the mountain was not happy in the easy and delightful path, but already sighed over the difficulties of the next ascent, so should women never be contented with the joys of the present moment, but prepare ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... "Bundle o' sticks, Tom Breeks. Don't let slip 'bout bundle o' sticks," pulled spokesman up short. He turned hurriedly to say, "All right," and inflated his chest to do justice to the illustration of the faggots of Aesop: but Mr. Tom Breeks had either taken in too much air, or the ale that had hitherto successfully prompted him was antipathetic to the nice delicacy of an apologue; for now his arm began to work and his forehead had to be mopped, and he lashed the words "Union ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... each Book, and grouped after their Fables. The name is spelled "Aesop" in Riley, "Esop" in Smart and in the Contents. Inconsistencies in fable numbering are described at the beginning of ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... of rapid colour-change is seen in cuttlefishes, where it is often an expression of nervous excitement, though it sometimes helps to conceal. It occurs with much subtlety in the AEsop prawn, Hippolyte, which may be brown on a brown seaweed, green on sea-lettuce or sea-grass, red on red seaweed, and so ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... because you are ignorant and heedless, and have never read your Aesop. 'Tis he who tells us that the lark was born before all other creatures, indeed before the Earth; his father died of sickness, but the Earth did not exist then; he remained unburied for five days, when the bird in its dilemma ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... See AEsop's Fables, No. 121. Halme. [Greek: Drapetes] is the title. All readers of Plautus and Terence know what a bugbear to slaves the threat of being sent to the mill was. They would have to turn it instead of horses, or ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... was driven from its ancient camping-ground. Of late years the jays have visited us only at intervals; and in winter their bright plumage, set off by the snow, and their cheerful cry, are especially welcome. They would have furnished Aesop with a fable, for the feathered crest in which they seem to take so much satisfaction is often their fatal snare. Country boys make a hole with their finger in the snow-crust just large enough to admit the jay's head, and, hollowing it out somewhat ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... reviving a little in the desire to vindicate the variety of her reading. "I know the reading in this book isn't pretty; but I like the pictures, and I make stories to the pictures out of my own head, you know. But I've got 'AEsop's Fables,' and a book about Kangaroos and ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... as these, then, are the books which our Roman boy would have to read. Composition would not be forgotten. "Let him take," says the author just quoted, "the fables of Aesop and tell them in simple language, never rising above the ordinary level. Then let him pass on to a style less plain; then, again, to bolder paraphrases, sometimes shortening, sometimes amplifying the original, but always following ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... very strange ones. Their nature I need not write on paper, for I think I shall always remember them. The 'Young Men's' play took its rise from some wooden soldiers Branwell had; 'Our Fellows' from AEsop's Fables; and the 'Islanders' from several events which happened. I will sketch out the origin of our plays more explicitly if I can. First, 'Young Men.' Papa bought Branwell some wooden soldiers at Leeds; ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... therefore attributed it to his household gods, to whom he made an immediate supplication for assistance, or rather for forbearance of further affliction: this disposition in man has been finely pourtrayed by Aesop in his fable of "the Waggoner and Hercules." The motion which in despight of himself was excited in his machine, his diseases, his troubles, his passions, his inquietude, the painful alterations his frame underwent, without his being able to fathom the true causes; at length death, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... of fable, the fox has been the principal hero. The most ancient fables on record, those of Lokman, the Arabian, from whom AEsop took most of his, gives him a very conspicuous place among the crafty courtiers of the lion. The chief phrase of which the wily flatterer makes use, as he bows with affected humility to his sovereign, is, "Oh, Father of Beauty," by which indirect ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... water: what shall we see? Nothing at first; but wait a minute or two: a little round black knob appears in the middle; gradually it rises higher and higher, till at last you can make out a frog's head, with his great eyes staring hard at you, like the eyes of the frog in the woodcut facing AEsop's fable of the frog and the bull. Not a bit of his body do you see: he is much too cunning for that; he does not know who or what you are; you may be a heron, his mortal enemy, for aught he knows. You move your arm: he thinks it is the heron's bill coming; down he goes again, and you ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... to Louvain, and there live by teaching Greek; and in this design I was heartened by my brother student, who threw out some hints that a fortune might be got by it. 'I set boldly forward the next morning. Every day lessened the burthen of my moveables, like Aesop and his basket of bread; for I paid them for my lodgings to the Dutch as I travelled on. When I came to Louvain, I was resolved not to go sneaking to the lower professors, but openly tendered my talents to the principal himself. ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... we had, All able to make one stark drunk or mad. But I with courage bravely flinched not, And gave the town leave to discharge the shot. We had at one time set upon the table, Good ale of hyssop, 'twas no AEsop-fable: Then had we ale of sage, and ale of malt, And ale of wormwood, that could make one halt, With ale of rosemary, and betony, And two ales more, or else I needs must lie. But to conclude this drinking aley-tale, We had a sort of ale, ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... would naturally endeavour to increase the number of those established and respected maxims, and to express their own sense of what was either proper or improper conduct, sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what are called the fables of Aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one of apophthegms or wise sayings, like the proverbs of Solomon, the verses of Theognis and Phocyllides, and some part of the works of Hesiod. They might continue in this manner, for a long time, merely to multiply the number of those maxims of prudence and morality, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... I," said Peterkin, "what pleases other people will always please me. Only I wish we have not got King Stork, instead of King Log, like the fabliau [fable] that the Clerk of Saint Lambert's used to read us out of Meister Aesop's book." ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the Rite, those entitled to, 136-m. Adversity, blessings and advantages of, 145-m. Aeschylus accused of representing the Mysteries on the stage, 384-l. Aeschylus and others declare life is not a scene of repose, 691-u. Aesop and others declare the object of suffering is beneficial, 691-u. Aesch Mezareph says the seven lower Sephiroth represent seven metals, 798-l. Affliction, a loneliness in, 189-m. Affliction, words go but ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... harmless display of merry pranks, which hit alike at gods and men without any particular object in view. Whatever was remarkable about birds in natural history, in mythology, in the doctrine of divination, in the fables of Aesop, or even in proverbial expressions, has been ingeniously drawn to his purpose by the poet; who even goes back to cosmogony, and shows that at first the raven-winged Night laid a wind-egg, out of which the lovely Eros, with golden pinions (without doubt a bird), soared aloft, and thereupon ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... pictures would be plentiful enough. However, there is the apparently authenticated anecdote of young Goldsmith's turning the tables on the fiddler at his uncle's dancing-party. The fiddler, struck by the odd look of the boy who was capering about the room, called out "AEsop!" whereupon Goldsmith is said to ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... the explanation of why Aesop's fox found the grapes to be sour which grew on a trellis, for he had expected to find them of easy access on the ground. Aesop was a Phrygian, and, while Bentley has proved that Aesop never wrote the existing fables which go by that name, yet it is recognized ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... roll of such perishable materials would have escaped destruction when the cathedral was burned in 1106;—from the unfinished state of the story;—from its containing some Saxon names unknown to the Normans;—and from representations taken from the fables of AEsop being worked on the borders, whereas the northern parts of Europe were not made acquainted with these fables, till the translation of a portion of them by Henry Ist, who thence obtained his surname of Beauclerk.—These and other considerations, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... GABRIUS, a Greek poet of uncertain date; turned the fables of AEsop and of others into ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the Royal Library at Windsor, which includes the unique perfect AEsop, and one of the two books on vellum (the Doctrinal of Sapience) printed by Caxton; the Archiepiscopal one at Lambeth, rich in rare early printed books and MSS., and the Chetham and Rylands foundations at Manchester, the latter comprehending the Althorp treasures en bloc. Humphrey ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... cursed with grafters and parasites—men who live off the body economic and give nothing substantial in return. But an appearance of uselessness is not always proof of such. We should not condemn men in ignorance. As old as Aesop is the fable of the rebellion of the other members of the body against the idle unproductiveness of the belly. In this passage the fable is used as an answer to the plebeians of Rome who have complained that the patricians ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... Syncretic genius, and his associates, by the designation they have chosen, by the terms of their agreement, are bound to cry each other up—to defend one another from the virulent attacks of common sense and plain reason. They are sworn to stick together, like the bundle of rods in AEsop's fable. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... over and night had gathered, the stroke of fantasy predominates and tends to comprise the whole. Men spun their fictions from the materials with which their minds were stored, much as we do to-day, and the result was a cycle of beast-fables—an Odyssey of the brute creation. Of these the tales of Aesop are the best examples. The beast-fable has never quite gone out of fashion, and never will so long as men retain their world-wonder, and childishness of mind. A large part of Gulliver's adventures belong ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... (albeit somewhat at hazard) it is possible to ascribe Aesop, about whom nothing is known except that he wrote the fables which have been imitated from generation to generation. The collection that we possess under his name is one of these imitations, perpetrated long after his death, but as to which it is ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... are the Snobs of this world: and never, since the days of Aesop, were they more numerous in any land than they are at present ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Leonard Willan, his peculiar friend. A wretched poet; author of "The Phrygian Fabulist; or the Fables of AEsop" (1650), "Astraea; or True ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... "merry and wise." Not a jest will be admitted that might be liable to misconstruction by the Council of Nice. The Comic Muse has been too apt to mistake liberty for license, and has been proportionably licentious; the Comic Ballads will be as particular as Seneca or Aesop in their regard for good morals. Nothing, in short, will be inserted but what is cut out for the female ear. To conclude—the said Melodies will be issued by Messrs. Clementi and Co., of Cheapside. Be sure to ask for "Comic Melodies," as all others are counterfeits, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... to tell the father that he is come; with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy who is got into Guy of Warwick, and the Seven Champions, and who shakes his head at the improbability of AEsop's Fables, is Steele's or Addison's, though I believe it belongs to the former. The account of the two sisters, one of whom held up her head higher than ordinary, from having on a pair of flowered garters, and that of the married lady who complained ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the honour of introducing to the public, the brothers Thomas and John Bewick's first efforts in wood-engravings, early and crude as they undoubtedly were. They are to be found in Hutton "On Mensuration," and also in various children's and juvenile works, such as AEsop's and Gay's Fables. We give some of the earliest known of their work in this ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... Name of Printer. Folio. This edition is printed in a fine large open gothic type. There is the usual whole length cut of AEsop. The other cuts are spirited, after the fashion of those in Boccacio De Malis Mulier. Illust.—printed by John Zeiner at Ulm in 1473. The present is a fine, sound copy: ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... he saw was impossible if anything had seemed unbelievable in this elfin girl. She laid open upon the table a finely illuminated copy, in Greek, of Aesop's Fables, written on vellum in a precise ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... of all wisdom, all eloquence, and of all good and prudent action. The right instruction of youth does not consist in cramming them with a mass of words, phrases, sentences, and opinions collected from authors. In this way the youth are taught, like Aesop's crow in the fable, to adorn themselves with strange feathers. Why should we not, instead of dead books, open the living book of nature? Not the shadows of things, but the things themselves, which make an impression upon the ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... could breed men having the tenacity of bulldogs, or, like the Spartans, 'lacking the wit to run away in battle,' would the world be any the better? Many of the noblest specimens of the human race have been among the weakest physically. Tyrtaeus or Aesop, or our own Newton, would have been exposed at Sparta; and some of the fairest and strongest men and women have been among the wickedest and worst. Not by the Platonic device of uniting the strong and fair with the strong and fair, regardless of sentiment and morality, nor ...
