"Fable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... according to the fable, is a creature hatched in the chilling waters of Arctic regions, and is consequently by nature so cold that it delights in the burning heat of a furnace. Fire, said the ancients, cannot consume it nor ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... swept away from the higher regions of the intelligence. "For several to command," says he, "is not good, there should be but one chief. A tradition, handed down from the remotest antiguity, and transmitted under the veil of fable, says that all the stars are gods, and that the Divinity embraces the whole of nature. And round this idea other mythical statements have been agglomerated, with a view to influencing the vulgar, and for political ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the world there came a time when there was danger of truth being corrupted and mingled with fable among those who did not follow the guidance of God, as did Abraham and the patriarchs; then the great lawgiver, Moses, was given the divine commission to make a written record of the creation of the world and of man and to transmit it to later ages; and because ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... like the Jews in the Maccabees, we rely upon the Lord to fight our battles, without lifting a weapon in our defence, or, like the wagoner in the fable, we content ourselves with calling on Hercules, we shall find in the end that 'Faith without Works is dead.' ... The world, as you say, is 'the world'—a quarrelling, vicious, fighting, plundering world—yet it is a very good world for good men. Why should man torment ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... canyon, which had seemed like a hunter's fable rather than truth. Slone's sight dimmed, blurring the spectacle, and he found that his eyes had filled with tears. He wiped them away and looked again and again, until he was confounded by the vastness and the grandeur and the vague sadness of the scene. Nothing he ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... is well worth while for us to know, once and always, that they are not a similitude, nor a fable nor semi-fable; that they are an everlasting highest fact! "No Lake of Sicilian or other sulphur burns now anywhere in these ages," sayest thou? Well, and if there did not! Believe that there does not; believe it if thou wilt, nay hold by it as a real increase, a rise to higher stages, to wider ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... at him, but they had no more effect upon the culprit than did the grass upon the bad boy in the fable; so the farmer got a long pole and prodded the apple thief until he whined and came scratching ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... life, he wrote a work in their defence. The theory that errors of transcription might possibly have crept into the text, was totally rejected. No such thing could, by any contingency, occur. The fable of Aristeas was still considered worthy a place in the canon. The sanctity of the Hebrew language, and other Rabbinical notions, were defended. Christ was discovered in every book of the Old Testament; ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... in the sun, and to my great surprise fifty-four returned to life, licked themselves clean, and joyfully went back to the hive, where they probably informed their companions of such an adventure and escape, as I believe had never happened before to American bees." Must one regard this as a fable? It is by no means as remarkable a yarn as one may find told by other naturalists of the same century. There is, for example, that undated letter of John Bartram's, in which he makes inquiries of his brother William concerning "Ye Wonderful ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... fable teaches that money will not buy everything in European travel, though some Americans imagine it will. It will not, for instance, buy comfort or decency, though it will secure privacy in a French sleeper ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... that the novel is not a drama, not a history, nor fable, nor any sort of philosophical treatise. It may have sentences, paragraphs, or perhaps chapters, in every style and of the highest excellence, as a shapeless architectural pile may rejoice in some exquisite ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... die in childbirth as she had never done so before. I have no explanation for the "denouement" and give the story as it happened, allowing my readers to judge for themselves whether or no any credence should be given to the fable after such ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... charming story is supposed to have but little foundation in fact. Many of Rodrigo's legendary exploits are still less authentic; but history and fable unite in declaring him a warrior of no common stamp. His master, King Ferdinand, as we have said, invaded the territories of his brothers and friends, besides those of his enemies. Garcia, Ramirez, and Bermudez successively fell before his attacks, which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... exercise their delightful vein in those points of highest knowledge, which before them lay hidden to the world; for that wise Solon was directly a poet it is manifest, having written in verse the notable fable of the Atlantic Island, which was continued by Plato. {6} And, truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin, as it were, and beauty depended most of poetry. ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... Thyrza must not discover her excitement, and went up the stairs slowly, regaining breath, trying to smooth her face. A fable to account for Mr. Boddy's summons was ready on her tongue. She entered, and found ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Remembering also the words that Narada had said, he began to repent greatly for his folly. Even in this way, O tiger among kings, a weak and foolish person, by provoking the enmity of a powerful one, is at last obliged to repent like the Salmali in fable. Even when possessed of equal might, people do not suddenly wage hostilities with those that have injured them. On the other hand, they display their might gradually, O king! A person of foolish understanding should never provoke the hostility of one ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... gold lace. She could tell of persons who had been born above a hundred years ago, persons she had herself seen and talked to; and her way of talking was not like that of many grown-up people who make children covetous and envious. That was not grandmamma's way; she was like the eagle in the fable, always trying to encourage her eaglets to fly upwards; and she did this so pleasantly that her grandchildren were never tired of hearing her talk. One of grandmamma's stories is so interesting that we will relate it in ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... archives of his memory. To the child we owe the celebrity of the Cigale, of whose misfortunes he has babbled during his first lessons in recitation. It is he who will preserve for future generations the absurd nonsense of which the body of the fable is constructed; the Cigale will always be hungry when the cold comes, although there were never Cigales in winter; she will always beg alms in the shape of a few grains of wheat, a diet absolutely incompatible with her delicate capillary "tongue"; and in desperation ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... fable relates, it so happened one day, That their efforts combined, made a bullock their prey: But agreed that the Lion should make the division, And ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... you think of this for a marvel?" for one can never be sure that the listeners will regard the matter in the same way that the teller does. Yet here is a case that makes an exception to this good rule, and I maintain that it is in truth wonderful, and, although it has the appearance of being a fable, it ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... my sweat—was an imp of darkness. My fool's paradise I had planted with all manner of fair flowers and lordly trees, and in my folly believed that those who had been my friends were forever after assured of pleasant places, lovely perfumes, and grateful shade; but like the Grecian in the ancient fable, I found I had sown dragon's teeth, and the crop I reaped was of hatred ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... appreciates and honors courage: the courage of Christianity, which sustained martyrs in the amphitheatre, at the stake, and on the rack; the courage of Patriotism, which inspired millions in our own land to realize the historic fable of Curtius, and to fill up with their own bodies, if need be, the yawning chasm which imperiled the republic; the courage of Humanity, which is witnessed in the pest-house and the hospital, at the death-bed of ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... his stress on the separatist instincts. The individual stands alone confronted by the eternities; between these and his own soul exists the one central relation. This has all the fundamental egotism of the doctrine of personal salvation, emancipated from fable, and varnished with an emotional phrase. The doctrine has been very widely interpreted, and without any forcing, as a religious expression for the conditions of ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... (Summaria Doctrina) Hardenberg taught: "St. Augustine and many other fathers write that the body of Christ is circumscribed by a certain space in heaven, and I regard this as the true doctrine of the Church." (Tschackert, 191.) Hardenberg also published the fable hatched at Heidelberg (Heidelberger Landluege, indirectly referred to also in the Formula of Concord, 981, 28), but immediately refuted by Joachim Moerlin, according to which Luther is said, toward the ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... was not probably congenial, that he was tied hand and foot in his treatment by the learned lady's written instructions (on hearing that he had represented Venus as nude, she declared that if one single figure were altered the whole fable would be ruined), and it is only in the wide sweep of clear sky and hills and river that the ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... this fish,' he asks, 'or one resembling it in vocal qualities, have given rise to the fable of the Sirens?' ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... supplies a better fable than any invention can. If he lost any credit of design, he augmented his resources; and, at that day, our petulant demand for originality was not so much pressed. There was no literature for the million. The universal reading, the cheap press, were unknown. A great poet who appears in illiterate ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... a bad scare already, sir!" remarked Hugh, greatly enjoying the experience, although it made him think of a fable in one of his earlier books concerning the sport of stoning that was "fun for the boy but death to ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... hieroglyphic figure of Adonis seems to have signified the spirit of animation or life, which was perpetually wooed or courted by organic matter, and which perished and revived alternately. Afterwards the fable of Adonis seems to have given origin to the first religion promising a resurrection from the dead; whence his funeral and return to life were celebrated for many ages in Egypt and Syria, the ceremonies of which Ezekiel complains as idolatrous, accusing the women of Israel of lamenting over ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... is popular, because it tells the truth about people. If the ruin of Samson by a woman, and the ruin of Hercules by a woman, have a common legendary origin, it is gratifying to know that we can also explain, as a fable, the ruin of Nelson by a woman and the ruin of Parnell by a woman. And, indeed, I have no doubt whatever that, some centuries hence, the students of folk-lore will refuse altogether to believe that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... often, as the mere consequence of the transition from wood to stone, (a figure carved out of one wooden log must have necessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its sides,) these literal changes are as nothing, in the Greek fable, compared to the bestowing of apparent life. The figures of monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs separate enough; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude figures at Branchidae sitting with their hands on their knees. And, briefly, the work of Daedalus is the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... of the evening. His theme was a complaint of the iconoclastic tendency of New Historians. Nothing was safe from their sacrilegious research. Every tradition, however venerable, however precious, was resolved into a myth or a fable. "For example," he said, "we have always believed that certain lands which this college owns in Berkshire were given to us by King Alfred. Now the New Historians come and tell us that this could not have been the case, because ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain and mountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision, speckled by the dwellings of my countrymen, and subdued to fertility by their labours, the earth's very centre was fixed for me in that spot, and the rest of her orb was as a fable, to have forgotten which would have cost neither my imagination nor understanding ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Saints contain an immense quantity of material of first rate importance for the historian of the Celtic church. Underneath the later concoction of fable is a solid substratum of fact which no serious student can ignore. Even where the narrative is otherwise plainly myth or fiction it sheds many a useful sidelight on ancient manners, customs and laws as well as on the curious and often intricate ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... impression, false idea; bubble; self-decit, self-deception; mists of error. heresy &c (heterodoxy) 984; hallucination &c (insanity) 503; false light &c (fallacy of vision) 443; dream &c (fancy) 515; fable &c (untruth) 546; bias &c (misjudgment) 481; misleading &c v.. V. be erroneous &c adj.. cause error; mislead, misguide; lead astray, lead into error; beguile, misinform &c (misteach) 538 [Obs.]; delude; give a false impression, give a false idea; falsify, misstate; deceive &c 545; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... thousand bridges quicker. Science and art alone won't do, The work will call for patience, too; Costs a still spirit years of occupation: Time, only, strengthens the fine fermentation. To tell each thing that forms a part Would sound to thee like wildest fable! The devil indeed has taught the art; To make it not the devil is able. [Espying the animals.] See, what a genteel breed we here parade! This is the house-boy! that's the maid! [To the animals.] Where's the old lady gone ...
— Faust • Goethe
... thought, and sometimes it is this, most clearly, that the author is following. Not the cycle of life everlasting, in which the rage of nations is an incident, a noise and an incursion from without—but the strife itself, the irrelevant uproar, becomes the motive of the fable. War and Peace, the drama of that ancient alternation, is now the subject out of which the form of the book is to grow. Not seldom, and more frequently as the book advances, the story takes this new and contradictory alignment. The centre shifts from the general ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... wise were able In proper terms to write a fable: Their tales would always justly suit The characters of every brute. The ass was dull, the lion brave, The stag was swift, the fox a knave; The daw a thief, the ape a droll, The hound would scent, the wolf would prowl: A pigeon would, if shown by AEsop, Fly ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... amounts to saying everything must give way to the considerations of war. It is taking the argument in the fable of the wolf and the lamb as serious philosophy and accepting the position of the wolf. They fail entirely to see the humor of the fable, and hence the fallacy ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... in the country, or that they here remain longer uncorrupted than in towns, whether large or small. Nor is it proved that in former times the country possessed any advantage in these respects, as compared with our own days and with the modern town. The entire fable of rural innocence appears to rest, not upon an actual comparison between town and country, but rather upon the more lively interest felt in town life, and especially in the life of the great towns: in towns, immorality has been more carefully studied and more ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... the Incas written by Captain Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. On three cloths were figures of the Incas with their wives, on medallions, with their Ayllus and a genealogical tree. Historical events in each reign were depicted on the borders. The fable of Tampu-tocco was shown on the first cloth, and also the fables touching the creations of Viracocha, which formed the foundation for the whole history. On the fourth cloth there was a map of Peru, the compass lines for the positions of towns being ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... and deferential as they have performed their functions that I have taken no note of them, having rarely experienced serious illness. Had Aesop possessed my anatomy, he would have had small data for inditing his fable as to the discord between the "Members" and their commissariat, and the long generations might have lacked that famous incentive to harmony and co-operation. I venture to say this in explanation of my stubborn optimism, which is due much less to any tranquil ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... misery and darkness this story gained implicit belief; but at length men arose who suspected that it was a fable and imposture, and that Jesus Christ, so far from being a God, was only a man like themselves. But a numerous set of men, who derived and still derive immense emoluments from this opinion, in the shape of a popular belief, told the vulgar that if they did not believe in the Bible ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... hateful than pretension. The fable of the "Frog and the Bull" illustrates the absurdity of it. Yet it is of every-day occurrence, and we continually meet with instances of it. Persons in humble class of life will often ape their betters, dressing after them, and absolutely going without necessary food ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... 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 there. The ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... fully convinced that Claire was seeking to deceive him; but her confidence astonished him. He wondered what fable she ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... peasant and Peruvian noble. But it was upon the temple crowning a near elevation that the eye would rest, in rapt astonishment at its magnificence and grandeur. The description may sound like a scrap from some eastern fable, but none the less it is a fact culled from the ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... intended only for a moral Reflexion on the sudden Revolutions and Vicissitudes of Fortune? But the Length of this Article is inconsistent with the nature of a Reflexion; and if any thing like this was intended, it must come in as the epimuthion, the Moral of the Fable; which will make the Contents of this Article, still more different from the nature of a Character, than any thing that has ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... is to 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
... island; which is likewise a most beautiful country. Next unto Arui there are two rivers Atoica and Caura, and on that branch which is called Caura are a nation of people whose heads appear not above their shoulders; which though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for mine own part I am resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of Aromaia and Canuri affirm the same. They are called Ewaipanoma; they are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... papa took me by the hand and led me into the dark room again, and I found that the giant which had frightened me so much was nothing but a pair of trowsers, thrown over the back of an arm-chair. The next day mamma made me learn the fable of the 'Camels.'" ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... god, the burgesses were compelled to impose a threefold punishment upon their wives—they were to lose their votes; the children were to receive no more the mother's name; and they themselves were no longer to be called Athenians, after the goddess." It seems to me this fable teaches that physical force was indeed the governing power in Athens at that day, and that men ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... 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 winced at this. His steel cuirass was ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Parthenope, one of the Syrens, celebrated by Homer in his "Odyssey," being shipwrecked on this coast, landed here, and built a town, to which she gave her name; others attribute its foundation to Hercules, some to Eneas, and others to Ulysses. These are mere freaks of fiction and fable; and it is more probable that Naples was founded by some Greek colonies; this may be inferred from its own name, Neapolis, and from the name of another town contiguous to it, Paleopolis. Strabo speaks of these Greek colonies, whence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... benevolent and disinterested. Perhaps congeniality in these points led Bentley to make the statement, just quoted, a little too strong. He wrote more than a century after the witchcraft proceedings; just at that point when tradition had become inflated by all manner of current talk, of fable mixed with fact, before the correcting and expunging hand of a severe scrutiny of records and documents had commenced its work. The drag-net of time had drawn along with it every thing that anybody had said; but the process of sifting and discrimination had not begun. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... 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
... guest, if but for an hour. As the story was an old one, so many an artist before Gerome had played with it as a subject for a picture. Jean-Francois Millet himself, another pupil of Delaroche, though earlier than Gerome, had tried his hand at illustrating Anacreon's fable before he found his proper field of work in portraying the occupations of the men and women about him, the peasants among whom he ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... ever the way for others by an eternal silence—that seemed well. Punishment thereafter, the Cure would say. But was it not worth while being punished, even should the Cure's fond belief in the noble fable be true, if one saved others here? Who—God or man—had the right to take from him the right to destroy himself, not for fear, not through despair, but for others' sake? Had he not the right to make restitution to Kathleen for having given her nothing but himself, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man, and they won't have that man, from seventeen to twenty-five: but then, afraid, as the saying is, that God has forgot them, and finding their bloom departing, they are glad of whom they can get, and verify the fable of the parson ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... policy of abstention was often urged at the council-table and opposed by Wolsey, who, according to More, used to repeat the fable of the men who hid in caves to keep out of the rain which was to make all whom it wetted fools, hoping thereby to have the rule over the fools (L. and P., vii., 1114; More, English Works, p. 1434). It had cost England, says More, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... before escaping was due to his cunning. And I have seen so many instances of his cunning that, with my two scientific eyes wide open, I could believe him almost as wise as he was thought to be in the olden days of fable and folk-lore. How cool and collected he ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... interested at this early age in the variability of plants! I told another little boy that I could produce variously colored primroses by watering them with certain colored fluids, which was of course a monstrous fable, and has never been tried by me. I may here also confess that as a little boy I was much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and this was always done for the sake of causing excitement. For instance, I once gathered much valuable fruit from my father's ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... her influence and the transformation she effected. Her life and legend formed the stepping-stone for Scotland into authentic history as into a consolidated and independent existence. The veil of fable and uncertainty cleared away before the mild shining of her name and story. Like Edinburgh coming suddenly into sight, as in some old and primitive picture, high upon its rock, with the slope of the Castle Hill on one side and the precipices round, and the white ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... attacking me for? The two rats in Gogol's fable sniffed first and then ran away, but you attack ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... fable that Lamech, when he had grown old and was blind, was led by a youth into the woods to hunt wild beasts, not for the sake of their flesh but for their skins; circumstances which are altogether absurd, and at once prove the whole fable to be a lie. And they hold that Cain was there, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... of men and women give, wreck many a young man of otherwise good intentions. The sinner is the man who cannot say no. The fall through vice to sin is a matter of slow transition. One virtue after another is yielded up as the strain on the will becomes too great. In Kipling's fable of Parenness, the demon appears before the clerk in the Indian service, who has been too long a good fellow among the boys. It asks him to surrender three things in succession: his trust in man, his faith in woman, then the hopes and ambitions of his childhood. When these ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... those scribblers, who having no talents of a writer but what is taught by the writing-master, are yet nowise afraid nor ashamed to assume the same titles with the greatest genius, than their good brother in the fable was of braying ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... like a zoetrope at the rate of nineteen miles a second? Could we tolerate the notion of a mighty King delivering a sublime fiat and then remember that for all practical purposes he is hanging head downwards in space? A strange fable might be written of a man who was blessed or cursed with the Copernican eye, and saw all men on the earth like tintacks clustering round a magnet. It would be singular to imagine how very different ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... Of humour sweet, with many years to stay, Is natural enough, 'tis true; To wait for him a hundred years, And all that while asleep, appears A thing entirely new. Now at this time of day, Not one of all the sex we see Doth sleep with such profound tranquillity: But yet this Fable seems to let us know That very often Hymen's blisses sweet, Altho' some tedious obstacles they meet, Are not less happy for approaching slow. 'Tis nature's way that ladies fair Should yearn conjugal joys to share; And so I've not ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... found us to his sorrow a thousand years ago, very slow to move, even when we see a thing ought to be done. Let us hope that in this matter—we have been so in most matters as yet—we shall be like the tortoise in the fable, and not the hare; and by moving slowly, but surely, win the race at last. But now think for yourself: and see what you would do to save these people from being poisoned by bad water. Remember that the plain question is this—The rainwater comes down from heaven ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... persuade myself, that others will like this little fable as much as I do: so curiously simple, and yet so strangely profound is its delicate epitome of the old old story, the course of true love, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... upon which lay a man-child of such exquisite beauty that he could scarce have been born of mortal parents. His body was bare, but round his neck was a glistening chain of marvellously wrought gold, fastened to which was this gem lying on his breast. This was doubtless the origin of the Hebrew fable of the finding of Moses, who, as all scholars know, was not a Hebrew, but an Egyptian priest in the House ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... I look down towards his feet; but that's a fable. If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... after cure, but that still upon every cross turn of Affairs against the Church, the irresistible Magnetism of the Good Old Cause (as some still think it) would quickly draw him out of the Good Old Way. The Fable tells us of a Cat once turn'd into a Woman, but the next sight of a Mouse quickly dissolv'd the Metamorphosis, cashier'd the Woman, and restor'd the Brute. And some Virtuosi (skill'd in the useful Philosophy of Alterations) have thought ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... description—never a solitary stone came his way. But he had no heart for digging. He was always thinking of the diamonds in that remote spot which he had ignorantly let slip from his grasp, like the dog in the fable dropping the substance for the shadow. He would have gone back to look for them, but he'd spent most of his little capital in that wild-goose chase, and the miserable remnant oozed away like water in a place where the barest necessaries of life ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... quaint version of the fable from the Bestiary of Philip de Thaun, published by Mr. Wright (Popular Treatises ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... other proofs have you besides your own words that all this is not a fable based by you ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... Egyptian paintings.) And whereas Strabo is, says M. Monceaux, the only writer of antiquity who questions the existence of the dwarfs, all the others are on the side of Aristotle, who says—"This is no fable; there really exists in that region (the sources of the Nile), as people relate, a race of little men, who have small horses and who live in holes." And these little men were of course the ancestors of Schweinfurth's and ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... great, yea, most high, Sackiema, by which name they—living without a king—call him who has the command over several hundred among them, and who by our people are called Sackemakers; and as the people listen, some will begin to mutter and shake their heads as if it were a silly fable; and others, in order to express regard and friendship for such a proposition, will say Orith (That is good). Now, by what means are we to lead this people to salvation, or to make a salutary breach among them? I take the liberty ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... concubine "Aminah" (the "Faithful"), when Sakhr, transformed to the King's likeness, came in and took it. The prophet was reduced to beggary, but after forty days the demon fled throwing into the sea the ring which was swallowed by a fish and eventually returned to Sulayman. This Talmudic fable is hinted at in the Koran (chaps. xxxviii.), and commentators have extensively embroidered it. Asaf, son of Barkhiya, was Wazir to Sulayman and is supposed to be the "one with whom was the knowledge of the Scriptures" (Koran, chaps. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... does not go on growing. It is not that he does not envisage change in history, but what he seems to hope for at the best is nothing more hopeful than recurring cycles of better and worse. He tells a fable, in his dialogue 'The Statesman', of how at one time the world is set spinning in the right direction by God and then all goes well, and again how God ceases to control it, and then it gradually forgets the divine teaching and slips from good to bad and from bad to worse, until ...
— Progress and History • Various
... read again, the history of Mithridates," said Madame de Villefort in a tone of reflection, "and had always considered it a fable." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... remains on that tree by the morning.' The woman understood the metaphor, and in an hour or two, aided by other strapping Zulu females, attacked the unfortunate Basuto and killed him with clubs. But Cetywayo having thus, like the monkey in the fable, employed a cat's paw to do his dirty work, began to think the Basuto's untimely death might have an ugly appearance in my eyes, so gave orders in my presence that, as a punishment, six of the women who had killed the Basuto should also be put to death. This was too much for ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... unhappy waters, void of light, No bird presumes to steer his airy flight; Such deadly stenches from the depth arise, And steaming sulphur that infects the skies. From hence the Grecian bards their legends make, And give the name Aornus to the lake. Four fable bullocks in the yoke untaught, For sacrifice, the pious hero brought. The priestess pours the wine betwixt their horns: Then cuts the curling hair, that first oblation burns, Invoking Hecate hither to repair; (A powerful name in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... appear to extend beyond the period of the flood, and from these the "dark idolater of chance," who would rejoice to prove that "Book of Books" a splendid fable, draws his deductions. But how he fails. The learned men of China, those held in the greatest repute amongst a people where such a reputation is not easily obtained, themselves admit, that the history of their empire in its infancy, is, for the most part, apocryphal, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... me alone: I that have feign'd so many hundred gods, Can easily forge some fable for the turn: Whist, madam; away, away: you fright the fowl; Tactus comes ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... man and woman, bird, beast, and flower, life is a love-call to be eagerly followed. To Bernard Shaw it is merely a military bugle to be obeyed. In short, he fails to feel that the command of Nature (if one must use the anthropomorphic fable of Nature instead of the philosophic term God) can be enjoyed as well as obeyed. He paints life at its darkest and then tells the babe unborn to take the leap in the dark. That is heroic; and to my instinct at least Schopenhauer looks like a pigmy beside ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... said Captain Rik firmly. "They talk a deal of stuff about it, more than nine-tenths of which is lies—pure fable. I don't believe in electricity; more than that, I don't believe in steam. Batteries and boilers ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... fixed in Mr. Johnson's opinion, that he was indeed a most acute observer of their effects; and used to say sometimes, half in jest, half in earnest, that they were the remains of his old tutor Mandeville's instructions. As a book, however, he took care always loudly to condemn the "Fable of the Bees," but not without adding, "that it was the ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Bajazet was imprisoned by Timur, so long and so often repeated as a moral lesson, is now rejected as a fable by the modern writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity. They appeal with confidence to the Persian history of Sherefeddin Ali, according to which has been given to our curiosity in a French version, and from which I shall collect and abridge, a more specious narrative ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of persons, who had sold the interest of their country, and their honor, to foreign interests, would have been different from that of certain persons? For our part, we do not doubt but that this report is a fable. The folly, the pride, the obstinacy which conducted us on the bank of Arguin, have no need of having another crime added to them. Besides, if there are, sometimes, persons who sell their honor, there are none who, at the same time, sell their lives; and those whom people would accuse of something ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... Paris, was in reality the eye and brain of Europe, the place of origin of almost every literary form, the place of finishing and polishing, even for those forms which she did not originate. She not merely taught, she wrought—and wrought consummately. She revived and transformed the fable; perfected, if she did not invent, the beast-epic; brought the short prose tale to an exquisite completeness; enlarged, suppled, chequered, the somewhat stiff and monotonous forms of Provencal lyric into myriad-noted variety; devised the prose-memoir, and left capital ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... for any other worldly blessing. And in reply to some faint objections of Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological works like the Washerwoman of Finchley Common and others of that school, with which Mrs. Osborne had been furnished during her life at Brompton) he told her an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the sunshine was unbearable for the eyes and that the Nightingale was a most overrated bird. "It is one's nature to sing and the other's to hoot," he said, laughing, "and with such a sweet voice as you have yourself, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the policy of the ostrich, Helena," said Forbes, grimly. "It may or may not be a fable as regards ostriches— I don't know enough about them to feel certain, but it is unquestionably too often true of mankind. I believed my head was hidden and imagined the remainder of my body was safe in consequence. Now I ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... in a minute, Tom," she said. "A cup of hot coffee'll do the poor craythur, yer grandfather, a power of good. So he's fable, is he?" ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... fable, and yet true, Scenes of accomplish'd bliss! which who can see, Though but in distant prospect, and not feel His soul refresh'd with foretaste of the joy? Rivers of gladness water all the Earth, And clothe all climes with beauty. The reproach ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... imagined; so that probably no attempt to paint or represent it to the senses can ever succeed. We can bear—at least we often have to bear—that a man should seem an ass to the mind's eye; but that he should seem such to the eye of the body is rather too much, save as it is done in those fable-pictures which have long been among the playthings of the nursery. So a child, for instance, takes great pleasure in fancying the stick he is riding to be a horse, when he would be frightened out of his wits, were the stick to quicken and expand into an ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... story does not carry its own moral, what fable does, I wonder? Before the arrival of that hamper, Master Briggs was in no better repute than any other young gentleman of the lower school; and in fact I had occasion myself, only lately, to correct ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... but the time came when all this was thrown aside. It was the old fable again of the bee and the bee-moth. Having failed in her first efforts, she was now very gradually ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... was always fighting him. What are you to do but to fight cruelty, and fight falsehood, and fight fraud and treachery,—when they come upon you and would overwhelm you but for fighting? You have not been fool enough to believe that fable about a duel? I did stand once, armed, and guarded my bedroom door from him, and told him that he should only enter it over my body. He went away to the tavern and I did not see him for a week afterwards. That ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the gust came roaring down furiously upon them, pelting fiercely with rain, flapping and tearing at Theodora's cloak, like the wind in the fable, trying to whirl her off her feet, and making vehement efforts to wrench the umbrella out of Percy's hand. A buffet with wind and weather was a frolic which she particularly enjoyed, running on before the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... matter? "I have only tumbled down, papa, amongst these nasty nettles, and got stung rather sharply." That is interesting. Do you know how it is that nettles sting? "Oh, papa," said Jack, pitifully, "you are like the man in the fable who was giving a lecture to the drowning boy; the boy asked him to get him first of all out of the water, and to give him the lecture afterwards. Now, you should first tell me how to cure these nettle stings, and I would then be more inclined ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... Spiders," 1873, which is full of interesting details. The book is moreover remarkable in having resuscitated our knowledge of the existence 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 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... year James Russell Lowell published his "Bigelow Papers," a humorous satire on the Mexican war in Yankee dialect, the "Indian Summer Reverie," and "A Fable for Critics." ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... ubi supra. This expression deserves to be noticed particularly, inasmuch as it effectually disposes of the story—which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as a fable—that the assassination of Lignerolles, a little over four months later (December, 1571), was compassed by Charles IX. and his mother, because they discovered that he had become possessed of the secret of the projected massacre of St. Bartholomew. If these ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... wont to laugh at love, And those who suffer'd that blind boy abuse The noble gifts were given them from above. What metamorphose strange is this I prove I Myself now scarce I find myself to be, And think no fable Circe's tyranny, And all the tales are told of changed Jove; Virtue hath taught with her philosophy My mind into a better course to move: Reason may chide her fill, and oft reprove Affection's power, but what is that to me? Who ever think, and never ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the merry old gentleman, "I knew you would do that. If you had done any differently there would have been no point to the fable." ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... composed of anti-slavery men who had learned their creed from him, Senator Toombs, in a tone full of exultation but not remarkable for delicacy, declared that "Actaeon had been devoured by his own dogs." The fable would be equally applicable in describing the manner in which the Southern men, who owed their forgiveness and their immunity to Mr. Seward, turned upon him with hatred and with imprecation. They were graciously ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... doubtless it had an allusion to some topic or scandal of the day; whoever can elucidate it will render good service to Medallic History, for hitherto it has baffled all commentators and collectors of medals. The windmill (indicative of the poplar fable that the Prince was the son of a miller), and the Roman ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... all interests affected by his action, but also a special responsibility for those with whose direct execution he is charged, is an impartial judgment. It expresses a broad and intelligent view of the total situation. In the fable of the fox and the grapes, the action of the fox is due to the folly of a too fluent attention. Similarly, he who lets go his present hold of the web of interests simply because his eye happens to alight on another vantage-point, is as much the blind slave of novelty as ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... renowned edifice marvels are related by the ancient Arabian and Spanish chroniclers; 'and I doubt much,' adds the venerable Agpaida, 'whether many readers will not consider the whole as a cunningly devised fable, sprung from an oriental imagination; but it is not for me to reject a fact which is recorded by all those writers who are the fathers of our national history: a fact, too, which is as well attested as most of the remarkable events in the story of Don Roderick. None but light and inconsiderate ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... course, if the rival interests clashed, litigation was the result:—the Courts and juries often decided what they little understood, and at times not at all, after the pleading of well fee'd lawyers; a pretty fair illustration of the fable of the boys and frogs; it may be fun for the lawyers but it is death to the hopes of many a poor patentee. We are, however, pleased to perceive a disposition manifested by the courts to sustain patents; even if occasionally an unjust claim is recognized as a valid one, it is better, according ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... fable," said the book. "There were two men wrecked upon a desert island; one of them made believe he was at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... month) will produce them; as we might have seen abundantly in the gardens of the Thuilleries, and that of Luxembourgh at Paris, where they usually sow themselves, and come up very thick; and so do they in many places of our country, tho' so seldom taken notice of, as that it is esteemed a fable, by the less observant and ignorant vulgar; let it therefore be tried in season, by turning and raking some fine earth, often refreshed, under some amply spreading tree, or to raise them of their seeds (being well dried a day or two before) sprinkled on beds prepar'd ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... said whimsically, "I am afraid we are rather like the shepherdess and the chimney-sweep of the fable I read you very long ago. We climbed up so far that we could see the stars, once, very long ago, Patricia, and we have come back to live upon the parlor table. I suppose it happens to all the little ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Prometheus was bound to Caucasus, nor would Cepheus, with his wife, his son-in-law, and his daughter have been enrolled among the constellations, but that their more than human knowledge of the heavenly bodies had transferred their names into an erroneous fable. From whence all who occupied themselves in the contemplation of nature were both considered and called wise men; and that name of theirs continued to the age of Pythagoras, who is reported to have gone to Phlius, as we ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there I think party differences in the Church, and even the variations between Christian sects are concerned, both being different ways of viewing the same truth. These may, like the knights in the old fable, find that both were right about the shield, both have the same foundation. But where the foundation is not the same, the results of the teaching ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a heap of 'Pandanus', 'Nipa', or Fern leaves, like those of which his bed is made, and he is especially careful to wrap up his head in them. It is this habit of covering himself up which has probably led to the fable that the Orang builds huts ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Palmer's money as his own; so he could only smile, rather sadly, and wish his new friends success. How many of his acquaintances had invested good money in a hole in the ground! Even the most prudent, in some unguarded moment, had parted with thousands of dollars, like the dog in the fable which dropped the real bone to seize the shadow. There was Mack, proprietor of the hotel at Graniteville, making lots of money at his business and losing it all in mining ventures. Only the other day Mack had remarked ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... its chance. It will willingly forego certainty in universal matters if only it can be allowed to feel that in them it has that same inalienable right to run risks, which no one dreams of refusing to it in the pettiest practical affairs. And if I, in these last pages, like the mouse in the fable, have gnawed a few of the strings of the sophistical net that has been binding down its lion-strength, I shall be more than ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... for the honour of humanity that, the whole account was demonstrated to be a fable." (Vol. IV., ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... induced by spirituous liquors, with the well known story of Prometheus, which seems indeed to have been invented by physicians in those ancient times, when all things were clothed in hieroglyphic, or in fable. Prometheus was painted as stealing fire from heaven, which might well represent the inflammable spirit produced by fermentation; which may be said to animate or enliven the man of clay: whence the conquests of Bacchus, as well as the temporary mirth and noise of his devotees. But the after punishment ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 which he ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... told you before that Separ was a place once—a sort of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable of its name. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... Wisdom or Human Understanding, by which the God of Vengeance is dethroned, and gives place to the eternal rule of the God of Love. To but few of those present could this idea of Langhetti's be intelligible. The most of them merely regarded the fable and its music, without looking for any meaning beneath ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... built an aerial chariot with sides of iron and clad with wings. The chariot was driven through the sky till it stood over Dwarakha, where Krishna's followers dwelt, and from there it hurled down upon the city missiles that destroyed everything on which they fell.' Here is pure fable, not legend, but still a curious forecast of twentieth century bombs from a rigid dirigible. It is to be noted in this case, as in many, that the power to fly was an attribute of evil, not of good—it was the demons who built the chariot, even as at Friedrichshavn. ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... 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 ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Lord Glistonbury, "my patience is now exhausted, and I must not let you expose yourself here, before our friend, as a novice—Hey! hey!—Why, will you never open your eyes, and see the world as it is! Why! what!—Did you never read the fable of the dog and his master's meat?—Well! it is come to that now in England; and he is a foolish dog, indeed, who, when he can't save the meat, won't secure ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... merit. The respect of which we speak should, in the strongest degree, be a possession of the immediate occupant, and will naturally become dim,—or perhaps be exaggerated,—in regard to the past, as history or fable may tell of them. No one need hesitate to speak his mind of King John, let him be ever so strong a stickler for the privileges of majesty. But there are degrees of distance, and the throne of which we wish to preserve the dignity seems to be assailed when unmeasured evil is said of one who has sat ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... companions. The musketeer sifted all he possibly could out of the host, whom he found cunning, mistrustful, and devoted, body and soul, to M. Fouquet. In order not to awaken the suspicions of this man, he carried on his fable of being a probable purchaser of some salt-mines. To have embarked for Belle-Isle at Roche-Bernard would have been to expose himself still further to comments which had, perhaps, been already made, and would be carried to the castle. Moreover, it was singular that this ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... examined the house. A large building, square and new, very high, seemed, as in the fable of the mountain and the mouse, to have given birth to a tiny little white house, which nestled near it. This little house was the original dwelling, and had been built by the former owner. The tower had been erected ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in this world to be the antagonist of good, out of the way of the gods in heaven. Wherefore also we should fly away from ourselves to them; and to fly to them is to become like them; and to become like them is to become holy, just and true. But many live in the old wives' fable of appearances; they think that you should follow virtue in order that you may seem to be good. And yet the truth is, that God is righteous; and of men, he is most like him who is most righteous. To know this is wisdom; and in comparison of this the wisdom of the arts or the seeming wisdom of politicians ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... the latter consideration, which is easily deducible from hence, we shall only appeal to the wonderful effect, which the fable, pronounced by Demosthenes against Philip of Macedon, produced among his hearers; or to the fable, which was spoken by Menenius Agrippa to the Roman populace; by which an illiterate multitude were brought back to ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... of it," with a little shrug of her pretty shoulders; "but I don't believe in it. It's a myth! a fable!" ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... education proceeded. Already a good horseman, he was now initiated into the arts of the manege, which, when carried to perfection, almost realize the fable of the Centaur, the guidance of the horse appearing to proceed from the rider's mere volition, rather than from the use of any external and apparent signal of motion. He received also instructions in his field duty; but, I must own, that when ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... 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. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the last [eighteenth] century was the calumny known as mercheta mulierum, now known as a malignant fable popularized by novelists and playwrights. Another suggestion is that it is a custom that has survived from some prehistoric race; a third that it has grown up at different points...." Mr. Peacock regards the last as the most likely. "It is only when the population becomes relatively ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded, That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known, (How often they dart out of themselves ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Lit. "neck." The Muslims fable that all will appear at the Day of Resurrection with their good and evil actions in visible form fastened about their necks. "And each man, we constrain him to carry his actions (ta'r, lit. bird, i.e. fortune as told by augury from the flight of birds, according ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... head upon the dressing-table and laughed heartily. She had suddenly bethought herself of Aesop's fable of the lion and ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... nothing obscure in our frontispiece picture of 'Red Ridinghood.' It sets before us a child's version and vision of a child's fable that is imperishable, and as such makes an immediate appeal to the eye. She is not acting a part or posing as a princess, but is simply a cowering little girl, frightened at the wolf and eager to protect her basket. In her freshness and simplicity, a cottage ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... of the beast-fable, latter-day amplifications of the simple tale of animals credited with human cunning, such as primitive man told to his naked children as they huddled around the embers in the cave, which was then their only home. The beast-fable is a ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... investigate the causes of this disaster? It is a curiosity which can be easily gratified. The Democratic party was killed in cold blood by Southern traitors. There never was a more causeless, malicious, or malignant murder. The fool in the fable who gained an unenviable notoriety by killing the goose which laid golden eggs, Balaam, who, but for angelic interposition, would have slain his faithful ass, were praiseworthy in comparison. Well might any one of the Northern victims of this cruel outrage have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Fable," Mr. Bulfinch endeavored to impart the pleasure of classical learning to the English reader by presenting the stories of Pagan mythology in a form adapted to modern taste. In this volume the attempt has been made to treat in the same way the stories of the ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... and was only recently destroyed to make room for the modern Post-office, the church itself having passed into the hands of the English. The coincidence of the two churches being dedicated to the same saint doubtless helped the growth of the unjust fable. But in an age of great women, in the times of Lucrezia Borgia, great and bad, of Catherine Sforza, great and warlike, Vittoria Colonna was great and good; and the ascetic Michelangelo, discovering in her the realization of an ideal, laid at her feet ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable to its natural one. It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct existences, enjoyed ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... friendship never parted, But among the evil-hearted; Time's sure step drag, soon or later, To his judgment, such a Traitor; Lady Lukshmi, of her grace, Grant good fortune to this place; And you, Royal boys! and boys of times to be In this fair fable-garden wander free.' ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... world was predictable from what had gone before. In spite of popular fable to the contrary, the division between classes had become increasingly clear. Among other things, tax systems were such that it became all but impossible for a citizen born poor to accumulate a fortune. Through ability he might rise to the point of earning ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Burns was more influenced by some other characteristics of Scotland than he was by its scenery. There was, first, its romantic history. That had not then been separated, as it has since been, from the mists of fable, but lay exactly in that twilight point of view best adapted for arousing the imagination. To the eye of Burns, as it glared back into the past, the history of his country seemed intensely poetical—including ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Have, formed a Club this season, where His Lordship sometimes takes the chair, And gives us many a bright oration In praise of our sublime vocation; Tracing it up to great King MIDAS, Who, tho' in fable typified as A royal Ass, by grace, divine And right of ears, most asinine, Was yet no more, in fact historical, Than an exceeding well-bred tyrant; And these, his ears, but allegorical, Meaning Informers, kept at high rent— Gem'men, who touched ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... services to philosophy, and whose entire works must not be judged of by the single particular which I am about to mention. In the year 1829, M. Cousin was developing at the Sorbonne the meaning of these verses of La Fontaine, which introduce the fable of the Wolf and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... 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 to educate our ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
