"La Fontaine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pronunciation, as I found all the letters and sounds described in the book. Of course this was tasking slender powers for great ends; but it gave me something to do on a rainy day, and I acquired a sufficient knowledge of French to read with pleasure La Fontaine's "Fables," "Le Medecin Malgre Lui" and ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... memoires were not written for children, they may outrage readers offended by Chaucer, La Fontaine, Rabelais and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Rabelais, at his pleasure. He had talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could adapt with great skill to the promotion of moral and political truth. He was master of that infantine simplicity which the French call naivete, which never fails to charm, in Phaedrus and La Fontaine, from ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... been to his taste. He was familiar with quite a large number of Latin and Greek indecent passages, knew the broader farces of the Canterbury Tales and of the Decameron, and, later, the 'contes' of La Fontaine and the Facetiae of Poggio. As Ste.-Beuve says of Gibbon, I think, he acquired an 'erudite and cold' sort of obscenity in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... far from the chimney, which was ornamented with a crucifix of yellow copper, was a set of shelves, attached to the wall, containing three rows of books, in gray linen binding. Julien, approaching, read, not without surprise, some of the titles: Paul and Virginia, La Fontaine's Fables, Gessner's Idylls, Don Quixote, and noticed several odd ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... had now been a literary as well as a civil reaction. As there was again a throne and a court, a magistracy, a chivalry, and a hierarchy, so was there a revival of classical taste. Honour was again paid to the prose of Pascal and Massillon, and to the verse of Racine and La Fontaine. The oratory which had delighted the galleries of the Convention was not only as much out of date as the language of Villehardouin and Joinville, but was associated in the public mind with images of horror. All the peculiarities of the Anacreon ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the very common cycle of tales where the fool comes to ruin in consequence of a stupid wish. In the "Book of Sindibad," it appears as the "Peri and the Religious Man" (Clouston, "Book of Sindibad," 71); La Fontaine has adopted it as the "Three Wishes," and Prior as "The Ladle." The Italian version will be found in Crane, "Italian Popular Tales," 221. The four-hand god is Vishnu in ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... girls were sitting in the shade, reading La Fontaine's fables. Greta, with one eye on her governess, was stealthily cutting a pig ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sympathy with such labor as you yourself have bestowed upon the most brilliant civilization of the East, has often sustained my ardor through nights of toil given to the details of our modern civilization. And will not you, whose naive kindliness can only be compared with that of our own La Fontaine, be glad to know ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... good than to be handsome; with all other wholesome truisms of the kind. They have been to school, and had their minds improved in all modern ways,—have calculated eclipses, and read Virgil, Schiller, and La Fontaine, and understand all about the geological strata, and the different systems of metaphysics,—so that a person reading the list of their acquirements might be a little appalled at the prospect of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... period, which was ruled by sentimentalism. His well-known poem, "Dushenka" ("Dear Little Soul"), was the first light epic Russian poem, with simple, intelligible language, and with a jesting treatment of a gay, playful subject. This subject Bogdanovitch borrowed from La Fontaine's novel, "The Loves of Psyche and Cupid," which, in ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... were most alien to the spirit of his humour. In 'Le Figaro', at the time of Mark Twain's death, this fundamental difference in taste once more comes to light: "It is as difficult for a Frenchman to understand Mark Twain as for a North American to admire La Fontaine. At first sight, there is nothing in common between that highly specialized faculty which the Anglo-Saxons of the old and the new world designate under the name of humour, and that quality with ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... couvert, Repondit le pot de fer Si quelque matiere dure Vous menace d'aventure, Entre deux je passerai, Et du coup vous sauverai. ........ Le pot de terre en souffre!"—LA FONTAINE. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who was deformed, was elected to succeed La Fontaine in the French Academy. On that occasion it was said that "La Fontaine was very properly ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... these stories were fables. Bold as he was arrogant, he affected at this time to look down with a forgiving contempt on the animosity of the nobles. He passed much of his time alone, writing his eternal dispatches to the King. He had a country-house, called La Fontaine, surrounded by beautiful gardens, a little way outside the gates of Brussels, where he generally resided, and whence, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his friends, he often returned to town, after sunset, alone, or with but a few attendants. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... spoken of my fear of troubling you by all my Letters, that I won't say more on that score. I have heard no news of Donne since I wrote. I have been trying to read Gil Blas and La Fontaine again; but, as before, do not relish either. {67} I must get back to my Don Quixote ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... the patriarch of levity, and Rousseau, the father of sentiment, Montaigne and Rabelais (great in wisdom and in wit), Moliere and that illustrious group that are collected round him (in the print of that subject) to hear him read his comedy of the Tartuffe at the house of Ninon; Racine, La Fontaine, Rochefoucault, St. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... a brilliant circle Lully moved in. He had the honour of being hated by Boileau and La Fontaine, and of being first the friend and collaborator, and later the enemy, of Moliere. His contract of marriage was signed by the king, queen, and the queen-mother. Of his marriage, Fetis says: "Never was a union better arranged, for if Lully was ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... are quite abundant, four or five being found in Italy, and a number in France, the best known of which is La Fontaine's fable of "The Bear and the ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... and yet she seems happy, like that poor Mademoiselle La Fontaine, whom I last saw at the Maison de Sante of Doctor Schwanthaller, seated with a straw crown on her head and imagining herself ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... could read the writing, still retaining it in her own hand. I did not blame her,—oh, no! I should have done the same. I saw, what seemed blazing in fire, the names of Henry Gabriel St. James and Theresa Josephine La Fontaine united in marriage by the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... personages in La Fontaine's fable of the Monkey and the Cat, of whom R. cracks the nut and B. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... taste in the humorous, and as to the limits of the extravagant. We have formerly illustrated this point, and especially we noticed it as a case impossible to any nation but the French to have tolerated the pretended 'absences' of La Fontaine—as, for instance, his affecting to converse with his own son as an entire stranger, and asking the lady who had presented him what might be the name of that amiable young man. The incredulus odi faces ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Decameron, Day III, 8. 'Ferondo, mangiata certa polvere, e sotterrato per morto: e dall' abate, chi la moglie di lui si gode, tratto dalla sepoltura, e messo in prigione e fattogli credere, che egli e in purgatoro; e poi risuscitato . . .' It is the Feronde; ou, le Purgatoire of La Fontaine. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the "Children's Poet," though his best poetry is prose. He was born in the ancient Danish city of Odense, on April 2d, 1805, of poor and shiftless parents. He had little regular instruction, and few childish associates. His youthful imagination was first stimulated by La Fontaine's 'Fables' and the 'Arabian Nights,' and he showed very early a dramatic instinct, trying to act and even to imitate Shakespeare, though, as he says, "hardly able to spell a single word correctly." It was therefore natural that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mother all about the town, and sent postcard pictures of its pride, the fortress-like, fifteenth-century church with a vast tower set upon a height. He liked Chateau-Thierry because Jean de la Fontaine was born there, and called it "a peaceful-looking place, just right for the dear fable-maker, who was so child-like and sweet-natured, that he deserved always to be happy, instead of for ever in somebody's debt." A soldier having seen ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... merveille! Nageait dans sa fontaine aussi frais que la veille: Eh bien! les Leonards volerent ce poisson, Mais Kemper n'oublie jamais leur trahison; Sans jouir de leur crime, ils en portent la peine, Et toujours le poisson nage dans la fontaine." Les Bretons—BRIZEUX. ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... Toulouse, and Paris, by men of literary mark—by Leonce de Lavergne, and De Mazude in the Revue des deux Mondes—by Charles Labitte, M. Ducuing, and M. de Pontmartin. The latter classed Jasmin with Theocritus, Horace, and La Fontaine, and paid him the singular tribute, "that he had made Goodness as attractive as other French writers had made Badness." Such criticisms as these made Jasmin popular, not only in his own district, but ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... n'a jamais manque de charlatans; cette science, de tout temps, fut en professeurs tres fertile. LA FONTAINE. ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... occupied in illustrating one set of ideas or one disposition of character. As early as the 13th century, the word is used in French literature to describe an anecdote thus briefly and artistically told, in prose or verse. The fairy-tales of Perrault and the apologues of La Fontaine were alike spoken of as contes, and stories of peculiar extravagance were known as contes bleus, because they were issued to the common public in coarse blue paper covers. The most famous contes in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... happiness. Why do the names of the two estates purchased after the Restoration, and in which Monsieur and Madame de Mortsauf both took the deepest interest, the Cassine and the Rhetoriere, move me more than the sacred names of the Holy Land or of Greece? "Who loves, knows!" cried La Fontaine. Those names possess the talismanic power of words uttered under certain constellations by seers; they explain magic to me; they awaken sleeping forms which arise and speak to me; they lead me to the happy valley; they recreate skies ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac |
