"Tale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and with as entire an absence of any tell-tale colour in his cheek, as if there were no softening old time behind him. Not wonderful, for there WAS none in his hollow empty heart. What is there but self, for selfishness to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Ramiro, himself, sat Madonna Paola, still in her torn and bedraggled raiment, her face white, her eyes wild as they had been when first she had been haled into Ramiro's presence, some two hours ago, and her features so rigidly composed that it told the tale of the awful self-control she must be exerting—a self-control that might end with a sudden snap that ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... feed on Henry James and write a dream fugue on your affected title, this might be the result," muttered Berkeley. "Hush!" whispered Merville; "can't you see that it is his own life he is unconsciously relating in this sequence of short stories; the tale of his own pampered procrastinations? If he had only made up his mind perhaps he could have kept her by his side and been happy but"—"But instead," said Berkeley sourly "he wrote queer impossible things about bevelled-edge ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... them to unworthy compliances, or to measures of vengeance as cruel as those which they have reason to expect. A Minister in our times need not fear either to be firm or to be merciful. Our old policy in this respect was as absurd as that of the king in the Eastern tale who proclaimed that any physician who pleased might come to court and prescribe for his diseases, but that if the remedies failed the adventurer should lose his head. It is easy to conceive how many able men would refuse to undertake the cure ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Maka's tale, which he told so rapidly and incoherently that he was frequently obliged to repeat portions of it, was to the following effect: He had thought a great deal about the scarcity of water, and it had troubled him so that he could ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... our vantage-ground of Light. Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake, Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan, And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man, And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,— But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease, (God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace: No foes are conquered who the victors teach Their vandal manners ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... grandfather, we can go back, for grandmamma told me so, and so it was in the beautiful tale in my book—but you have not heard that yet; but we shall be home directly now, and then I will read it you, and you will see how beautiful it is." And in her eagerness Heidi struggled faster and faster up the steep ascent, and they were no sooner at the top than she let go ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... to cords. We were assured at Atures, that the tiger dreads being surrounded in the forests by these herds of wild pigs; and that, to avoid being stifled, he tries to save himself by climbing up a tree. Is this a hunter's tale, or a fact that has really been observed? In several parts of America the hunters believe in the existence of a javali, or native boar with tusks curved outwardly. I never saw one, but this animal is mentioned in the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Breezes are dry Cool & refreshing. the Northerley Breezes which is more frequent is much Cooler, and moist, I continue my Drawing. Cap Lewis also ingaged prepareing Som paper to Send back, one of the men cought a white Catfish, the eyes Small, & Tale resembling ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... at length one day with President Wilson on my visit to America in October, 1916, he remarked, half to himself, in surprise at my tale of war, "Why does all this horror come on the world? What causes it?" "Mr. President," I answered, ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... singing! there I had never had a bosom-friend; here the affection of an idiot would be divinely welcome! "If only I had a dog to love!" I sighed—and regarded with wonder my past self, which preferred the company of book or pen to that of man or woman; which, if the author of a tale I was enjoying appeared, would wish him away that I might return to his story. I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking! "Any man," I said now, "is more than the greatest of books!" I had not cared for my live brothers and sisters, and now ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... on me, too! It's all like a fairy tale, and I'm transformed into a great prince, and am waited on right royally. I'm going to drink that broth to your health, as if you were a great lady. It will do me more good than all the drugs ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... retold them in a new language. To do them justice in this new language I have found it necessary to present them with a new selection of detail and with an occasional shifting of emphasis. I do not mean by this that I have invented detail in any unwarranted fashion. I haven't had to for any folk tale, however bald, contains all sorts of things by implication. The true story teller, it seems to me, is he who is able to grasp these implications and turn them ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... with wonder; she cast them down, and a strange smile began to play about her sweet strong mouth. All at once she was in the middle of a fairy tale, and had not a notion what was coming next. Her dumb shepherd boy a baronet!—and, more wonderful still, a Galbraith! She must be dreaming in the wide street! The last she had seen of him was as he was driven from the house by her father, when he had just saved her ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the principal reason is, that then I should not have been born in this. Everything is dreadfully prosy in our age. Oh, not here, at this moment! but this is a fairy tale we are living through. I know how the plain world will look when I ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... occasionally used with swift and tragic effect, the weapon of excommunication. Many a modern historian or philosopher has smiled good-naturedly and in mild contempt at this weapon used by the Church to frighten her children, much as children are frightened by flaunting some horrid tale of ogre or hobgoblin before them. Yet the student of history might profitably study the use which the Church has made of such an instrument, and find in it one of the most effective causes of social regeneration ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... of base metal; and the conjecture may deserve consideration, that it was a signet not intended for the purpose of sealing, but entrusted in lieu of credentials to some envoy. The popular literature of the Middle Ages abundantly proves this custom to have been in general use. The tale of Ipomydon, in Weber's "Ancient Metrical Romances," notes the gift of a ring to the hero from his mother, which is to be used as a token of recognition to his illegitimate brother, and which is brought secretly to his notice by being dropped into his drinking horn. In the "Romance of Florence ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... little off the track of my tale; I'll get back on my course again. Now you see what kind of speed I was making. So, as I said, when I had been tearing along this way about thirty years I begun to get uneasy. Oh, it was pleasant enough, with a good deal to find out, but then it was kind of lonesome, you know. Besides, I wanted ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... super ripam Etili, sicut Baatu, vt pascam ibi? Qu verba relata fuerunt Baatu. Tunc ispse Baatu scripsit hominibus illius, vt adducerent ei dominum ipsorum vinctum quod et fecerunt. [Sidenote: Casale.] Tunc Baatu qusiuit ab eo si dixisset tale verbum: et ipse confessus est, tamen excusauit se, quia ebrius erat: (quia solent condonare ebrijs:) et Baatu respondit: Quomodo audebas me nominare in ebrietate tua? Et fecit ei amputari caput. De illis Teutonicis nihil potui cognoscere vsque ad curiam Mangu. Sed in supradicto casali intellexi, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... sensible eneugh carle, an it werena for his tamn'd Cameronian nonsense, whilk it is not worth while of a shentleman to knock out of an auld silly head, either by force of reason or otherwise." So that, by avoiding topics of dispute, the personages of our tale lived in great good habits with the gracious Duncan, only that he still grieved David's soul, and set a perilous example to the congregation, by sometimes bringing his pipe to the church during a cold winter ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hill breeze, the sea breeze, fierce and bold, And never a breeze that gives the lie to a tale that a breeze has told; Always the tale of the strange and new in the countries ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... it came about, as he sat there opposite me, so serious, so silent, but something seemed suddenly to plunge my mind into a perfectly irrelevant region of thought, and drag therefrom to the surface some droll tale I had happened to hear only a few days since. Before I knew it, I was telling the Doctor that story. Fools rush in; but there is a Providence that cares for them, for the Doctor enjoyed it—he laughed, and from then on interchange of thought was ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... simplest cases. The subject is a girl of eighteen, called Josephine. She lives at Voiron, in the department of Isere. By means of downward passes she is brought back to the condition of a baby at its mother's breast The passes continue and the wonder-tale runs its course. Josephine can no longer speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which seems to be followed by a silence more mysterious still. Josephine no longer answers except by signs: she is not yet born. 'She is floating in darkness.' ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Editor who read these lines Has quite a different tale; He says it is the she that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... close. The dell was to be left a solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a real instinct for money-making and a capacity for constructive individualism. Of them the most conspicuous was Clifford Melville, whose name was originally Joseph Sobieski, with habitat Poland, whose small part in this veracious tale ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as well as great laws from within. If we knew all the laws, we should know what average consequences to expect. But in the mean time we shall commit the error of supposing that History does nothing but repeat itself, fretfully crooning into the "dull ear" of age a twice-told tale, if we do not allow for the modifications amid which the primitive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Christian brotherhood evidenced its purpose to make men of these degraded classes. But until recently it has escaped the notice of these Christian workers that we have another class as needy perhaps as any. No spice of romance is connected with them. No barbarous tale of cruelty could be told to awaken sympathy in them. They are simply poor people, who during slavery were unable to obtain large plantations and so were driven by the arrogant Bluegrass slaveholder on the one side, and the greedy cotton-planter ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... Give us a toast from a full brimming cup. [Starts back.] What is this stain upon the cloth? It looks As purple as a wound upon Christ's side. Wine merely is it? I have heard it said When wine is spilt blood is spilt also, But that's a foolish tale. ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... two ways in which this story might be told. It might be told as a tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be told as a ruthless enterprise of compelling a hostile administration to subject women to martyrdom in order to hasten its surrender. The truth is, it has elements of ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... were resumed. Cuckoo visited dressmakers, bonnet-shops, ABC establishments, with no success. Her face, even when unpainted, told its tale. Nature can write down the truth of a sin better than art. Cuckoo learnt that fact by her walks. But still she trudged, learning each day more truths, one of which—a finale to the long sermon, it seemed—was that there is no army on earth more difficult to enlist in, under certain circumstances ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... become the party of construction. You have outlined new policies and put them into effect through every department, from State to Labor. Therefore, our platform should be generously filled with words of boasting that will hearten and make proud the Democrats of the country; a plain tale of large things ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... sigh, I swept the litter from the table, and, taking from the shelf that held my meagre library a bundle of Master Shakespeare's plays (gathered for me by Rolfe when he was last in London), I began to read; but my thoughts wandered, and the tale seemed dull and oft told. I tossed it aside, and, taking dice from my pocket, began to throw. As I cast the bits of bone, idly, and scarce caring to observe what numbers came uppermost, I had a vision of the forester's hut at home, where, when I was a ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... have perused the annexed startling and extraordinary narrative, on which I have founded the tale of the Tithe-Proctor, I am sure he will admit that there is very little left me to say in the shape of a preface. It is indeed rarely, that ever a document, at once so authentic and powerful, has been found prefixed to any work of modern Irish Fiction—proceeding as it does, let me ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... 'may overlade a ship or barge, and therefore I will skip at once to the effect, and let all the rest slip.' And he unconsciously suggests a striking difference between himself and the great Elizabethan epic poet who owes so much to him, when he declines to make as long a tale of the chaff or of the straw as of the corn, and to describe all the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... however, refer to at least one living author who has done so; and in 'The Scarlet Letter' by Hawthorne, the greatest of American novelists, Mr. [Wilkie] Collins might see the mode in which the moral lesson from examples of error and crime ought to be drawn. There is a tale of sin, and its inevitable consequences, from which the most pure need not turn away." In another paper in the same number the reviewer speaks of some one who "writes with the pure poetry of Nathaniel Hawthorne." As I have entered upon ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... in the gloom of that winter's night, I heard her tale of anguish and sorrow; and whilst I thanked God for this, His sheep that was lost, I went deeper down than ever into the valleys of humiliation and self-reproach: "Caritas erga homines, sicut caritas Dei erga nos."[5] ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... persuasion is not without its charm. Who knows? It may be, that the soul grows to its atmosphere as well as the body, and living in a land where dreams are realities, and all things are credible, and history is only a fairy tale: the land of the moon and the lotus and the snake, old gods and old ruins, former births, second sight, and idealism: it falls back, unconsciously mesmerised, under the spell ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... excuse for himself; he continued the plain tale of how, his ambitions still holding him, he had selfishly tried to keep both joy and them, by asking her—she who was so infinitely above him—to descend to the invidious position ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... on a par with the other two in view of its double life in a book and on the boards of the theater. The fragrance of Home, of the homely kindness and tenderness of the human heart, is in them, especially in the Carol, which is the best tale of its kind in the tongue and likely to remain so. It permanently altered the feeling of the race for Christmas. Irving preceded him in the use of the Christmas motive, but Dickens made it forever his ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... her tale with evident glee, "as we went up the blind lane come a little lad running down as hard as ever he could run. 'What's ado?' says I. 'Mad bull! mad bull!' quoth he. Dolly was a bit frighted, I think; I know I was. But will you believe ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... of it. The news could not have reached here in thirty-eight hours. What do you mean by coming to me with such a tale?" ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... notice, and the reader will allow us to notice with summary indignation, the slanderous and idle tale which represents Shakspeare as having fled to London in the character of a criminal, from the persecutions of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot. This tale has long been propagated under two separate impulses. Chiefly, perhaps, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... a pretty tender tale, that he had loved Mrs. Staines when she was Miss Lusignan, had thought himself beloved in turn, but was rejected; and now, though she was a widow, he had not the courage to court her, her heart was in the grave. He spoke in such a broken voice that the ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... determined to go to an hotel for the night, and next day to call at Melton House. During the evening he would have to concoct some sufficiently plausible tale to deceive the Suttons as to the real reason for having come—but sufficient unto the evening was the worry thereof. He walked slowly up the steep hill that led into the High Street, and booked a room at the first inn he came to. Then ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... fate, O beautiful child, are wounds and ill-doings and shedding of blood. You will have a little grave apart to yourself; you will be a tale ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... of every page I have to pull myself together to remind myself that it is not of the Right Honorable Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M.P., that I am telling the tale—any one can do that—but of a certain Englishman who wrote Sardonyx, to the everlasting joy and pride of the land of his fathers—and of a certain Frenchman who wrote Berthe aux grands pieds, and moved his mother-country to such ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... liked much to suggest that some of the troops might, before starting, take a fancy to explore the ruin, and to ask how long they should remain in the cellar before venturing out. Quietly awaking all his comrades, and drawing their surprised heads together, he whispered his tale in their wondering ears. After that they were quite prepared to act, and accompanied him ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... mean?" exclaimed Miss Panney, and then the doctor told his tale. As the old lady listened, her spirits rose higher and higher. What extraordinary good luck! She had never planned a match that moved with such smoothness, such celerity, such astonishing directness as this. She did not look upon Dora's disregard of tradition ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... of the "spicy breezes" said to blow from Arabia and India, is as old as Ctesias; and is eagerly repeated by Pliny? lib. xii. c. 42. The Greeks borrowed the tale from the Hindus, who believe that the Chandana or sandal-wood imparts its odours to the winds; and their poete speak of the Malayan as the westerns did of the Sabaean breezes. But the allusion to such perfumed winds was a trope common to all the discoverers of unknown lands: the companions of Columbus ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... know the tale," he said. "Doubtless your mother told you it when you clutched at her breast. Some day a great white people from the north will come down and swallow up the disobedient. That day is now at hand. You have been wise in time. Therefore I say ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... sugar, he bestrides and dominates fearlessly, yet with a true republican sense of the rights of the fourlegged fellowcreature whose martyrdom, and man's shame therein, he has told most powerfully in his Calvary, a tale with an edge that will cut the soft cruel hearts and strike fire from the hard kind ones. He handles the other lethal weapons as familiarly as the pen: medieval sword and modern Mauser are to him as umbrellas and kodaks are to me. His tales ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... eating my breakfast, Ricketts sat down by my side and recounted a stirring tale of all that had happened at Philour and Ludhiana consequent on the rising of the Native regiments at Jullundur. The mutineers had made, in the first instance, for Philour, a small cantonment, but important from the fact of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... him this stupendous tale, the minister sat with open mouth and eyes, gazing on her with more of the air of an idiot than of a learned ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... her. It was the story of her life—a simple tale of ordinary things, such as wring the quiet hearts and train the unnoticed saints of this world. In her first youth, when Charles Harden was for a time doing some divinity lecturing in his Oxford college, Mary had ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... At any rate, fear was the misery of his life. Darkness was his horror. He would scream till he brought in some one, though he knew it would be only to scold or slap him. The housemaid's closet on the stairs was to him an abode of wolves. Mrs. Gatty's tale of The Tiger in the Coal-box is a transcript of his feelings, except that no one took the trouble to reassure him; something undefined and horrible was thought to wag in the case of the eight-day clock; and he could not ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a time came when minstrels wandered from town to town, from castle to castle, singing their lays. And the minstrel who had a good tale to tell was ever sure of a welcome, and for his pains he was rewarded with money, jewels, and even land. That was the true listening time ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... here be recognized. It is impossible to take seriously statements which make the tomb of Ninus some 5,500 feet high and 6,100 in diameter. The history of Ninus and Semiramis as Ctesias tells it, is no more than a romantic tale like those of the Shah-Nameh. All that we may surely gather from the passage in question is that, at the time of Ctesias, and perhaps a little later, the remains of a great staged-tower were to be seen among the ruins of Nineveh. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... as they were that of any one who needed their help. Among such boys it was regarded as dishonorable in the highest degree to betray any one; and, indeed, the principal discountenanced anything like "tale-bearing," to which the students gave a very liberal construction. Sanford had proposed that De Forrest should take a walk on shore, in order to give Ole an opportunity to escape from his confinement, which, on account of the singular obstinacy and suspicion of that officer, had threatened ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... frequently reckless; the New Zealander resembles the Scot—equally daring, equally determined, but more canny and cautious. In brief, the New Zealander is more ready to weigh the issues and count the cost. Both types are necessary in war; both are extremely useful. Now I have reached my tale. ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... ending a controversy, which he knew would be fruitless, Lowell made another searching personal examination of the scene. He examined the stakes, having in mind the possibility of finger-prints. But no tell-tale mark had been left behind. The stakes were too rough to admit the possibility of any finger-prints that might be microscopically detected. The road and prairie surrounding the automobile were examined, but nothing save pony tracks, numerous and ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... Sydney Cove was for some time amused with an account of the existence and discovery of a gold mine; and the impostor had ingenuity enough to impose a fabricated tale on several of the officers for truth. He pretended to have found it at some distance down the harbour; and, offering to conduct an officer to the spot, a boat was provided; but immediately on landing, having ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... the characters of the personages he brought on the scene; he seemed to multiply himself in order to play the different parts, and no person needed to feign the terror which he really inspired, and which he loved to see depicted in the countenances of those who surrounded him." In this tale I have made no alterations, as can be attested by those who, to my knowledge, have a copy of it. It is curious to compare the impassioned portions of it with the style of Napoleon in some of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... make-believe he has an actual object to manipulate according to the meaning attached to it, in story-telling he simply talks about persons and things and makes them perform in his story. He comes breathless into the house with a harrowing tale of being pursued by a hippopotamus in the woods; or he gives a fantastic account of the doings of his acquaintances. For this he is sometimes accused of being a "little liar"—as indeed he {483} probably is when circumstances demand—and sometimes, more charitably, he is described ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Carmichael with the vividness of a forgotten photograph, come upon suddenly: Bonn, the Rhine, swift and turbulent, a tow-headed young fellow who could not swim well, his own plunge, his fingers in the flaxen hair, and the hard fight to the landing; all this was a tale twice told. ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... but I know the Bible says so. I suppose just the same as when you promise me, in the morning, that if I say my lessons all nicely you will tell me a beautiful fairy-tale after tea." ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... thought that the secret of Rousseau's success lay in the circumstance that he began to write late, and it is true that no other author, so considerable as Rousseau, waited until the age of fifty for the full vigour of his inspiration. No tale of years, however, could have ripened such fruit without native strength and incommunicable savour. Nor can the mechanical movement of those better ordered characters which keep the balance of the world even, impart to literature that peculiar quality, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... you remember what they call the English Quay? For, on my word, I have forgotten it," exclaimed Fred in some little dismay, feeling very like Mustapha in the tale of The Forty Thieves, when he forgets the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... I had been weighing her story in my mind. I had hitherto put cases of witchcraft on one side, as mere superstitions; and my uncle and I had had many an argument, he supporting himself by the opinion of his good friend Sir Matthew Hale. Yet this sounded like the tale of one bewitched; or was it merely the effect of a life of extreme seclusion telling on the nerves of a sensitive girl? My scepticism inclined me to the latter belief, and when she ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... reckoned with him. He is honest. That tells his tale. No honest king can hope to reign over this country in their new Constitution. It needs a ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... a girl, I must be a phenomenon as well as a phoenix, for nobody knows better than you that my Bible age is thirty-one if it's a day. And I think Burke and Debrett have got the same tale ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... others, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. The disseminators of this tale are the accusers whom I dread; for their hearers are apt to fancy that such enquirers do not believe in the existence of the gods. And they are many, and their charges against me are of ancient date, and they were made by them in the days when you were more impressible than you ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... time of the sunset, they sat on a log by the bank, and Siddhartha told the ferryman about where he originally came from and about his life, as he had seen it before his eyes today, in that hour of despair. Until late at night, lasted his tale. ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... diseased and that he was not fully responsible for his actions. As bearing on this question it is worth while to quote the story of his death given by a Greek historian[135] who wrote twenty-four years after his death. It is, perhaps, only an idle tale, but it shows the kind of stories which were current among the citizens of Ravenna as to the last days of their great king. "When Theodoric was dining, a few days after the death of Symmachus and Boethius,[136] the servants ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the young fool, whose hands were clasped behind him and concealed a marlin-spike, up and killed the old sailor, and so rounded off this fascinating tale. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... pleasantly again. He was admirable. "This is an old tale which the hastiness of our American friend has forced us to rehearse. The marriage was never recognized by the Vatican, and there ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... successive deposits by their fossils and by their stratigraphical relations, measuring their thickness and selecting as part of the data required those beds which we believe to most completely represent each formation. The total of these measurements would tell us the age of the Earth if their tale was indeed complete, and if we knew the average rate at which they have been deposited. We soon, however, find difficulties in arriving at the quantities we require. Thus it is not easy to measure the real thickness of a deposit. It may be folded back upon itself, and ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... refinement days, too! Well might Niobe wake with a start from her trance of woe, and, glancing sovereign contempt upon the new, unconscious passenger, discover to me a countenance as plain, withered, and fraught with the impress of evil passions, as that of the Lady in the Sacque, in Sir Walter's tale of the Tapestried Chamber. I never beheld so fretful and malignant-looking a being!—and the contrast which her visage afforded to that of my kind-hearted widow, which beamed with satisfaction and good-humour, was quite remarkable. This "lady," indeed, now appeared ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... he said. "I won't pay my old playfellow compliments; besides, you must be tired of them. I wish you happiness all the day long like a fairy-tale Princess. But a crock like me can't do much to help you to it. The service seems to be the wrong way round, for here you are wasting ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Italy, she said, and therefore was silent? She has sent me her new work (have you read it?) and speaks of her strength and of being able to walk fifteen miles a day, which seems to me like a fairy tale, or ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... busy outside. Every minute a dog's yelp, the shout of its master, and the dull thud of a bludgeon, told plainly enough the tale of some unhappy rodent's ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... Do you know, I sometimes think I have got into a fairy tale. Everything is so beautiful and so bewildering, and unlike what ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... believed, but this "arm of war" has been so abused by our rulers, that at present their most solemn asseverations meet with universal incredulity—not, indeed, that the Parisians are cured of their mania for crediting every tale which comes to them from any other source—thus, for instance, every newspaper has contained the most precise details from eye-witnesses of a conflict which took place two nights ago before the battery of Hautes-Bruyeres, in which our "braves Mobiles" took between two ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... that the utmost that one can say is powerless to give any idea of a desolation which seems irremediable. Let us forget—if to forget them be possible—the women, the children, the old men, peaceable and innocent, who have been massacred in their thousands, the tale of whom will amaze the world when once the grim barrier is broken behind which so many secret horrors are being committed. Let us forget those who are dying of hunger in our country, a land without harvests and without homes, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... his followers, was treacherously slain by the crew of a Chinese ship they had captured,—Roger himself, with a few fighting desperately, having alone regained their boat as the Chinaman, bursting into flame, blew up, all on board perishing. Lettice gasped for breath as she listened to the tale; then Roger changed the subject and told her of the wonderful islands of the East, with their spice-groves and fragrant flowers; of the curious tea-plant; of the rich dresses of the natives; of the beautiful carved work and ornaments of all sorts which ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... to forget your tricks, you wicked little devil? Haven't you ever seen me dodging about to get a sight of you amongst those pretty gentlemen, on horseback, like a princess, with pure cheeks like a carved saint? I wonder I didn't throw stones at you, I wonder I didn't run after you shouting the tale—curse my timidity! But I daresay they knew as much as I did. More. All the new ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... told the tale in older times Says that Sir Gareth wedded Lyoners, But he that told it later, says Lynette." TENNYSON, Gareth ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... down on her with a little wry smile. "I haven't told it often, but you shall hear," he said. "It's a tale of a black failure." He stretched out a hand and pointed to the sliding fog and ranks of tumbling seas. "It was very much this kind of night, and we were lying, reefed down, off one of the Russians' beaches, when I asked ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... enough. He's got dead kin with no sort o' tags on 'em. You might have to talk to him all the evening, and even follow him home, but you'll sell him if you understand your business. He's powerful soft-hearted, for one thing, and if you'll tell him a tale or two in the eloquent tongue you was rolling off just now he'll place a dandy order. I'll give you that ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... sir, on the whole; but we were attacked by the Malay pirates, and I should certainly not be here to tell the tale, at present, had it not been for the quickness and shrewdness of a lad, who had been ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... prejudiced imaginations. War destroys capital when and where actual destruction of property takes place, as now in Belgium, Northern France, and other scenes of actual warfare, and on the sea, where a large number of ships, though small in relation to the total tale of the merchant navies of the world, have been sunk and destroyed. Destruction in this sense has only been wrought, so far, in limited areas. In so far as agricultural land has been wasted, kindly nature, aided by industry and science, will soon restore its productive power. In ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... had rushed into Maud's face, covering it with a rich tell- tale mantle, when her companion first alluded to the half-finished miniature he held in his hand; then her features resembled ivory, as the revulsion of feeling, that overcame her confusion, followed. For some little ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... midnight wind doth sigh! Like some sweet, plaintive melody Of ages long gone by; It speaks a tale of other years, Of hopes that bloomed to die— Of sunny smiles that set in tears, And loves that ...
— Fostina Woodman, the Wonderful Adventurer • Avis A. (Burnham) Stanwood
... like a bad cent, sure to turn up when not wanted." Dick told the truth. How Dan Baxter turned up, and what he did to bring the Rovers more trouble, will be told in another volume, to be entitled, "The Rover Boys on Land and Sea; or, The Crusoes of Seven Islands," a tale full of happenings ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... the stories of Korean successes reaching Seoul were at the best improbable. The tale of one fight, however, came to me through so many different and independent sources that there was reason to suspect it had substantial foundation. It recalled the doings of the people of the Tyrol in their struggle against Napoleon. A party of Japanese soldiers, forty-eight ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... and all were hushed in a pleasant awe. The fire on the hearth was suffered to die down, and men drew closer to each other, as Leif told of the tragic love of Helgi and Sigrun, or how Weyland outwitted King Nidad, or how Thor went as bride to Thrym in Giantland, and the old sad tale of how Sigurd Fafnirsbane, noblest of men, went down to death for the love of a queen not less noble. Leif told them well, so that his hearers were held fast with the spell of wonder and then spurred to memories of their own. Tongues would be loosened, and there would be wild recollections ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Highlanders, was dogging the steps of the Irish from the west to the east, and by force, fear, or influence, had collected an army nearly sufficient to have given battle to that under Montrose. The Lowlands were also prepared, for reasons which we assigned at the beginning of this tale. A body of six thousand infantry, and six or seven thousand cavalry, which profanely assumed the title of God's army, had been hastily assembled from the shires of Fife, Angus, Perth, Stirling, and the neighbouring counties. A much less force in former times, nay, even in the preceding reign, would ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... truth of this story: "the open day," "flying in the sight of all men," the priests inspecting the registers, and all this vouched for by Clement himself! How reliable must be the testimony of the apostolic Clement! Tertullian, the Apostolic Constitutions, and Cyril of Jerusalem mention the same tale. We have already drawn attention to that which was seen by the writers of the circular letter of the Church of Smyrna. Barnabas loses himself in a maze of allegorical meanings, and gives us some delightful instruction in natural history; ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... Talmage. "We have seven pages taken by the Blue Birds and four by the Bobolinks. Then there is a story Aunt Selina has been thinking of writing, and a page for music that her friend in New York will contribute. Mrs. Catlin promised to give us some tale of adventure each month and that will take two pages. So, let me see—that takes up, in all, sixteen pages. How many pages shall ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... rooms on the south side were lighter and more comfortable. Many of them spoke cheerfully, and endeavored to restrain their feelings, but the furrows upon their haggard countenances needed no tongue to utter its tale. ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... A tale is told—we cannot say on what authority—which, whether it be a fact or a fiction, is natural, and may serve very well to shew what would be the effect of imagination if reason did not interfere. It is said that the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... take a part, even if only for the purpose of making a chalk mark on the back of the ridiculous boarding-school teacher. "And how charming in the last act is 'Cinderella's awakening as a princess,' or at least as a countess! Really, it was just like a fairy tale." She often spoke in this way, was for the most part more exuberant than before, and was vexed only at the constant whisperings and mysterious conduct of her girl friends. "I wish they felt less important and paid more attention to me. When the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the glass dome. After the mysterious alchemical perturbations had ceased, we fished out those eggs soft boiled to the second! One day the maid mistook the gasoline bottle for the alcohol bottle. That is a sad tale having to do with running flames, and burned table pieces, not to speak of a melted-down connection or so on the Dingbat. We did not know what was the matter; and our attitude was not so much that of alarm, as of grief and indignation that our good old tried and trained ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... listening almost breathlessly to the tale of a deliverance that involved new peril for Bertie, the color came slowly back to her blanched face, and her parted ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... left side, in the shade of the church, telling her his story; and she listened, silently interested, always turning her face a little toward his, and sometimes meeting his eyes with eyes of sympathy. He could not have told his tale to a man; he would not have told it to a woman he loved; but Eleanor represented to him a new and untried relation, and the sweet, impersonal light of friendship waked the dark places of ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... the whole tale to Croizette, and I saw that she knew nothing about this wicked scheme. I was very pleased to know that. The play was very successful. Coquelin, Febvre, and I carried off the ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... conceivable kind, organic and inorganic, that, within a very recent geological period, central Europe and North America suffered under an Arctic climate. The ruins of a house burnt by fire do not tell their tale more plainly than do the mountains of Scotland and Wales, with their scored flanks, polished surfaces, and perched boulders, of the icy streams with which their valleys were lately filled. So greatly has the climate of Europe changed, that in Northern Italy, gigantic moraines, left by old ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... now—each passing gale Sighs o'er them as a spirit's voice, which moaned That loneliness, and told the plaintive tale Of the bright synod once above them throned. Mourn, graceful ruin! on thy sacred hill Thy gods, thy rites, a kindred fate have shared: Yet art thou honored in each fragment still That wasting years ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... at them, and told another tale; and, if she had been there alone, perhaps, the daughter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of my kinsman, Olaf, to own and to manage." [Sidenote: Unn's death] After that Unn stood up and said she would go to the bower where she was wont to sleep, but bade every one have for pastime whatever was most to his mind, and that ale should be the cheer of the common folk. So the tale goes, that Unn was a woman both tall and portly. She walked at a quick step out along the hall, and people could not help saying to each other how stately the lady was yet. They feasted that evening till they thought it time to go to bed. But the day after Olaf ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... tale, like the interest of so many other Russian masterpieces, consists in this sharp contact between a simplicity, which we in the West feel to be very old, and a rebelliousness which we in the West feel to he very new. We cannot in our graduated and polite civilization quite ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky |
