"Tales" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... next day tried to move it from there, for the playing—he being a very strong man, and lifting it on end—it fell upon him, backwards, and crushed his breast, so that he never spoke again. And there were many tales told of church-lands; and how my Lord Strafford, that was beheaded, before his death told his son to get rid of them all, for that they brought a curse always upon them that held them. And there was another story told at the end by a man from the farm who had been ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... generally called) were represented as condensed incarnations of the seven deadly sins. These works had much to do with preventing Lyeskoff from taking that high place in the public estimation which his other works (a mass of novels and tales devoid of political tendency) and his great talent would have otherwise assured to him. Of his large works, "The Cathedral Staff," with its sympathetic and life-like portraits of Archpriest Savely Tuberosoff and his athletic Deacon Achilles, and his "Episcopal ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was doubly rich in the spirit of romance and in a wise and beautiful morality. But the irresponsible caprices of his narrative fancy prevented his tales from being the appropriate vehicles of his morality. He has left no work—unless the two short stories mentioned above be regarded as exceptions—in which romance and morality are welded into a single perfect whole, nothing that can be put beside The Scarlet Letter or The Marble Faun ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... the soft-soap men always give a girl beforehand. I wonder did he think me one of the folks who would swallow it? Couldn't I see as soon as I was married all the privileges I would get would be to settle down and drudge all the time till I was broken down and telling the same hair-lifting tales against marriage as aired by every other married woman one meets;" and Dawn, her cheeks flushed and her white teeth gleaming between her pretty lips, looked the ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the Palatinate had a double tie on James, and it was always the earnest object of his negotiations. But Spain sent him an amusing and literary ambassador, who kept him in play, year after year, with merry tales and bon mots.[231] These negotiations had languished through all the tedium of diplomacy; the amusing promises of the courtly Gondomar were sure, on return of the courier, to bring sudden difficulties from ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... turn to a critic of very different character, Dean Swift: "I have been better entertained and more improved," writes that cynical pessimist, "by a few pages of this book than by a long discourse on the will and intellect." The favourite of our childhood, as "the most perfect and complex of fairy tales, so human and intelligible," read, as Hallam says, "at an age when the spiritual meaning is either little perceived or little regarded," the "Pilgrim's Progress" becomes the chosen companion of our later years, perused with ever fresh appreciation of its teaching, and enjoyment of its native genius; ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... gout. Even if we take no formal steps, spiritual or corporeal, some rule of life we must achieve for ourselves. We must, for example, make up our minds whether we are to open our ears and our purse to tales of misery, or are to join ourselves with those whose rule of life it is to keep that which they have for themselves. What is true of each of us is none the less true of each and every race—even more true; for each race must make up its mind ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... begin with those with which he was most familiar, as the horse, the dog, the cow. From these he would proceed to the creatures with which he was less familiar, and finally deal—through the medium of travellers' tales and other sources of information—with the denizens of field, forest and flood in foreign lands. In similar fashion he would consider the plants, minerals, and other products of Nature, in addition to recounting the marvels ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... rise to power surpassed anything told in the Arabian Nights' Tales, and yet he remained the same simple, unaffected man, more thoughtful for another's interests than for his own. The supreme test came in his contact with his brothers, who had insulted and cruelly wronged him. They were completely at his mercy and he had abundant reason for ignoring the obligations ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... prevail. Clara, who had by this time discovered that her teacher possessed an inexhaustible fund of fairy stories, assured her playmates across the street that he was "just splendid," and frequently invited them over to listen to his wonderful tales. Mr. Van Kirk himself, of course, was non-committal, but paid the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... formidable creatures to any eyes; but to poor Margaret's they were monsters as terrible as griffin or dragon. All cattle, even the mildest old Brindle that ever stood to be milked, were objects of dire alarm to her, but she had never seen animals like these. Tales of the wild cattle of Chillingham, of the fierce herds that roam the Western prairies and the pampas of the South, rushed to her mind. She felt fear stealing over her, a wild, unreasoning panic which neither strength nor reason could resist. She dared ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... yards in ten and one fifth seconds and he weighed one hundred and seventy pounds stripped. In the Goodrich game time and again he had made ten yards with two or more of the Goodrich players clinging to him as unavailingly as Lilliputians clinging to a giant. No less fearsome tales were told of Whipple, the Jefferson punter, and of Phillips and Burton, ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... These are the tales of the various adventures participated in by a group of bright, fun-loving, up-to-date girls who have a common bond in their fondness for outdoor life, camping, travel and adventure. They are clean and wholesome and ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... and then refreshes his hold on life by immolating a virgin under a copper-bell. It is one of the most extravagant and "Monk-Lewisy" of the whole. L'Excommunie, L'Israelite, and L'Heritiere de Birague are mediaeval or fifteenth century tales of the most luxuriant kind, L'Excommunie being the best, L'Israelite the most preposterous, and L'Heritiere de Birague the dullest. But it is not nearly so dull as Dom Gigadus and Jean Louis, the former of which deals with the end of the seventeenth century ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... detachment from all passions and desires in order to arrive at absolute calm (nirvana). The literature it inspired was primarily gnomic, that is, sententious, analogous to that of Pythagoras, with a tendency towards little moral tales and parables, as in ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... German neighbour of thy lair Say what I say to thee; the wealth o' the west, Which Constantine brought off from Rome, is there — Brought off the choicest, gave away the rest — There golden Hermus and Pactolus are, Mygdonia and Lydia: nor that country blest, Which many tales for many praises note, If thou wouldst thither wend, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... up in the escape department, I sat on my bunk and lit a cigarette. I looked for tell-tales, and found a television lens set above the door of the room eight feet outside of my steel barrier. Beside the lens was a speaker grille and a smaller opening that looked ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... Elizabeth College and the Archer Monks of Hyde Abbey. The tales mentioned as told by Ambrose to Dennet are ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Mrs. Piozzi, from Brynbella, July 9, 1796, "Mr. Bunbury's 'Little Gray Man' is printed, do send it hither; the ladies at Llangollen are dying for it. They like those old Scandinavian tales and the imitations of them exceedingly; and tell me about the prince and princess of 'this' loyal country, one province of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... no news—beyond what one could glean from the incoherent tales of Belgian refugees. The French newspapers still contained vague and cheerful bulletins about their own military situation, and filled the rest of their meagre space with eloquent praise of les braves petits Belges. The war ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... were not yet rubbed off by the friction of his handkerchief: he wore a loose unstarched white handkerchief, black loose ill-made clothes, and huge loose shoes, adapted to many corns and various bunions: his husky voice told tales of much daily port wine, and his language was not so decorous as became a clergyman. Such was the master of Mr Sentiment's "Almshouse." He was a widower, but at present accompanied by two daughters, and a thin and somewhat insipid curate. One of ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... character. It has a more mature strength, nobleness and dignity, together with an inspiring and magnificent beauty and splendour of tone power. The subject of the work was one that MacDowell loved to dwell upon—the stirring tales of love and mighty heroism told in the ancient Norse sagas. The barbaric, but undoubtedly splendid spirit of those dim days seized upon his imagination as it did upon that of the English composer, Elgar, when he wrote his Scenes from the Sagas of King Olaf. ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... pains of millions who are not and cannot be philosophers. That a valetudinarian who took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished his boiled chicken, and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales, should be treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the Timaeus without a headache, was a notion which the humane spirit of the English school of wisdom altogether rejected. Bacon would not have thought it beneath the dignity of a philosopher to contrive an improved garden ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and just to show that he didn't care at all about such idle tales he began to whistle; but Leneli noticed that he too looked ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... triumph. His adventures in woman's dress, his escape from the English ship, the touching devotion of Flora Macdonald, the loyalty of Lochiel, the fidelity of Cluny Macpherson—all these things have been immortalized in a thousand tales and ballads, and will be remembered in the North Country so long as tales and ballads continue to charm. At last, at Lochnanuagh, the prince embarked upon a French ship that had been sent for him, and early in the October of 1746 he ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the story of the Sidonian Cadmus, which is so improbable, has been readily believed, and also innumerable other tales. ...
— Laws • Plato
... his shoulder, running up and down his arms, giving all of the news of their long journey into his ear. He chuckled and chuckled and soon sat down by the table again, nodding his head with delight at the tales they were ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... the doubtful tradition was almost extinguished, before the missionaries of Rome restored the light of science and Christianity. The declamations of Gildas, the fragments, or fables, of Nennius, the obscure hints of the Saxon laws and chronicles, and the ecclesiastical tales of the venerable Bede, [126] have been illustrated by the diligence, and sometimes embellished by the fancy, of succeeding writers, whose works I am not ambitious either to censure or to transcribe. [127] Yet the historian of the empire may ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... all the tales That Tusitala told, When first we plunged thro' purple vales In quest of buried gold? Do you remember how he said That if we fell and hurt our head Our hearts must still be bold, And we must never mind the pain But rise up ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... it queered me, but only a moment. Hell, you read in fairy tales and fantasy magazines about one man's mind in another man's body, and ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... his time between Copenhagen and Stampeborg, and worked with the same industry in one place as in the other. The life in the country was a great delight to him; he played games, listened to fairy tales from the poet Andersen, or to music from the young girls of the house, all with equal pleasure; and if he were allowed to have his mornings for work he would spend the rest of the day in the woods or pay visits, and was perfectly happy in this succession of ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... might be the result of delay. Almost in silence we moved over the glittering plain. The fiery sun struck down on our heads, and the heat was such that the air seemed to dance around us. Hour after hour we moved on, a few words being now and then exchanged, or songs sung by the light-hearted, or tales told by the most loquacious of story-tellers. I observed skeletons of camels and men sticking out of the sand, as the caravan deviated slightly to avoid them; for they extended across the plain half a mile or more. On making inquiries, I found that the skeletons ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... her that she was not really 'like that'? You guessed right, I fancy. It is quite possible she was not herself at the moment, though I cannot fathom her meaning. Evidently she meant to hurt and insult us. I have heard curious tales about her before now, but if she came to invite us to her house, why did she behave so to my mother? Ptitsin knows her very well; he says he could not understand her today. With Rogojin, too! No one with a spark of self-respect could have talked like that in the house of ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... like Grimm's fairy tales!" exclaimed Nora. "Only the book people are all kings and queens, but this is even better because the heroine ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... the captain and little sailor nodded assent. They were much excited, having often heard tales of boar-hunting, though neither of them had ever taken part in ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... mind were tales Of rock-girt isles amid a desert sea, Where unexpected stretch the flowery vales To soothe the shipwrecked sailor's misery. Fainting, he lay upon a sandy shore, And fancied that all hope of life ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... it might be North-Country, but was none the less barbarous. However, of course it would all come right. All the interesting tales of one's childhood began that way—with a cruel father, and a rebellious son. But they came to magnificent ends, notwithstanding—with sacks of gold and a princess. Diffident, yet smiling, she drew conclusions. 'So, you see, you'll make money—you'll ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in Hind and Sind and China and the lands of Mawarannahr beyond the Oxus and other regions of the barbarians and what not else. He was a just King, a valiant and a generous, and loved table-talk[FN349] and tales and verses and anecdotes and histories and entertaining stories and legends of the ancients. Whoso knew a rare recital and related it to him in such fashion as to please him he would bestow on him a sumptuous robe of honour and clothe him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... cell and clapped a dagger to her breast, telling her to rise and do his bidding on pain of death. He changed clothes with her, coloured his face like hers, put on her veil, and murdered her, that she might tell no tales. Then he went towards the palace of Aladdin, and all the people, thinking he was the holy woman, gathered round him, kissing his hands and begging his blessing. When he got to the palace there was such a noise going on round him that the ...
— Aladdin and the Magic Lamp • Unknown
... as amended for Northern consumption we find no record of this. Hence we are forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee "edited" his reminiscences before sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she well knew, to exaggerate good or evil. And Otis Yeere bore himself as befitted the hero of many tales. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... take cold. Here, then, they stood amusing themselves in watching the motley throng that came and went. Bolle, to whom the scene was strange, gaped at them with his mouth open; Emlyn took note of every one with her quick eyes, while old Jacob Smith whispered tales concerning individuals as they passed, most of which were little to ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... should I desire to deceive you? I am an old man, trembling upon the borders of the grave. Can I have any wish to injure you? Is it conceivable that, standing thus already as it were before the bar of God, I could pour false and idle tales into your ears? But if I have spoken truly, can you refuse to believe? But I must not urge. Use your freedom. Inquire for yourselves. Let the leisure and the wealth which are yours carry you to read with your own eyes that wide-spread volume which you will find among the ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... guide's sex. It's getting dark, let us go out. This is such a creepy place in the dark that it actually makes me understand what people mean by nerves. And, Morris, of course you understand that I have only been talking rubbish. I always liked inventing fairy tales; you taught me; only this one is too grown up—disagreeable. What I really mean is that I do think it might be a good thing if you wouldn't live quite so much alone, and would go out a bit more. You are getting quite an odd look on your face; you are indeed, not like other men at all. ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... lightsome in his breast, As played the feather on his crest. 555 Yet friends, who nearest knew the youth, His scorn of wrong, his zeal for truth, And bards, who saw his features bold, When kindled by the tales of old, Said, were that youth to manhood grown, 560 Not long should Roderick Dhu's renown Be foremost voiced by mountain fame, But quail to ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... refine and strengthen the sentiments and instincts, the conscience, good sense and taste, as well as the affections, filial piety, friendship, and the love of Nature. Spiritual and moral ideals are inculcated by means of innocent and simple tales or narratives. Children are taught to obey the authority placed over them, or in their own breast, and to sacrifice all to their duty. The conduct of the teacher must be irreproachable, because he is a model to ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... myth did not seem to me to be like one of the fairy tales that we have seen so gracefully and quaintly modernised; and at the risk of seeming to travestie the Farnese statue in a shooting-coat and wide-awake, I could not help going on, as the notion grew deeper and ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seating himself on the high seat in the villages, receive homage from the people, and also gifts and offerings, the most valuable of which were pretty damsels, and then betake himself back again, with his followers, into the woods. Oh the tales that my brother used to tell us of the high Barbary shore! Poor fellow! what became of him I can't say; the last time he came back from a voyage, he told us that his captain, as soon as he had brought his vessel to port and settled ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... fables tell us, Or old folk lore whispers low, Of the origin of all things, Of the spring from whence they came, Kalevala, old and hoary, AEneid, Iliad, AEsop, too, All are filled with strange quaint legends, All replete with ancient tales,— ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... the children had long rambles out-of-doors in the care of a young housemaid, who allowed them a good deal of liberty. In this way they worked off a great deal of energy, and did not get into any serious scrapes. Bridget told them fairy tales as they trotted along, one on each side of her, but that was only when they were tired of ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... Tales of fictitious wo, and of splendid distress, may alone be capable of fascinating those who recline on the lap of luxury, and who seek amusement, without soliciting instruction; but, among persons who possess any taste for genuine simplicity, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... of your readers and correspondents, versed in "legendary lore," reconcile the two different tales of which "Roland the Brave" is the hero? The one related in Mrs. Hemans's beautiful ballad describes him as reported dead, and that his fair one too rashly took the veil in "Nonnenwerder's cloister pale," just before his return. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... different from the romance. It leaves the field of legend and occupies the place in poetry that a story or a novel does in prose. "Marmion" and "Enoch Arden" are tales. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... historical documents, would, taken as a general rule, render all collation and cross-examination of written records ineffective, and obliterate the main character by which authentic histories are distinguished from those traditional tales, which each successive reporter enlarges and fashions to his own fancy and purpose, and every different edition of which more or less contradicts the other? Allow me to create chasms ad libitum, and ad libitum to fill them up with imagined facts and incidents, and I ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the work before us is equivocal: a reader might as reasonably expect the Sports of the Western World, as adventures in Ireland, such as make up the present volumes. What we principally complain of is the paucity of Sports among their contents. It is true that the title also promises Legendary Tales and Local Sketches, but here they are the substance, and the Wild Sports mere shadow. We have too little of "the goodly rivers," "all sorts of fish," "the sweet islands and goodly lakes, like little inland seas," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... with their evidence; and they knew they could keep it, almost as long as they pleased, for the purposes of delay. Thus they, who boasted, when the privy council examinations began, that they would soon do away all the idle tales, which had been invented against them, and who desired the public only to suspend their judgment till the report should come out, when they would see the folly and wickedness of all our allegations, dared not abide by the evidence, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... enthusiast. The moralities of the Epistles were more tractable, and formed the largest contribution to the Florilegia, or flower-collections, that were circulated by themselves. Horace did not contain the facile and stimulating tales of Ovid, he was not a Virgil the story-teller and almost Christian, his lines did not exercise a strong appeal to the ear, he was not an example of the rhetorical, like Lucan, his satire did not lend ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... they were being bumped along, began to relate pleasantries and mirthful tales to each other, and Heracles, listening, had to laugh. And one said to the other, "O my brother, we are in the position of the frogs when the mice fell upon them with such fury." And the other said, "Indeed nothing can save us if Zeus ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... Strange tales were told this Lent of fearful and marvellous visions and sights seen by many persons. Beside Merton Abbey, and in other places, men in armour were seen in the air, who came down to the earth and faded; and in Sussex were three suns shining ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... land the tales of the Greek gods seem very remote. Like the colours in an old, old portrait, the humanity of the stories seems to have faded. But in Sicily they grow vivid at once. Almost, as we stand above Syracuse, that long yellow town by the sea—a blue-green sea, with deep purple shadows ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... were historians, and their histories were the grossest absurdities. "Tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying no thing." In those days the histories were written by the monks, who, as a rule, were almost as superstitious as they were dishonest. They wrote as though they had been witnesses of every occurrence ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... had such stores of tales of ghosts, fairies, witches, and other thrilling subjects, that she never failed to fascinate her listeners. She did so now, when once she had begun, until they were all almost afraid to look round the dim kitchen, and Jabez wished, ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... not such a bigot to Slawkenbergius as my father;—there is a fund in him, no doubt: but in my opinion, the best, I don't say the most profitable, but the most amusing part of Hafen Slawkenbergius, is his tales—and, considering he was a German, many of them told not without fancy:—these take up his second book, containing nearly one half of his folio, and are comprehended in ten decads, each decad containing ten tales—Philosophy is not built upon tales; and therefore 'twas certainly wrong in Slawkenbergius ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... palace of the Pope or in the street, we could not part until the stars sent us to rest. D. Pedro Mascarenhas, the Ambassador, is my witness what a great thing this was and how difficult; and, too, of the tales M. Angelo, when coming out of vespers one day, told about me and about a book of mine in which I had drawn some things in Rome and Italy, to Cardinal Santtiquatro and to him. Now my habit was to go round the solemn temple of the Pantheon and note all its columns and proportions; the Mausoleum ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... think so," said she, smiling. "Good enough as far as such children can be, I suppose! I suppose I must not tell tales out of school, sure, about what a little girl said the other day when somebody, whom I won't name, ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... shop, I found a collection of Goblin Poetry in three volumes, containing many pictures of goblins. The title of the collection is Ky[o]ka Hyaku-Monogatari, or "The Mad Poetry of the Hyaku-Monogatari." The Hyaku-Monogatari, or "Hundred Tales," is a famous book of ghost stories. On the subject of each of the stories, poems were composed at different times by various persons,—poems of the sort called Ky[o]ka, or Mad Poetry,—and these were collected and edited to form the three ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... desolate a-bed for France! One wak'd to tend the cradle, hushing it With sounds that lull'd the parent's infancy: Another, with her maidens, drawing off The tresses from the distaff, lectur'd them Old tales of Troy and Fesole and Rome. A Salterello and Cianghella we Had held as strange a marvel, as ye would A Cincinnatus ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... from one early home by his sense of wounded honor, and from his immediate home by superstitious fear, recalled to my mind an image and a situation that had been beautifully sketched by Miss Bannerman in "Basil," one of the striking (though, to rapid readers, somewhat unintelligible) metrical tales published early in this century, entitled "Tales of Superstition and Chivalry." Basil is a "rude sea boy," desolate and neglected from infancy, but with feelings profound from nature, and fed by solitude. He dwells alone in a rocky cave; but, in consequence of some supernatural terrors ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of this system is derived from the works of Homer, He'si-od, and other ancient writers, who have gathered the floating legends of which it consists into tales and epic poems, many of them of great power and beauty. Some of these legends are exceedingly natural and pleasing, while others shock and disgust us by the gross impossibilities and hideous deformities which they reveal. Yet these legends are the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... looking kindly at Ned, "a bluebird shall be your companion and will show you many and curious things. I can spare no more time, for my people must be governed, and while I have given you more attention than any other mortal because of your great fondness for fairy tales, I must now leave you in the care of this bluebird, unless, perchance, you wish to return ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... o' Man' for the future, but it turned out otherwise. I'd got leave from the Chief on Thursday afternoon to go up to the Cathedral of San Lorenzo to see the Holy Grail. They keep it in the Treasury there and show it on Thursdays for a franc. Most Englishmen laugh at these tales of the Church, and even Catholics I have met tell me they don't believe in miracles. I don't know why; I'm interested in them. Sometimes I get a glimpse of the state of mind in which they are reasonable and necessary things. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of division at heart! I never show them that there is one. But our early training has us; it comes on us again; three or four days with Con have stirred me; I don't let him see it, but they always do: these tales of starvations and shootings, all the old work just as when I left, act on me like a smell of powder. I was dipped in "Ireland for the Irish"; and a contented Irishman scarcely ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for all this kind of thing in the highest degree were probably the old "Scouts," of whom Natty Bumpo, in Cooper's famous old Indian tales is the great example. They were explorers, hunters, campers, builders, fighters, settlers, and in an emergency, nurses and doctors combined. They could cook, they could sew, they could make and sail a canoe, they could support themselves indefinitely in the trackless woods, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... refusing my Lord Paulet and several other gentlemen, noted among us for their hard fighting, whenever by chance we were opposed to them. And I, standing guard on the outpost, chafed in vain when I heard these tales, until one day chance decided me to risk all, to see her once more with my own eyes, and ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... said he, and then told them several fairy tales he had heard when a boy. He was an uneducated man and his life was exceedingly simple, and the fairy tales were, consequently, ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... "rush of modern life," a woman who has a home ought to be willing to give some part of her time to its daily supervision. Eternal vigilance is the price of everything worth having. If she gave this she would not have so many tales of woe to relate about the laziness, neglectfulness, and stupidity of her cook and housemaids. There is not a single housewife to-day who has not had many bitter experiences. One who desires information upon this subject has only to call on the ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... supplies my demands in the way of fiction—a word, by the way, often misapplied. Where do you find stranger tales than in the records of every-day life? ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... then, for even into the snow-bound seclusion of the north country the shadow of the name of Diaz had gone. He could not remember just what they were, but he seemed to recollect grim tales through ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... vibrating tones, flinging out one long arm and one thin finger at the Wondersmith, as if he would have impaled him like a beetle. "Humiliate me, if you can. I care not. You are a wretch, and I am honest and pure. This girl is not your daughter. You are like one of those demons in the fairy tales that held beauty and purity locked in infernal spells. I do not fear you, Heir Hippe. There are stories abroad about you in the neighborhood, and when you pass, people say that they feel evil and blight hovering over their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... are few— Loves me, more than her elders do; Says, my wrinkles become me so; Marvels much at the tales I know. Says, we shall marry when ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... pleasantness to the person that does the most for you, and has all the care of you but the first stranger that comes along, you can be all honey to them, and make yourself out too good for common folks, and go and tell great tales how you are used at home, I suppose. I am sick of it!" said Miss Fortune, setting up the hand-irons and throwing the tongs and shovel into the corner in a way that made the iron ring again. "One might as good be ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... those of Frederick VII. of Denmark, the brothers Grimm, and "Hans Christian Andersen Reading His Fairy Tales to a Child." ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... them, entirely by oral tradition, a far grander mythology than that which has been made known to us by either the Chippewa or Iroquois Hiawatha Legends, and that this was illustrated by an incredible number of tales. I soon ascertained that these were very ancient. The old people declared that they had heard from their progenitors that all of these stories were once sung; that they themselves remembered when many of them were poems. This was fully proved ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... A bitter knave of late, and lost his mirth, And mutters riddling warnings and wild tales Of the great days of heathen Rome; and prates Of peace, and liberty, and equal law, And mild philosophy, to us the knights And warriors of this warlike age, who rule By the bright law of arms. The fool's grown wise— A ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... know, with your eyes wide open and your brain-machinery whizzing—are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... tell her Uncle Duke of finding de Spain? Whenever she decided that she must, something in the recollection of de Spain's condition unsettled her resolution. Tales enough of his bloodthirstiness, his merciless efficiency, his ever-ready craft and consummate duplicity were familiar to her—most of them made so within the last three days—for no one in her circle any longer professed ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... by the local nimrods that none could doctor a sick rifle better than young Daniel Boone, already the master huntsman of them all. And perhaps some trader's tale, told when the caravan halted for the night, kindled the youth's first desire to penetrate the mountain-guarded wilderness, for the tales of these Romanies of commerce were as the very badge of their free-masonry, and entry money at the doors ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... untrue. ["Hear, hear!"] France offered Belgium five army corps to defend her if she were attacked. Belgium said: "I do not require them; I have the word of the Kaiser. Shall Caesar send a lie?" [Laughter and applause.] All these tales about conspiracy have been vamped up since. A great nation ought to be ashamed to behave like a fraudulent bankrupt, perjuring its way through its obligations. ["Hear, hear!"] What she says is not true. She has deliberately broken this treaty, and we were in honor ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... Christine, her eyes veiled with rapturous tears, received her husband tremblingly. Alas! he had for her only a silent greeting, a cold, ceremonious bow. But she saw him once more; she could lose her whole soul in those melting eyes, in which she was ever reading the most enchanting magical fairy tales. In these days of ceremony he could not refuse her a place by his side; to sit near him at table, and at the concerts with which the royal chapel and the newly-arrived Italian singers would celebrate the return of the ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... displaying more skill in the transaction than had been shown by the doctors. Here had been tried all sorts of murder cases, with all sorts of defenses, from self-preservation with an ax to the irresponsibility of a brain-storm. From that old-fashioned witness chair, on its high platform, enough tales of tragedy had been told, if bound in books, to fill a good-sized library; enough tears had been shed to atone for a thousand crimes; enough pathos shown to have broken a million hearts; enough perjury committed to substantiate David's somewhat ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... has heard this story told by persons who received it from Fighting Charlie himself; he has also heard that Mumps's Ha' was afterwards the scene of some other atrocious villainy, for which the people of the house suffered. But these are all tales of at least half a century old, and the Waste has been for many years as safe as any place ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... transmission, however often assumed by foreign and barbarian conquerors, was still, to the imagination, supreme above all other earthly titles; the story of Roman deeds was known of all men; the legends of Roman heroes were the familiar tales of infancy and age. Cities that had risen since Rome fell claimed, with pardonable falsehood, to have had their origin from her, and their rulers adopted the designations of her consuls and her senators. The fragments of her ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... during our squadron organization, took place. Ten or fifteen men were posted on picket some eight miles from the town toward Nashville, near a small bridge, at the southern end of which the extreme outpost vidette stood. From tales told by the citizens, these pickets had conceived the idea that the enemy contemplated an attack to surprise and capture them, and (perhaps for the very reason that they had so often played the same game themselves) they became very nervous about it. Late in ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... reading, he exchanged his Pilgrim's Progress for a set of little books, then much sold by peddlers, called "Burton's Historical Collections," in forty paper-covered volumes, containing history, travels, tales, wonders, and curiosities, just the thing for a boy. As we do not know the market value of his Pilgrim's Progress, we can not tell whether the poor peddler did well by him or the contrary. But it strikes me that that is not the kind of barter in which a mean, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... in a thousand ways and woven into a thousand different stories, which come with full right under the head of "myths." Thus arose a number of so-called HEROIC MYTHS, which, by dint of being repeated, settled into a certain defined traditional shape, like the well-known fairy-tales of our nurseries, which are the same everywhere and told in every country with scarcely any changes. As soon as the art of writing came into general use, these favorite and time-honored stories, which the mass of the people probably still received as literal truth, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... influence and have him thrown out of the Regular ministry. Think I can't? What sort of yarns do you suppose will be told about him and her, meeting the way they did? Won't the county papers print some fine tales? Won't the Boston ones enjoy such a scandal? I tell you, Eben Hammond, that young chap's name will be dragged so deep in the mud ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... needed color in that bare little place so much, and here is this beautiful glowing picture just full of story suggestions. There never was a child born who could look at that, and not go dreaming off into all sorts of fairy tales. It makes me so happy to think you care enough about our little library to give your own beautiful work. I wanted to go right down and hang it, but I called Polly up on the 'phone and she came over, and said I should keep it this evening ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... for an almost sufficient Selection from him; and some such Selection will have to be made, I believe, if he is to be resuscitated. Two of the Poems—'The Happy Day' and 'The Family of Love'—seem to me to have needed some such abridgement as the 'Tales of the Hall,' for which I have done little more than hastily to sketch the Plan. For all the other Poems, simple Extracts from them will suffice: with a short notice concerning their Dates of Composition, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... have thus wasted on poetical fantasies and visionary daydreams much of the energy that they might otherwise have used in life's real battle. But the greyness of commonplace existence became more bearable when they listened to tales of the heroic deeds of the past. In the evening, the living-room (bastofa), built of turf and stone, became a little more cheerful, and hunger was forgotten, while a member of the household read, or sang, about far-away knights and heroes, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... place his hopes in the bounty of God. He is merciful, and does not hold any one's difficulties to be irremovables; weeping and lamentations are improper. God forbid that our enemies should misrepresent [the motive of our tears] to the king, and the teller of tales calumniate us, for that would be the cause of farther displeasure. On the contrary, let us offer up our prayers for the king's welfare; we are his born slaves, and he is our master; even as he is wroth, so will he be gracious." The girl, from her good sense, thus made her mother ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... I was afraid of Mistress Kent and Aunt Wetherill and everybody, and I wanted to stay here. And now it is so merry and pleasant in Arch Street, and there is the spinet that I sing to, and the lessons I learn, and some books with verses in and tales of strange places and people, and going out to the shops with Patty and watching the boys snowballing, and learning ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... world, he wished to see a little of it. He began to think that they must have been all over the world in all this time that the rolling and roaring and hissing and jangling had been about his ears; shut up in the dark, he began to remember all the tales that had been told in Yule round the fire at his grandfather's good house at Dorf, of gnomes and elves and subterranean terrors, and the Erl King riding on the black horse of night, and—and—and he began to sob and to tremble again, and this time did scream outright. But the steam was screaming ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... them and part from them: we like their action upon us and the pause that succeeds and enables us to appreciate its quality. Often we leave them on our path, and return no more, but we bear them in our memory, tales which have been told, and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Remembering the tales which get into the papers now and then of riot amongst the "high-spirited young gentlemen" at the Universities, I am a little unwilling to say more about the unruliness of our village youths, as though it were something peculiar ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... Prior's poems were to be printed entire; Johnson said they were. I mentioned Lord Hales's censure of Prior in his preface to a collection of sacred poems, by various hands, published by him at Edinburgh a great many years ago, where he mentions 'these impure tales, which will be the eternal opprobium of their ingenious author'. JOHNSON: 'Sir, Lord Hales has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hales thinks there is, he must be more combustible than other people.' I instanced the tale of Paulo ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by their firesides in their little huts, they told old tales of their race, and round the truth grew up romantic legend, ever dear to the fighting man and to the husbandman alike, with strange tales of their first leader's birth, fit for poets, and woven to stir young hearts to daring, and young hands to smiting. Truth there was under ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of the firm in Edinburgh was in the Southgait (now the Cowgate), and they lost no time in setting to work, devoting themselves chiefly to printing some of the popular metrical tales of England and Scotland. A volume containing eleven such pieces, most of them printed in 1508, is preserved in the Advocates' ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... has sent me his poems and tales—so now I must write to thank him for his dedication. Just now I have the book. As to Mr. Buckingham, he will go, Constantinople and back, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... present moment she was living in a world of her own creation, a carnival of brave men and fair women, characters out of the tales she had so newly read for the first time. She could not resist enduing persons she met with the noble attributes of the fictional characters. We all did that in our youth, when first we came upon a fine story; else we were worthless metal indeed. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath |
