"Fable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he pressed A trembling hand against his throbbing breast, His aimless fingers touched a treasured part Of the green holly-branch of Elfinhart, Laid in his breast when he put off his arms. What perils now are left in fairy charms? For poets fable when they call love blind; Love's habitation is the purer mind, Whence with his keen eyes he may penetrate All mists and fogs that baser spells create. Love? What is love? Not the wild feverish thrill, When heart to ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... written of those lands,[271-1] it was all by conjecture, without confirmation from eyesight, amounting only to this much that the hearers for the most part listened and judged that there was more fable in it than anything actual, however trifling. Since thus our Redeemer has given to our most illustrious King and Queen, and to their famous kingdoms, this victory in so high a matter, Christendom should have rejoicing therein and make great festivals, and give solemn thanks to the Holy ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet; but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterward, caught in the thicket, he ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... Apostle, 'so run not as uncertainly.' If the runner is now heading that way and now this, making all manner of loops upon his path, of course he will be left hopelessly in the rear. It is the old fable of the Grecian mythology transplanted into Christian soil. The runner who turned aside to pick up the golden apple was disappointed of his hopes of the radiant fair. The ship, at the helm of which is a steersman ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Protestantism, awoke the nation to the true faculty of defence; and from that period alone could the burden of the fine national song be realized, and Britain was to "rule the main." The expeditions against the Spanish West Indies, and the new ardour of discovery in regions where brilliant fable lent its aid to rational curiosity, carried on the process of naval power. The war against Holland, under Charles II., though disastrous and impolitic, showed at least that the fleet of England was the true arm of its strength; and the humiliation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... made up with a heroic determination not to mind it. Few envy the consideration enjoyed by the oldest inhabitant. We do not count a man's years, until he has nothing else to count. The vast inconvenience of animal immortality was told in the fable of Tithonus. In short, the creed of the street is, Old Age is not disgraceful, but immensely disadvantageous. Life is well enough, but we shall all be glad to get out of it, and they will all be glad to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... 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
... "Fable tells us that upon entering into life Hercules saw the two paths open before him: of pleasure and ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... whole gold-fable was vastly exaggerated. To be sure there was gold, no one could deny that, but it occurred very rarely, and in terrible places to get at. One had to put in ten dollars' worth of work, to get out one dollars' worth of dust. And provisions were so high that the cost of living ate ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... world. All frontiers crossed, all barriers behind, he stood within the paradise of his heart's desire. The Consciousness of the Earth included him. These were early forms of life she had projected—some of the living prototypes of legend, myth, and fable—embodiments of her first manifestations of consciousness, and eternal, accessible to every heart that holds a true and passionate worship. All his life this love of Nature, which was worship, had been his. It now fulfilled ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The Republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the Republic of Venice was modern when compared to the Papacy; and the Republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor. ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... monstrous one; but in its very monstrosity there lay this germ of encouragement—that it could not be suspected. The very hopelessness of the scheme grounded his hope; and he resolved to 20 execute a vengeance which should involve as it were, in the unity of a well-laid tragic fable, all whom he judged to be his enemies. That vengeance lay in detaching from the Russian empire the whole Kalmuck nation and breaking up that system of intercourse which had thus far been 25 beneficial to both. This last was a consideration which moved him but little. True ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... fairy-stories of our children. There is a special value in these old-world stories, that date back to a time long before written history. They belong to all countries in slightly different forms. We have regarded them as fables, but there was never a fable that did not arise out of truth—not, of course, the outside truth of facts, but from that inward truth of the life and thought of a people, which is what really matters. I cannot, then, do better than conclude the evidence for the mother-age by referring to some ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... that that story of "The Dog and the Water-lily" was "no fable," and that Beau really understood his master's wish when he fetched him a water-lily out of "Ouse's silent tide." How graceful are the last two stanzas of that ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... stated (Devay, 'Du Danger des Mariages,' &c., 1862, p. 141) that the marriages of cousins have been prohibited by the legislature of Ohio; but I have been assured, in answer to inquiries made in the United States, that this statement is a mere fable. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... "A fable, I think. Someone was telling me about her the other day. She is only a camp-follower and protegee; and a compatriot of mine. She is an orphan and Madame ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... my sweat—was an imp of darkness. My fool's paradise I had planted with all manner of fair flowers and lordly trees, and in my folly believed that those who had been my friends were forever after assured of pleasant places, lovely perfumes, and grateful shade; but like the Grecian in the ancient fable, I found I had sown dragon's teeth, and the crop I reaped was of hatred and envy, passion ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... "that we all know, and you know that we all know, is but a fable. Doth not Madam Cavendish treat you as a son, and are you not a convict in name only, so far as she is concerned? I say, Harry, you can ride my horse to the winning on Royal Oak Day, at the races. What think ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... 'winning wave in the tempestuous petticoat' which has rippled to such good purpose through so many graceful speeches since. So that though Julia and Dianeme and Anthea have passed away, though Corinna herself is merely 'a fable, song, a fleeting shade,' he has saved enough of them from the ravin of Time for us to love and be grateful for eternally. Their gracious ghosts abide in a peculiar nook of the Elysium of Poesy. There 'in their habit as they lived' ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... work for the day, twelve sums, four pages of penmanship, and the fable of "The Dog and the Rabbit" to learn by heart. He began with the fable, reciting it in a loud voice, like the hero in the play: "'A dog was roaming about the fields, when from behind a little hill jumped a rabbit, which had been nibbling ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... Bajazet was imprisoned by Timur, so long and so often repeated as a moral lesson, is now rejected as a fable by the modern writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity. They appeal with confidence to the Persian history of Sherefeddin Ali, according to which has been given to our curiosity in a French version, and from which I shall collect and abridge, a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... itself); and, except for Nicolai's good industry (in his ANEKDOTEN-Book), we should have difficulty even in guessing, not to say understanding, as is now partly possible. The few real particulars—and those do verify themselves, and hang perfectly together, when the big globe of fable is burnt off from them—are to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a thousand kisses, And fight e'er since for pay, like Swisses. Gay's 'Aye and No, a Fable'. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... presence of this great beast, which was made into the fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder." To his friend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Ha! why? Do you think I fable with you? I assure you, He that has once the flower of the sun, The perfect ruby, which we call elixir, Not only can do that, but, by its virtue, Can confer honour, love, respect, long life; Give safety, valour, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... erected it. He did not calculate upon the avaricious frenzy of a whole nation; he did not see that confidence, like mistrust, could be increased almost ad infinitum, and that hope was as extravagant as fear. How was he to foretell that the French people, like the man in the fable, would kill, in their frantic eagerness, the fine goose he had brought to lay them so many golden eggs? His fate was like that which may be supposed to have overtaken the first adventurous boatman who rowed from Erie to Ontario. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... that necessary before one can believe in his teachings? The truth is always divine. What difference does it make whether the one who utters it be human or divine, bond or slave, AEsop or Marcus Aurelius? the truth remains the same. A fable is only another name of a parable. We have the story of the lost sheep; that's a parable; and that of the lamb that muddied the stream, and that's a fable. One is sacred, the other profane, but both ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... and geographical research. Because there was a Persian empire which was the natural enemy of the Greek, there must also have been an Assyrian empire, which had a similar hostility; and not only the fable of the island of Atlantis, but the Trojan war, in Plato's mind derived some features from the Persian struggle. So Herodotus makes the Nile answer to the Ister, and the valley of the Nile to the Red Sea. In the Republic, Plato is flying in the air regardless ...
— Laws • Plato
... scorn as well as defiance in her voice—scorn because he stood before her so silently; scorn because the fierce torrent of her anger had flowed unchecked. She had only to stand up to him, it seemed, and like the giant of the fable he dwindled to a pigmy. She was no longer hurt by his passivity. She despised him ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... their carriages, as one sometimes does in the Park, though not given to such nonsense, he could not help uttering a secret exclamation against the inequalities of fortune, and thinking the blindness of the goddess of the wheel no fable. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... of Piedmont was not quite seven years old, when his preceptor, Cardinal (then Father) Glendel, explained to him the fable of Pandora's Box. He told him that all evils which afflict the human race were shut up in that fatal box; which Pandora, tempted by Curiosity, opened, when they immediately flew out, and spread themselves over the surface ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... of himself in this fable, Mr Tapley took it upon him to issue divers general directions to the waiters from the hotel, relative to the disposal of the dishes and so forth; and as they were usually in direct opposition to all precedent, and were always issued in his most ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... voice faltered, and with a sudden impulse Mrs. Snowdon bent her head and kissed the fair forehead which had bent lower and lower as she went on. Each listener understood the truth, lightly veiled in that hasty fable, and each found in it a different meaning. Sir Jasper frowned and bit his lips, Annon glanced anxiously from face to face, Octavia hid hers, and Treherne's flashed with sudden intelligence, while Rose laughed low to herself, enjoying the ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... When the night is cold, windy, or rainy, he usually covers his body with a heap of 'Pandanus', 'Nipa', or Fern leaves, like those of which his bed is made, and he is especially careful to wrap up his head in them. It is this habit of covering himself up which has probably led to the fable that the Orang ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... sex's much-lov'd enemy; For other foes we are prepar'd, And Nature puts us on our guard: In that alone such charms are found, We court the dart, we nurse the hand; And this, my child, an Aesop's Fable Will prove much better than ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... in which verbena and maiden-hair have been steeped, as good raise mirth and jollity in the guests (in imitation of Homer's Helen, who with some medicament diluted the pure wine she had prepared), do not understand that that fable, coming from round Egypt, after a long way ends at last in easy and fit discourse. For whilst they were drinking Helen ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Europe, and beaten in one or two. If but once I had been shoved into the gutter by a heedless throng going furiously upon its financial ways, I should have been content.... The legendary "American rush" is to me a fable. Whether it ever existed I know not; but I certainly saw no trace of it, either in New York or Chicago. I dare say I ought to have gone to Seattle for it. My first sight of a stock-market roped off in the street was an acute disillusionment. In agitation ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... correspondence with the Orleans Princes, was thinking of starting a racing stable, and finished up by believing that he really was a fashionable man, and strutted about, and was puffed out with conceit, as he had probably never read La Fontaine's fable, in which he tells the story of the ass that is laden with relics which people salute, and so ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... in armour, on an enchanted steed, guarding hidden treasure, or waiting for the magic word which will set him free to fight for his banished rulers. And yet, here was I entering this ancient citadel mighty in history and fable, in an ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that the Goddess is made to command nature—the breeze, the sleep of the Suitors. It is the method of fable thus to portray intelligence, whose function is to take control of nature and make her subserve its purpose. The breeze blows and drives the ship; it is the divine instrument for bringing Telemachus to Pylos, a part of the world-order, especially upon the present ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... "In realising the fable of the boys and the frogs with the poor old Dominie, forgetting that what may be sport to ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... vigorous Christianity. A Christianity without a dying Christ is a dying Christianity. And history shows us that the expansiveness and elevating power of the Gospel depend on the prominence given to the sacrifice on the Cross. An old fable says that the only thing that melts adamant is the blood of a lamb. The Gospel reveals the precious blood of Jesus Christ, His death for us as a ransom, as the one power which subdues hostility and binds hearts to Him. The Christ of the Gospels is the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... American girl is neither an affectation, nor a prejudiced fable, nor a piece of stupidity. The German woman, quoted by Mr. Bryce, found her American compeer furchtbar frei, but she had at once to add und furchtbar fromm. "The innocence of the American girl passes abysses of obscenity ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Very shortly he began to refuse to talk about the thing at all. The act was completed. Like the creature of fable, it had consumed itself. Out of that old man's consciousness it had departed. Amazingly. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... I advise you to give up trying to father the crime onto a band of gipsies. The witness Bridet, who has business relations with you, has endeavored, no doubt at your instigation, to induce us to accept this fable. I warn you he has ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... caterpillar and the horseman was conceived in arrogance, but it was pretty and effective. Every tory intellect on earth is pleased to discourse in that way of the labors of the only men who greatly help their species,—the patient elaborators of truth. A caterpillar, as we learn from this fable, had crawled slowly over a fence, which a gallant horseman took at a single leap. "Stop," ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... says the fable, "in the room of those pictures which exhibit men vanquishing lions, we should see lions feeding upon men." If the stone-cutter could have written like Bruyere, what would he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the collection was that of three portraits belonging to the pre-historical age, and, according to mythical tradition, taken by the orders of a philosopher, whose origin and attributes were as much mixed up with symbolical fable as those of an Indian Budh ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and as easily stampeded. When the Atlin boom struck the camp, Foy lost five hundred men in as many minutes. Scores of graders dropped their tools and started off on a trot. The prospector who had told the fable had thrown his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the general direction. Nobody had thought to ask how far. Many forgot to let go; and Heney's picks and shovels, worth over a dollar apiece, went away with the stampeders. As the wild mob swept on, the tethered blasters cut the cables that guyed ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... "Why do you always wear those eye-hiding glasses straddled across your nose? Are they supposed to make a man look handsomer or wiser than his fellows, or do you, a sensible person, really believe that you can see better than another man because of them? If so, then all I can say is that it is a fable, a delusion; no man can believe such ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... establish his credit as a staunch upholder of the Bourbons, and has tried already to gain admittance into my set. When his wife took Mme. de Langeais' box, she thought that she could take her charm, her wit, and her success as well. It is the old fable of the jay in the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... constructed may be an actual occurrence or fiction; but, if fictitious, the story must be consistent and probable, with no admixture of the unusual or miraculous. In this respect the parable differs from the fable, the latter being imaginative, exaggerated and improbable as to fact; moreover, the intent is unlike in the two, since the parable is designed to convey some great spiritual truth, while the so-called moral of the fable is at best suggestive only ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... followed by comic groups, six of which illustrated Goethe's fable of "Reinecke the Fox," and were skilfully managed as well ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... devote themselves to his worship; they cast lots, and one of them offers her own tender infant to be torn by the three, like a roe; then the other women pursue them, and they are turned into bats, or moths, or other creatures of the night. And fable is endorsed by history; Plutarch telling us how, before the battle of Salamis, with the assent of Themistocles, three Persian captive youths were offered to ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... were moved with extraordinary indignation; who were once in the highest pitch of either honour, or calamity; or mutual hatred and enmity; or of any other fortune or condition whatsoever. Then consider what's now become of all those things. All is turned to smoke; all to ashes, and a mere fable; and perchance not so much as a fable. As also whatsoever is of this nature, as Fabius Catulinus in the field; Lucius Lupus, and Stertinius, at Baiae Tiberius at Caprem: and Velius Rufus, and all such examples of vehement prosecution in worldly matters; let these also run in thy mind ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... Pleasant Adventures at Brussels; a Comedy; with a familiar Preface upon a late Reformer of the Stage, ending with a Satirical Fable of the Dog, and the Otter, 1698. This play is dedicated to Thomas Lord Wharton, and part of it is borrowed from a Novel called Female Falsehood. Scene Brussels. 24. Massanello, or a Fisherman Prince, in two Parts; acted at the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... also returned. During my work I frequently felt quite well; the thunder-clouds seemed to have cleared away. I often felt beautifully elevated, gently supported; generally I was silent, but it was from inner joy; even hope wound itself softly round my heart; the children of fable came to the weeping elf, saying, "Weep not; thou too mayst still be happy." But the word resounded from farther and farther distance, till at last I could hear it no longer. Silence! now the old night holds me again; let it ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Salmali felt great shame. Remembering also the words that Narada had said, he began to repent greatly for his folly. Even in this way, O tiger among kings, a weak and foolish person, by provoking the enmity of a powerful one, is at last obliged to repent like the Salmali in fable. Even when possessed of equal might, people do not suddenly wage hostilities with those that have injured them. On the other hand, they display their might gradually, O king! A person of foolish understanding should never provoke the hostility of one that is possessed of intelligence. In such cases ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... what a fable is? You have heard fables?" Whatever the answer, proceed to explain a fable as follows: "A fable, you know, is a little story, and is meant to teach us a lesson. Now, I am going to read a fable to ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... sleep at ease in some pleasant wayside inn, without once meeting the eyes that stood as it were like a window between himself and a shrewd incredulous scoffing world that would turn him into a monstrosity and his story into a fable. And in a little while, perhaps in three days, he would awaken out of this engrossing nightmare, and know he was free, this black dog gone from his back, and (as the old saying expressed it without any ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... of curiosity has a hold of you, Molly; remember the fable they made us repeat: De loin c'est quelque chose, et de pres ce n'est rien. Now you shall go straight into your bed, and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... air of all but fabulous antiquity pervades them, greater perhaps than pervades the legends of any other north European people. We seem transplanted to a world of the most primitive type conceivable; a world of myth and of fable, of direct Nature interpretations, of mythology, in short, pure and simple. Even those stories which are known to be of later origin exhibit to a greater or less degree the same character; one which has come down to them doubtless from earlier half-forgotten tales, of which they are ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... and these great dark holes remained always mysterious to those that looked for mystery in the family that whiled away the ages in that castle. And by every fireplace two queer carved creatures stood upholding the mantlepiece, with mystery in their faces and curious limbs, uniting the hearth with fable and with tales told in the wood. Years after the men that carved them were all dust the shadows of these creatures would come out and dance in the room, on wintry nights when all the lamps were gone and flames stole out and flickered ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... (so chance I to please Caecilius owning me now-a-days!) Is it my own default, how so they say it be mine; 10 Nor can any declare aught sin by me was committed. Yet it is so declared (Quintus!) by fable of folk; Who, whenever they find things done no better than should be, Come to me outcrying all:—"Door, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... everything must give way to the considerations of war. It is taking the argument in the fable of the wolf and the lamb as serious philosophy and accepting the position of the wolf. They fail entirely to see the humor of the fable, and hence the fallacy of the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... railed at by all who come from Ireland that I can defend him no longer. Lord Anglesea assured me that the story of applying Piso out of Tacitus(22) to Lord Treasurer's being wounded is true. I believe the Duke of Beaufort will be admitted to our Society next meeting. To-day I published the Fable of Midas,(23) a poem, printed in a loose half-sheet of paper. I know not how it will sell; but it passed wonderfully at our Society to-night; and Mr. Secretary read it before me the other night to Lord Treasurer, at Lord ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... 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
... entered the war, and President Wilson was burning to associate his name and also that of his country with the vastest and noblest enterprise inscribed in the annals of history. And each one moved over his own favorite route toward his own goal. It was an apt illustration of the Russian fable of the swan, the crab, and the pike being harnessed together in order to remove a load. The swan flew upward, the crab crawled backward, the pike made with all haste for the water, and the load remained ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... cantos were added, which, following the fortunes of the hero, record at length that he was killed by a dragon. A digest and running commentary of the poem may be found in Turner's Anglo-Saxons; and no one can read it without discerning the history shining clearly out of the mists of fable. The primitive manners, modes of life, forms of expression, are all historically delineated. In it the intimate relations between the king and his people are portrayed. The Saxon cyning is compounded of cyn, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... inconveniences, she is heaping upon his head future accidents and perils; nor how cruel is the caution which prolongs the weakness of childhood in one who must bear the fatigues of a grown-up man. The fable says that, to render her son invulnerable, Thetis plunged him into the Styx. This allegory is beautiful and clear. The cruel mothers of whom I am speaking do far otherwise; by plunging their children into effeminacy they open their pores to ills of every kind, to ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and broke his palette, determined never to paint again, but probably this is a good deal of a fairy tale and one that is not needed to impress us with the artist's greatness, since there is so much to prove it without adding fable to fact. ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... development of the world there came a time when there was danger of truth being corrupted and mingled with fable among those who did not follow the guidance of God, as did Abraham and the patriarchs; then the great lawgiver, Moses, was given the divine commission to make a written record of the creation of the world ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... corner of his cab with fully half his cry to finish out; and, curiously, all the time a sad little story from an old holiday in the country kept haunting him. It was at once a fact and a fable concerning a happy little family of swallows, whose sudden tragedy he had seen with his own ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... seems to me," he said, "that if AEsop had observed this he would have made a fable from it, how the Deity, wishing to reconcile these warring principles, when he could not do so, united their heads together, and from hence whomsoever the one visits the other attends immediately after; as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... change was coming over the boy. He began to weary of fable and cry out for fact. He had just entered his fourteenth year. He was growing fast; and, but for that dwarfing deformity, would have been unusually tall, graceful and well-proportioned. But along with this increase of stature had come a listlessness and languor which troubled Lady Calmady. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Scotlande: of the beginning (origin) of which name haue been sundrie opinios (opinions): One late feigned by him, which first prynted the Englishe Chronicle,[1] wherein is neither similitude of trouth, reasone, nor honestie: I mean the fable of the fiftie doughters of Dioclesian, kyng of Syria, where neuer any other historic maketh mencion of a kyng of Syria, so named: Also that name is Greke, and no part of the language of Syria. Moreouer the coming of theim from Syria in a shippe or boate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... 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
... and the fable of the Sphynx! What lessons do they teach, What sermons do they preach Of the riddle and ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... point the fable teaches that money will not buy everything in European travel, though some Americans imagine it will. It will not, for instance, buy comfort or decency, though it will secure privacy in a French sleeper ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every State which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the Northern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... There is so much of fable mingled with the traditionary biography of this "Devonshire worthy," that most persons probably will dismiss the claim altogether. He became weary of his life, and, being determined to rid himself from the direful apprehensions of dangerous approaching ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... haste to supplant a habit, so fearful and pernicious, though every thing else be laid aside. Let him show the great inconvenience a man must experience in whose word no confidence can be reposed. The fable of the shepherd-boy who gave false alarms to the distant workmen of the approach of wolves, so that when the wolves really came his cries were in vain, will show that lying is unprofitable in the end. But his chief object should be to exhibit the moral turpitude ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... The philosopher's stone is no fable, if words of yours could extract gold from a heart of flint. Brave Anthony! you have wrought a miracle. But let me look at the order. Seeing's believing; and I cannot believe such an improbable thing without I witness it ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... resounds In fable or romance of Uther's son, Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore When Charlemain with ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... person whom by reason of his purity of character they are unable to influence they react with terrible force upon their creator; so that the mediaeval story of the magician being torn to pieces by the fiends he himself had raised is no mere fable, but may well have ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... pantomimi was then revived, to add to the attractions of court-dances. Under the Roman empire the pantomimi had represented either a mythological story, or perhaps a scene from a Greek tragedy, by mute gestures, while a chorus, placed in the background, sang cantica to narrate the fable, or to describe the action of the scene. The question is whether mute pantomimic action, which is the essence of modern ballet, was carried through those court entertainments, in which kings, queens, princes and princesses, took parts with the courtiers; or whether it is of later growth, and derived ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... a fable, but history records This defeat of the "Fowl of Great Boasting Words." How the "Prussian Black Eagle" that thought he could scratch, Found in "Old Baldy" far more than ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... was the salvation of man from everlasting damnation. Not only Tertullian, but several Fathers of the Church, regarded physical research as superfluous and absurd, and even as godless. "What happiness shall be mine if I know where the Nile has its source, or what the physicists fable of heaven?" asked Lactantius. And, "Should we not be regarded as insane if we pretended to have knowledge of matters of which we can know nothing? How much more, then, are they to be regarded as raving madmen who imagine that they know the secrets of nature, which will ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... every man Some gift serviceable; Write I never could nor can Hungry at the table; Fasting, any stripling to Vanquish me is able; Hunger, thirst, I liken to Death that ends the fable. ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... the world was but dimly known, the man who had reached India, China, or the Islands of the Sea, and returned to describe his adventures, made his narrative a matter of conscience, and justly considered that he had added something to the stock of human knowledge. The world of fable had not then contracted into as narrow limits as at present; foreign countries were full of marvels, and science had not made clear the phenomena of nature. The old travelers had all the wonder and the credulity of children. All was fish that came to their nets, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded, That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known, (How ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... country into which it came. Infidelity was triumphant and religion was on the point of expiring. Something extraordinary seemed necessary to arrest the attention of a giddy people who were ready to conclude that Christianity was a fable and futurity a delusion. This revival has done it. It has confounded infidelity and brought numbers beyond ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... surmise. Ah me! Whilst thee the shores, and sounding Seas Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurl'd Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides. Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou to our moist vows deny'd, Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, 160 Where the great vision of the guarded Mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold; Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth. And, O ye Dolphins, waft the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... antiquities. He has been occupied all the day in the attempt to convince me that the ancient Amriccans governed themselves!—did ever anybody hear of such an absurdity?—that they existed in a sort of every-man-for-himself confederacy, after the fashion of the "prairie dogs" that we read of in fable. He says that they started with the queerest idea conceivable, viz: that all men are born free and equal—this in the very teeth of the laws of gradation so visibly impressed upon all things both in the moral and physical universe. Every man "voted," as they called it—that is to say meddled ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as many reasons for as there were against marriage in general and marrying Missy in particular. At all events the arguments were equally strong on both sides, and Nekhludoff laughed as he compared himself to the ass in the fable who, while deciding which of the two bales of hay before him he should have ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... worldly blessing. And in reply to some faint objections of Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological works like the Washerwoman of Finchley Common and others of that school, with which Mrs. Osborne had been furnished during her life at Brompton) he told her an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the sunshine was unbearable for the eyes and that the Nightingale was a most overrated bird. "It is one's nature to sing and the other's to hoot," he said, laughing, "and with such a sweet voice ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Merry Devil of Edmonton" and "The Witch of Edmonton."—Lysons, in his Environs of London, says, "There is a fable (says Norden) of one Peter Fabell, that lyeth in Edmonton church, who is said to have beguiled the devell by policie for money; but the devell is deceit itselfe, and hardly deceived."—"Belike (says Weever) he was some ingenious, conceited gentleman, who did use some sleightie ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... questions; and we have sometimes to remember that there are people who 'will not hear the word,' and who must first 'be won without the word.' Heavy rains run off hard-baked earth. It must first be softened by a gentle drizzle. Luther once told this fable: 'The lion made a great feast, and he invited all the beasts, and among the rest, a sow. When all manner of costly dishes were set before the guests, the sow asked, "Have you no bran?" Even so, said ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... gives the following account of Lilith and her doings: "There are some who do not regard spectres as simple devils, but suppose them to be of a mixed nature—part demoniacal, part human, and to have had their origin from Lilith, Adam's first wife, by Eblis, prince of the devils. This fable has been transmitted to the Arabs, from Jewish sources, by some converts of Mohamet from Cabbalism and Rabbinism, who have transferred all the Jewish fooleries to the Arabs. They gave to Adam a wife formed of clay, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... "does" the Parisian correspondence for the Adelphi Theatre, has supplied it with a vaudeville bearing the above title; the fable, of which, like some of AEsop's, principally concerns a hen, that, however, does not speak, and a smart cockscomb who does—an innocent little fair who has charge of the fowl—a sort of Justice Woodcock, and a bombardier who, because he is in the uniform of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... They talk much of the union of the will and understanding, but all is mere phantasy and folly. The right and true speculation is this: "Believe in Christ; do what thou oughtest to do in thy vocation," etc. This is the only practice in Divinity. Also, Mystica Theologia Dionysii is a mere fable, and a lie, like to Plato's Fables. Omnia sunt non ens, et omnia sunt ens-All is something, and all is nothing; and so he leaveth all hanging ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... on all points which can be tested, the Pentateuchal writer states that which is not true. What, therefore, is his authority on the matter—creation by a Deity—which cannot be tested? What sort of "inspiration" is that which leads to the promulgation of a fable as divine truth, which forces those who believe in that inspiration to hold on, like grim death, to the literal truth of the fable, which demoralises them in seeking for all sorts of sophistical shifts to bolster up the fable, and which finally is discredited and repudiated ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and oeconomical prudence. Yet his real power is not shown in the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and the tenour of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... visitors, that the wonderful land of Cibola, with its seven cities and its untold riches, was distant but twenty days' journey by water. In truth, it was on the Gila, two thousand miles off, and its wealth a fable. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... are! He said nothing of himself. He was absorbed in my stories concerning you. I told him as pretty a fable as La Fontaine related of the Avare qui avait perdu son tresor! I said you were a beautiful chatelaine besieged by an army of lovers, but the knight errant Fortunatus had alone won your favor, and would receive your hand! ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pausing, Gebir then besought What region held his ancestors, what clouds, What waters, or what gods, from his embrace. Aroar then sudden, as though roused, renewed. "Come thou, if ardour urges thee and force Suffices—mark me, Gebir, I unfold No fable to allure thee—on! behold Thy ancestors!" and lo! with horrid gasp The panting flame above his head recoiled, And thunder through his heart and life blood throbbed. Such sound could human organs once conceive, Cold, speechless, palsied, not the soothing ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... 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 ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... is the fable of the crab and its mother. They were strolling along the sand together when the mother said, "Child, you are not walking gracefully. You should walk straight forward, without ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... occasioned an acquaintance between us. He took great notice of me, called on me often to converse on those subjects, carried me to the Horns, a pale alehouse in——Lane, Cheapside, and introduced me to Dr. Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," who had a club there, of which he was the soul, being a most facetious, entertaining companion. Lyons, too, introduced me to Dr. Pemberton, at Batson's Coffee-house, who promis'd to give me an opportunity, sometime or other, of seeing Sir ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Encyclopaedia Britannica does not imitate the wise reticence of Tabourot's saving clause, but pronounces authoritatively for the porte de Hugon fable. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... called Aurva, from the following fable. The Rishi Aurva, who had gained great power by his austerities, was pressed by the gods and others to perpetuate his race. He consented, but warned them that his offspring would consume the world. Accordingly, he ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... chariot was driven through the sky till it stood over Dwarakha, where Krishna's followers dwelt, and from there it hurled down upon the city missiles that destroyed everything on which they fell.' Here is pure fable, not legend, but still a curious forecast of twentieth century bombs from a rigid dirigible. It is to be noted in this case, as in many, that the power to fly was an attribute of evil, not of good—it was the demons who built the chariot, even as at Friedrichshavn. Mediaeval legend in nearly ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... of the other gods. So, likewise, with many of the more human [Greek: muthoi]. We find the same ideas to spring up in the agora of Athens, the wilds and snows of Norway, and the heathers and hills of Scotland. The fable of the Sirens finds an exact counterpart in the North. Like Ulysses, Duke Magnus and innumerable others escape with difficulty from the charms and enticements of sea-nymphs. Sometimes it is their wonderful song which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... belief that some other person, who had less pretense and less inclination to be excused, could execute all the duties full as satisfactorily as myself. To say more would be indiscreet, as a disclosure of a refusal beforehand might incur the application of the fable in which the fox is represented as undervaluing the grapes he could not reach. You will perceive, my dear sir, by what is here observed (and which you will be pleased to consider in the light of a confidential ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... still lies in the coffin in the same state as when it was first buried. There is also a story that the coffin of Mohammed rests somewhere between heaven and earth, suspended in the air. But this fable was invented by enemies to bring ridicule on the prophet and ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... the object of Whig idolatry, and Tory abhorrence; and at every weapon of attack and defence the non-juror, on the ground which is common to both, approves himself at least equal to the prelate. On the appearance of the Fable of the Bees, he drew his pen against the licentious doctrine that private vices are public benefits, and morality as well as religion must join in his applause. Mr. Law's master-work, the Serious Call, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... almost universally advocated, is to avoid drugs. The importance of this and its union with right exercise have been demonstrated in the impressive language of fable. ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... were stilled, pens forgotten, chisels thrown aside, brushes were useless, and oratory was silent, dumb. Yet we know the man Pericles quite as well as the popular mind knows George Washington, who lived but yesterday, and with whom myth and fable ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... a fable of Grimm's about a man without a shadow, a man who's lost his shadow. And that's his punishment for something. I never could understand how it was a punishment. But a woman must ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 negrophils, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Christie looks as though a good puff of wind might blow him away, and he is as tough as a pin-wire. I stand like a tower, and they tell me the foundations are sinking. It sounds like a fable to ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... many other Publishers, who make the Works of other People their own, without acknowledging the Piracy they are guilty of, or so much as paying the least Complement to the Authors of their Wisdom: No, Gentlemen and Ladies, I am not the Daw in the Fable, that would vaunt and strut in your Plumes. And besides, I know very well you might have me upon the Hank according to Law, and treat me as a Highwayman or Robber; for you might safely swear upon your Honours, that I had stole the ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... the Sailor and Aladdin's wondrous lamp; for that was an uncritical age, and its spirit breathed hot and cold, east and west, from all quarters of the globe at once, confusing the traditions and tales of all times and countries into one incongruous mass of fable, as much tangled and knotted as that famous pound of flax which the lassie in one of these Tales is expected to spin into an even wool within four-and-twenty hours. No poverty of invention or want of power on the ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... more influenced by some other characteristics of Scotland than he was by its scenery. There was, first, its romantic history. That had not then been separated, as it has since been, from the mists of fable, but lay exactly in that twilight point of view best adapted for arousing the imagination. To the eye of Burns, as it glared back into the past, the history of his country seemed intensely poetical—including the line of early kings who pass ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... at the Lodge to pass in with her basket, and would not often get it. But ladies in carriages would frequently make purchases from her trifling stock, and were usually pleased with her bright eyes and her hopeful speech. In these and her clean dress originated a fable that she was well to do in the world: one might say, for her station, rich. As making a comfortable provision for its subject which costs nobody anything, this class of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of all this? Is the man a clever swindler, who invented that fable for some purpose, or is he really an artist, who took me in all simplicity of soul for the living realization of his idea? That is what I intend to find out in the course of a few days, for now I am committed to your programme, and to-morrow ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... understand. He asserts that my "deleterious works" have had "an effect upon civil society, which requires," etc., etc., etc., and his own poetry. It is a lengthy poem, and a long preface, with an harmonious title-page. Like the fly in the fable, I seem to have got upon a wheel which makes much dust; but, unlike the said fly, I do not take it ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... statements of truth? Not always. The primitive human mind could only lisp its wonderful glimpses of truth in legend and myth. And so in fable and allegory the early Israelites sought to show the power of good over evil, and thereby stimulate a desire for right conduct, based, of course, on right-thinking. And thus it is that the most significant thing in their sacred records is their many, many stories of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... any means," she gave a hard little chuckle, "but because when you talk, I hear again the voice of youth. It rings in your tones and smiles in your eyes; it's something as effervescent and sparkling as the bubbles that rise in this wine. You are exactly like the nightingale in the old French fable. Just as irresponsible. You remember he sang all summer while the ants toiled unceasingly getting in their winter stores, and then when winter came, and he pined with hunger, the thrifty ants said: 'Do you not know that winter follows summer, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... we deem it, for the honour of humanity that, the whole account was demonstrated to be a fable." ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... "before these terrible days"; her conduct towards her husband then was "enough for" Nurse Brown, so she said. No sooner had the poor gentleman gone off on some errand for her pleasure than she called for him to be with her, and was only to be pacified by a fable of Jeanette's devising, who always said that "the King" had summoned Monsieur de Vandaleur. Jeanette was well aware that, the childless old Duke being dead, her master had succeeded to the title, and she often spoke of him as Monsieur le Duc to ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sang and slew is now The fable outworn of an age remote, And the women to whom to-day we bow Have long abjured her sinister note; She heals, she helps, she follows the plough, And her song has ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various |