— The Republic • Plato
... by the bale for the whole household, could we reasonably expect the girl to announce the fact, in the parlor above, in the same tone in which she ordinarily states that the butcher has called for his orders? Aesop, in his very first fable, (as arranged by good Archdeacon Croxall,) has inculcated but a mean opinion of the cock who forbore to crow lustily when he turned up a jewel of surpassing richness, in the course of his ordinary scratching, and under his own very beak; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... there lived a poor slave whose name was Aesop. [Footnote: Aesop (pro. e'sop).] He was a small man with a large head and long arms. His face was white, but very homely. His large eyes ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... seeing how much of the tiger enters into the human composition, that there should be a good dose of the monkey too. If Aesop had not lived so many centuries before the introduction of masquerades and operas, he would certainly have anticipated my observation, and worked it up into a capital fable. As we still trade upon the stock of the ancients, we seldom deal in any other manufacture; and, though nature, after ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... same manner at Rome, during the banishment of Cicero,(214) when some verses of Accius,(215) which reproached the Greeks with their ingratitude in suffering the banishment of Telamon, were repeated by AEsop, the best actor of his time, they drew tears from the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation: like as it was with AEsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... a goddess, only embraced a cloud: in these imaginary fruitions of fancy I resemble the birds that fed themselves with Zeuxis' painted grapes; but they grew so lean with pecking at shadows, that they were glad, with Aesop's cock, to scrape for a barley cornel.[1] So fareth it with me, who to feed myself with the hope of my mistress's favors, sooth myself in thy suits, and only in conceit reap a wished-for content; but if my food be no better than ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... as if he had had a private press of his own, and had issued dainty little tractates on Dutch paper to be fought for by bibliophiles. His prejudices, his desultoriness, his occasional lack of correctness of fact (he speaks of "Fontaine's Translation" of AEsop, and makes use of the extraordinary phrase, "The whole Council of Trent with Father Paul at their head," than which a more curious blunder is hardly conceivable), his wayward inconsistencies, his freaks of bad taste, would in all probability ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of the seed-storing habit. Mr. Moggridge points out that the ancients were familiar with the facts, and quotes the well-known fable of the ant and the grasshopper, which La Fontaine borrowed from Aesop. Mr. Moggridge (page 5) goes on: "So long as Europe was taught Natural History by southern writers the belief prevailed; but no sooner did the tide begin to turn, and the current of information to flood from north to south, than ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... hastily she goes, And, like light Salmacis, her body throws Upon his bosom, where with yielding eyes She offers up herself a sacrifice To slake his anger, if he were displeas'd: O, what god would not therewith be appeas'd? Like AEsop's cock, this jewel he enjoy'd, And as a brother with his sister toy'd, Supposing nothing else was to be done, Now he her favour and goodwill had won. But know you not that creatures wanting sense, By nature have a mutual appetence, And, wanting organs ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... contain every edition of a Greek author. It comprised the first editions of the De Officiis of Cicero, the Natural History of Pliny, Cornelius Nepos, the History of Ammianus Marcellinus, the Fables of AEsop, the Works of Plato, and of many other Greek and Latin writers; the greater number of them being printed on vellum. A vellum copy of the Rationale of Durandus, printed by Fust and Schoeffer at Mentz in 1459; a first edition of the Teseide of Boccaccio, printed ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... by Zarotus. 1476. Folio. This is an exceedingly rare edition of the Decameron. It is executed in the small and elegantly formed gothic type of the printer, with which the Latin AEsop, of the same date, in 4to, was printed. Notwithstanding this copy is of a very brown hue, and most cruelly cut down—as the illuminated first page but too decisively proves—it is yet a sound ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin |
