"Fable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... features. Sir Thomas assures us that his life, up to the period of the 'Religio Medici,' was a 'miracle of thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like a fable.' Johnson, with his usual sense, observes that it is rather difficult to detect the miraculous element in any part of the story open to our observation. 'Surely,' he says, 'a man may visit France and Italy, reside at Montpelier and Padua, and ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... narrow ways To heights of Roman speech. The youth, alert, Caught at the offer; and for years of nights, The house asleep, he groped his twilight way With lexicon and rule, through ancient story, Or fable fine, embalmed in Latin old; Wherein his knowledge of the English tongue, Through reading many books, much aided him— For best is like in all ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... made a sort of myth of him? Isn't he only a fable to us now? And haven't we got real facts ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the fable reported by Arrian (in Indicis) of Hercules having searched the Indian Ocean, to find the pearl with which he ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... 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 end of his life, to have confessed to Melanchthon that he had ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... great festivals were retained. But it was not thought desirable that Saint Valentine, Saint Chad, Saint Swithin, Saint Edward King of the West Saxons, Saint Dunstan, and Saint Alphage, should share the honours of Saint John and Saint Paul; or that the Church should appear to class the ridiculous fable of the discovery of the cross with facts so awfully important as the Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of her ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... interests. France is agonizing, that is certain; we are all sick, all corrupt, all ignorant, all discouraged: to say that it was WRITTEN, that it had to be so, that it has always been and will always be, is to begin again the fable of the pedagogue and the child who is drowning. You might as well say ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... HIS PLACE.—The old fable of a social contract, by virtue of which man becomes a member of a society, agreeing to renounce certain rights he might exercise if wholly independent, and to receive in exchange legal rights which guarantee to the individual the protection of life and ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... of getting a bad character," said Josh. "He'll be treating us like the shepherds did the boy in the fable who ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... do to give him more; I felt I should become the fable of Kirkby-Lonsdale if I did; and I looked him in the face, sternly but still smiling, and addressed him with a ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fable, Ruth? The story about all the pains and torments which flew out of Pandora's box, and how Hope came out last—that blessed Hope—and healed the wounds? Here, a moment after the blow has fallen, I am hoping ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... themselves, and so are much more highly individualized. The Tatler and the Spectator very greatly extended the range of essay-writing, and with it the flexibility of prose style; it is this extension that gives to them their modern quality. Nothing came amiss: fable, description, vision, gossip, literary criticism or moral essays, discussion of large questions such as marriage and education, or of the smaller social amenities—any subject which would be of interest to a sufficiently large number of readers ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... "The Fable of the Oak and the Violet." In a large garden there grew a fine oak tree, with its wide-spreading branches, and at its foot there grew a sweet and modest violet. The oak one day looked down in scorn upon the violet, and said: "You, poor ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, every thing that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchimy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable[26].' ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable—Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the commonly accepted name for the well-known collection of stories about animals, though we cannot be sure that any of them, were written by the Greek slave of that name, who, Herodotus tells us, lived about the year 55O B.C. The fable about animals is probably the oldest form of story known. Its object is to teach a lesson to men and women, without seeming to do so, and because of this concealed lesson it has always been a great favorite with all nations. In Russia, for example, where a man did not dare say what he thought ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... purity and continuity of the European type. We consider the old Eastern rule as a wound, but not as a stain. Copper-coloured men out of Africa overruled for centuries the religion and patriotism of Spaniards. Yet I have never heard that Don Quixote was an African fable on the lines of Uncle Remus. I have never heard that the heavy black in the pictures of Velasquez was due to a negro ancestry. In the case of Spain, which is close to us, we can recognise the resurrection ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... eager apprehension of the rejoicing and the love of Eternity. What truth there was in such faith I dare not say that I know; but what manner of human souls it made, you may for yourselves see. Here are enough brought to you, of the thoughts of a believing people.[180] This maid in her purity is no fable; this is a Venetian maid, as she was seen in the earthly dawn, and breathed on by the breeze of her native sea. And here she is in her womanhood, in her courage and perfect peace, waiting for ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... you did, and letting that brother of mine get away sneering and sniggering at me, with his nose cocked up in the air, and swelling with pride till he's like the frog in the fable." ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... The fable invented to account for this desire on the part of Mrs. Sheldon was very innocent. The doctors had ordered a milder climate than England for the dear convalescent—Madeira, Algeria, Malta—or some other equally remote quarter of the globe. It was impossible that Mr. or Mrs. Sheldon could ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... repeated to his Northern crowds the fable of negro suffering in the South until he believed the lie himself. He believed it with every beat of his stern Puritan heart. And he had repeated and shouted it until the gathering Abolitionist mob believed it as a message from God. The fact that the system of African slavery, as actually ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... child for religious education; and that an education based on "reality," as in this method we would adopt, is too arid, and tends to dry up the founts of spiritual life. Such reasoning, however, will not be accepted by religious persons. They know well that faith and fable are "as the poles apart," since fable is in itself a thing without faith, and faith is the very sentiment of truth, which should accompany man even unto death. Religion is not a product of fantastic imagination, it is the greatest of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... League, take part, without knowing it, in a Masonic institution, and in building up this new state of society, from which religion is to be banished. Well may the Bishop of Metz say: 'These persons forget that, like Proteus in the fable, Freemasonry knows how to multiply ad infinitum its transformations and its names. Yesterday it called itself 'Les Solidaires,' or 'morality independent of religion,' or 'freedom of thought'; to-day ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... and must be able to do it," Ayrault continued. "Throughout Nature we find a system of compensation. The centripetal force is offset by the centrifugal; and when, according to the fable, the crystal complained of its hard lot in being unable to move, while the eagle could soar through the upper air and see all the glories of the world, the bird replied, 'My life is but for a moment, while you, set in the rock, will live forever, and will see ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... The pretty fable that the storks or angels fetch the babies cannot long satisfy the growing mind. Children wish to understand, yet it is easy for them to see that parents do not wish to explain the mystery. Curiosity ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... importance of details in this case would have been the excessive probability that Malory would have described an entertainment consonant with the usage of his own day, although at no period of early history was there ever so large an assemblage of guests at one time as met, according to the fable, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... like the little brook We've heard of in the fable, Employ our hearts, our heads and hands, In doing what we're able; Till all Columbia praise our deeds, And nations, o'er the waters, Will tune their harps and chant their song, ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... themselves can clearly perceive that they neither possess talent, intellect, public spirit, nor any other qualification calculated either to amuse or to instruct. When I see a sensible man in other respects fall into an inconsistency of this sort, I am always reminded of the fable of the Eagle, the Owl, and her young ones. The fact is, that I am more proud of my father than of any of my ancestors, because I know him to have been an excellent and an honest man, and one who by his industry and talent became a second founder of his family. But as the object of my labours will ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... when St. Mark, snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to him: 'Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel goes on to foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne piu veduta Citta;" but the fable is hardly ingenious ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the graceful Greeks, Grey with the moss of eld and venerable, The fauns, the nymphs, the half-defaced antiques, The gods and men of mythologic fable, And legends of steel-casqued and mailed men, The old heroic tales of love and glory, Of knight, and palmer, and the Saracen, And the ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... brought forth to make sport for the Philistine lords and ladies. This proceeds from no dislike, real or affected, to the aristocracy of these realms. But they have their place, and I have mine; and, like the iron and earthen vessels in the old fable, we can scarce come into collision without my being the sufferer in every sense. It may be otherwise with the sheets which I am now writing. These may be opened and laid aside at pleasure; by amusing themselves with the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... fable, Apollo, the god of music, sowed the isle of Delos, his birthplace, with golden flowers, by the music ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... judges; the consecration of one of whose descendants, Abimelech (before noticed), connects the subject with the earliest and one of the most beautiful fables of the East—that of the trees going forth to anoint a king[16]. Selden regards this fable as a proof "that anointing of kings was of known use in the eldest times," and "that solemnly to declare one to be a king, and to anoint a king, in the Eastern parts, were but synonymies[17]." The elegant allusion to the olive tree, "honouring both God ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... nations. The old Greek was large in brain, but not in heart. He had created his gods in his own image, and they were—what they were. There was no goodness in his religion, and we can tolerate it only as it is developed in the Homeric rhapsodies, in the far-off fable-time of the old world, and amongst men who were but partially self-conscious. In that remote Homeric epoch it is tolerable, when cattle-stealing and war were the chief employments of the ruling caste,—and we may add, woman-stealing, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Heywood, who had heard everything, and saw clearly the arrow that the earl had shot at the queen. "Princess Elizabeth, her true and dear friend, who never leaves her side. Besides, her maids of honor, who, like the dragon in the fable, keep watch over ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... his wife's embraces, And on Andromache[186] his helmet laces. Great Agamemnon was, men say, amazed, On Priam's loose-trest daughter when he gazed. Mars in the deed the blacksmith's net did stable; In heaven was never more notorious fable. 40 Myself was dull and faint, to sloth inclined; Pleasure and ease had mollified my mind. A fair maid's care expelled this sluggishness, And to her tents willed me myself address. Since may'st thou see me watch and night-wars move: He that will not ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... the naked legend of the negro's origin, one of those nursery tales in which the ignorant of Christendom still believe But the deduction from the fable and the testimony to the negro's lack of intelligence, though unpleasant to our ignorant ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... after these shares. I replied that such conduct would be that of a fool, the conduct of impertinence, rather than of conceit; that it was not mine, and that since he pressed me so much I would tell him my reasons. They were, that since the fable of Midas, I had nowhere read, still less seen, that anybody had the faculty of converting into gold all he touched; that I did not believe this virtue was given to Law, but thought that all his knowledge was a learned trick, a new and skilful juggle, which put the wealth of Peter into the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... fable of imprisonment in one's own Palace has become a sad fact, then? Majesty complains to Assembly; Municipality deliberates, proposes to petition or address; Sections respond with sullen brevity of negation. Lafayette flings down his Commission; appears in civic pepper-and-salt ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... accurately know what she wanted. The effect of seeing some one so hard, so clear, so alien, was much as if, a gracefully moulded but fragile earthenware pot, she had suddenly, while floating down the stream, found herself crashing against the bronze vessel of the fable. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the possessor of enormous wealth. Novelists described the old man's life and gave some really interesting details of the atrocities committed by him while he was in the service of the Prince of Mysore. Bankers, men of a more positive nature, devised a specious fable. ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... True, the Coliseum will seem vaster close at hand, but from no point can it be seen so completely and clearly, in its immensity and its dilapidation combined, as from that. The Tarpeian Rock seems an absurd fable—its fatal leap the daily sport of infants—but in all ancient cities the same glaring discrepancy between ancient and modern altitudes is presented, and especially, we hear, at Jerusalem. The Seven Hills whereon Rome ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... looked as pleased as if he had been a boy of six, rather than a man of sixty, and Ralph rushed recklessly here and there and everywhere, with his head thrown back and his eyes rivetted upon the soaring kite, until, like Genius in the fable, he was suddenly prostrate through stumbling over an ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... emerges from the flower, shaking the yellow dust—A Hen comes on the scene as in La Fontaine's fable. A Cuckoo calls, as ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... which 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, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Your sex's much-lov'd enemy; For other foes we are prepar'd, And Nature puts us on our guard: In that alone such charms are found, We court the dart, we nurse the hand; And this, my child, an Aesop's Fable Will prove ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and the Fable are all common and popular modes of conveying instruction. Each is distinguished by its own special characteristics. The Tale consists simply in the narration of a story either founded on facts, or created ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... to be cheated he could make no objection, except where it might come under his cognizance, and then he must take the liberty to remonstrate, or to give up his agency to some of the many, who could play better than he could the part of the dog in the fable, pretending to guard his ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... pluck to send to himself his annuity in order not to appear in the eyes of a community, which loves the main chance, to be entirely without resources. Many of his friends (he was by that time dead, you will please remark) have contested mordicus this curious fact, declaring it to be a fable, and upholding the Chevalier de Valois as a respectable and worthy gentleman whom the liberals calumniated. Luckily for shrewd players, there are people to be found among the spectators who will always sustain them. Ashamed of ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... the fable, who after losing his tail tried to make that bereavement the fashion, failed in his undertaking; Dutch canal-boat dogs have, however, been successful where the fox failed, and are to-day pampered and prized for a curtailment ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... fable tells of two brothers. The younger, Bata, was falsely accused by his sister-in-law (as was Joseph by Potiphar's wife). His brother Inpw (Anepu) consequently pursued him. The sun god made a mighty flood that separated the pursuer from the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... any of the conditions which obtained in older communities where great literature arose. There is no glamour of old Romance about our early history, no shading off from the actual into a dim region of myth and fable; our beginnings are clearly defined and of an eminently prosaic character. The early settlers were engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with nature, and in the establishment of the primitive industries. Their strenuous pioneering days were followed by the feverish excitement of the gold period and ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... arrangements of this jovial regiment, and were at last as regular at table, as the adjutant and the paymaster, and so might they have continued, had not prosperity, that in its blighting influence upon the heart, spares neither priests nor laymen, and is equally severe upon mice (see Aesop's fable) and moral philosophers, actually deprived them, for the "nonce" of reason, and tempted them to their ruin. You naturally ask, what did they do? Did they venture upon allusions to the retreat upon Ross? Nothing of the kind. Did they, in that vanity which wine inspires, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... multitudes unacquainted with this life of Shelley? Perhaps they are; indeed, one may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them are. To these, then, I address myself, in the hope that some account of this romantic historical fable and the fabulist's manner of constructing and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... see giddy, coquetting, restless girls become sobered by marriage? A great object in life is decided; one on which their thoughts have been running in all their vagaries, and they seem to verify the beautiful fable of Undine. A new soul beams out in the gentleness and repose of their future lives. An indescribable softness and tenderness takes place of the wearying vanity of their former endeavours to attract admiration. Something of this sort took place ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... but a wondrous House of Sorrow, And Happiness therein a lying Fable. When first they mix'd the Clay of Man, and cloth'd His Spirit in the Robe of Perfect Beauty, For Forty Mornings did an Evil Cloud Rain Sorrows over him from Head to Foot; And when the Forty Mornings pass'd to Night, Then ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... immemorial served the Tartar instead of wine or spirits. The horse then is his friend under all circumstances, and inseparable from him; he may be even said to live on horseback, he eats and sleeps without dismounting, till the fable has been current that he has a centaur's nature, half man and half beast. Hence it was that the ancient Saxons had a horse for their ensign in war; thus it is that the Ottoman ordinances are, I believe, to this day dated from "the imperial stirrup," ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... more clearly, and that now, now, was the hour to ascertain them in lasting verity. Picturesquely and dramatically he portrayed the imbecility of deferring the inquiry at any point to the distance of future years when inevitably the facts would begin to put on fable. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... votre faon la fable suivante de La Fontaine. Du palais d'un jeune lapin Dame belette, un beau matin, S'empara: c'est une ruse. Le matre tant absent, ce lui fut chose aise. Elle porta chez lui ses pnates, un jour Qu'il tait ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... whole city: he, on the relation of the matter, determined that the poor man's money should be put between two empty dishes, and the cook should be recompensed with the jingling of the poor man's money, as he was satisfied with the smell of the cook's meat." This is affirmed by credible writers as no fable, but an undoubted truth.—FULLER'S Holy State, lib. iii. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... pieces, in which the poet has under his language a different meaning from what it expresses,—a meaning which there should be nothing in that language to indicate. Such a piece may be compared to the sopic fable; but, while it is the object of the fable to inculcate the virtues of morality and prudence, an historical interpretation has to be sought for the metaphorical pieces of the Shih. Generally, moreover, the moral of the fable ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... after Jupiter was married to Metis, she conceived by him, and was with child, but Jupiter suffered her not to stay, till she brought forth, but eat her up; whereby he became himself with child, and was delivered of Pallas armed, out of his head. Which monstrous fable containeth a secret of empire; how kings are to make use of their counsel of state. That first, they ought to refer matters unto them, which is the first begetting, or impregnation; but when they are elaborate, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... Nugent, obtained for him, from Dr. Madox, Bishop of Worcester, the vicarage of Snitterfield, worth about 140l. After having inserted some small poems in Dodsley's Collection, he published (in 1767) Edgehill, for which he obtained a large subscription; and in the following year, the fable of Labour and Genius. In 1771, his kind patron, Lord Willoughby de Broke, added to his other preferment the rectory of Kimcote, worth nearly 300l. in consequence of which he ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... a private in the ranks, an obscure workman among master builders. But she could offer her victory over herself, and ask her country to take back and use a character hewn and shaped in accordance with its traditions. Her husband's citizenship had become a legal fable. She would take it and weld it with her own, and, content never to know the outcome, lay them both together upon the ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... Tielitz and Messer also boasted of their present-day mistresses who were so often changed for reasons of economy. The hilarious game, as Gard learned, was to obtain favors in exchange for nothing as far as possible. Trickery, lies, abuse, kicks, were employed to this purpose. Female chastity? A fable for the impotent. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... It is no fable that the Aloe grows about a hundred years (a few more or less) before it blooms; and, after yielding its seed, the stem withers and dies. If we remember right, a beautiful specimen in full bloom, was exhibited three or four years since at the Argyll ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... speculation than that of George Eliot. Had she only lived earlier in the century she might easily have become the centre of a mythos. As it is, many of the anecdotes commonly repeated about her are made up largely of fable. It is, therefore, well, before it is too late, to reduce the true story of her career to the lowest terms, and this service has been well done by the author of the present ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... upon their dead fellows; and the mournful lowings of cattle, on their entering the slaughter-house, publish the impression made upon them by the horrible spectacle they are there struck with. It is with pleasure we see the author of the fable of the bees, forced to acknowledge man a compassionate and sensible being; and lay aside, in the example he offers to confirm it, his cold and subtle style, to place before us the pathetic picture of a ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... day this changed, and we camped at the foot of a granite mountain. It made one think of the Glass Mountain of fable, with its smooth stretches of polished rock shining in the sun. That a human being should dare to take a wagon over such a place seemed incredible. Yet there the road was, zigzagging up the rocky slope, while here and there ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... Mandeville, a London physician of French extraction, and born in Holland, had aroused attention by his poem, The Grumbling Hive; or Knaves Turned Honest, 1706, and in response to vehement attacks upon his work, had added a commentary to the second edition, The Fable of the Bees; or Private Vices Public Benefits, 1714. The moral of the fable is that the welfare of a society depends on the industry of its members, and this, in turn, on their passions and vices. Greed, extravagance, envy, ambition, and rivalry are the roots of the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... reflection—to have been an echo, a shadow, a futile attempt; but this at last was life itself, this was a fact, this was reality. For these things one lived; these were the things that people had died for. Love had been a fable before this—doubtless a very pretty one; and passion had been a literary phrase—employed obviously with considerable effect. But now he stood in a personal relation to these familiar ideas, which gave them a ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... conservative. He lacked that restless technical curiosity which spurred Poe and Whitman to experiment with new forms. But Lowell revealed early extraordinary gifts of improvisation, retaining the old tunes of English verse as the basis for his own strains of unpremeditated art. He wrote "A Fable for Critics" faster than he could have written it in prose. "Sir Launfal" was composed in two days, the "Commemoration ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... 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
... a fable or the posy of a ring, Sir Dragon?" she said, sharply. "Do you come to try or tempt me, or is this perchance but some part of my Lord of Misrule's Yule-tide mumming? 'Sblood, sir; only cravens sneak behind masks to strike and threaten. Have off your disguise, ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... 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 gluing ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... amuse you, tell you, if you like, the story of the Ass's Skin or the fable of the Fox and the Crow, ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... genius required a frequent rein; Walpole's intellect needed the perpetual spur. Yet Walpole, with his lack of imagination, of eloquence, of wit, of humor, and of culture, went farther and did more than the brilliant Bolingbroke. It was the old fable of the hare and the tortoise over again; perhaps it should rather be called a new version of the old fable. The farther the hare goes in the wrong way the more she goes astray, and thus many of Bolingbroke's ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... opposition to the Government; for all these societies and associations connect themselves directly with politics. [See Note 1.] It is of little consequence by what description of tie "these sticks in the fable" are bound up together; once bound together, they are, not to be broken. In America religion severs the community, but these societies are the bonds which to a certain ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... making the beasts talk. Of course they never do talk that way, and if they did talk, they would not be giving that kind of advice But then they never did talk. Did you ever hear of a beast talking, Ernest, except in a fable?" ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... by a small rod, tipped apparently with sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like fluid, so that a pale, lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native fable talk, we call the "Fairy's ring," but yet more visible because marked in phosphorescent light. On the ring thus formed were placed twelve small lamps, fed with the fluid from the same vessel, and lighted by the same rod. The light emitted by the lamps was more vivid and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... lesser good qualities of moderation, forbearance, and silence would amply suffice. In silence and In hope shall your strength be."[7] So he dismissed me, ashamed of myself, it is true, but, like the giant of fable, strengthened by having fallen. On leaving him I felt as if all the insults in the world would henceforth fail to make me utter one single word of complaint. I was much consoled afterwards by coming across, in one of his letters, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Briney, hard at his syntax, with the Fibulae AEsiopii, as he called it, placed open at a particular passage, on the seat under him, with a hope that, when Philemy will examine him, the book may open at his favorite fable of "Gallus Gallinaceus—a dung-hill cock." Phaddy himself is obliged to fast this day, there being one day of his penance yet unperformed, since the last time he was at his duty; which was, as aforesaid, about five years: and Katty, now that everything ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... walking together in a little natural glade of the bush that bordered one side of the kraal, when, at the end of it, looking like some wood nymph of classic fable in the light of the setting sun, appeared the lovely Mameena, clothed only in her girdle of fur, her necklace of blue beads and some copper ornaments, and carrying ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... should be avoided, as much as possible, in moral education; for prohibitions may often become the cause of greater immorality, than they were intended to prevent. The fable of the hen, whose very prohibition led her chickens to the fatal well, has often been realized in life, there is a certain curiosity in human nature to look into things forbidden. If Quaker youth should have the same desires in this respect as others, they cannot gratify them but at the expence ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... multitude of lights all along the coast. At six in the morning, seeing none of the natives on shore, and observing that the pendant was taken away, which probably they had learnt to despise, as the frogs in the fable did King Log, I ordered the lieutenant to take a guard on shore, and, if all was well, to send off, that we might begin watering: In a short time, I had the satisfaction to find that he had sent off for water-casks, and by eight o'clock, we had four tons of water on board. While our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Giovanni had half hoped, half feared, would be the case,—a figure appeared beneath the antique sculptured portal, and came down between the rows of plants, inhaling their various perfumes as if she were one of those beings of old classic fable that lived upon sweet odors. On again beholding Beatrice, the young man was even startled to perceive how much her beauty exceeded his recollection of it; so brilliant, so vivid, was its character, that she glowed amid the sunlight, and, as Giovanni whispered ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... than aught wild chivalry could tell. There's not a scene of this dim, daily life, But, in the splendor of one truthful thought As from creation's palette freshly wet, Might make young romance's loveliest picture dim, And e'en the wonder-land of ancient song,—— Old Fable's fairest dream, a nursery rhyme. How calm the night moves on, and yet In the dark morrow, that behind those hills Lies sleeping now, who knows what waits?—'Tis well. He that made this life, I'll ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... classical opera, called No, which is performed on stages specially built for the purpose in the palaces of the principal nobles. These No represent the entertainments by which the Sun Goddess was lured out of the cave in which she had hidden, a fable said to be based upon an eclipse. In the reign of the Emperor Yomei (A.D. 586-593), Hada Kawakatsu, a man born in Japan, but of Chinese extraction, was commanded by the Emperor to arrange an entertainment ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... 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 royal personages had anything ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... 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 ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the fable let loose a dove upon the waters, and the dove lost only a tail-feather or two when the clashing islands clashed their worst, and in the moment of the rebound the Argo swept through in safety. The modern ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... should cease to act like a foolish boy who has inherited (what appears to him) a limitless fortune; not for fear of his coming, like his prototype in the parable, to live on "husks" for he is doing that already, but lest like the dog of the fable, in grasping after the shadow of a banquet he miss the simple meal that ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... knows the fable of the old man, the boy and the ass; but not one in a thousand knows that it was written nearly four hundred years ago by a man who for forty years was a member of the Secretariate to nine Popes, from Innocent VII. to Calixtus III. First in the Bugiale of the Vatican, where the officers ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... any of your learned correspondents inform me whether the fable of Cupid and Psyche was invented by Apuleius; or whether he made use of a superstition then current, turning it, as it suited his purpose, into the beautiful fable which has been handed down to us as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... more elegant or digestible. For the credit of Greek farmers, I am sorry that Eumaeus has nothing better to offer his landlord,—the most abominable dish, Charles Lamb and his pleasant fable to the contrary notwithstanding, that was ever set before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the picture of male carnality that such women conjure up belongs almost wholly to fable, as I have already observed in dealing with the sophistries of Dr. Eliza Burt Gamble, a paralogist on a somewhat higher plane. As they depict him in their fevered treatises on illegitimacy, white-slave trading and ophthalmia neonatorum, the average male adult of the Christian and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Aeolus, renowned in fable for his robberies, and for the tortures to which he was put by Pluto. He was cunning enough to break loose out of hell, but Hermes brought ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... chronological order, and leaving Gallathea for later treatment, we pass on to Endymion, the second of the allegorical dramas, and, without doubt, the boldest in conception and the most beautiful in execution of all Lyly's plays. The story is founded upon the classical fable of Diana's kiss to the sleeping boy, but its arrangement and development are for the most part of Lyly's invention: indeed, he was obliged to frame it in accordance with the facts which he sought to allegorize. All critics are agreed in identifying Cynthia with Elizabeth and Endymion with Leicester, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... 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, ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... the dead was ridiculous, and only meant to keep up a belief in the fable of purgatory, as the fate of all is finally decided, on the departure of the soul ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... indomitable strength. In, however, all these forms of religion, whether inherently false from the beginning, or so overlaid in some after stage by the fictitious and the untrue as to have their original substratum of truth covered up by error and fable, there is such a want of coherency between the theistic and human elements, that we always find them undergoing a process of separation. We see the human element ever laying hold on the popular mind, and there manifesting itself in the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... much for that person's sake; yet in that period we do not care whether we suffer or die, and in after life, when we look back at those hours of youth, we wonder at the way in which we then felt. In European life of to-day the old Greek fable is still true; almost everybody must run Atalanta's race and abide ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn |
