"Fable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... certain little widowed star, which has lost its previous mortal, concentrating from a billion billion of miles, or leagues, or larger measure, intense, but generally invisible, radiance upon him or her; and to take for the moment this old fable as of serious meaning, my star was to find bad facts at a glance, but no bad folk ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... mountains, though this is never even whispered now, as she has declared herself to be a daughter of the Gods, with a miraculous birth and upbringing. As she has decreed it a sacrilege to question this parentage, and has ordered to be burnt all those that seem to recollect her more earthly origin, the fable passes current for truth. You see the faith I put in you, Deucalion, by telling you what ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... should be put between two empty dishes, and the cook should be recompensed with the jingling of the poor man's money, as he was satisfied with the smell of the cook's meat." This is affirmed by credible writers as no fable, but an undoubted truth.—FULLER'S Holy State, lib. iii. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... into the brightest greens and umbers. Three miles away, but seemingly very much closer, was the bold headland of the Peak, and more inland was Stoupe Brow, with Robin Hood's Butts on the hill-top. The fable connected with the outlaw is scarcely worth repeating, but on the site of these butts urns have been dug up, and are now to be found in Scarborough Museum. The Bay Town is hidden away in a most astonishing fashion, for, until you have almost ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... Supper he resumed the combat with Bishop Hoadley, 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, is still read as a popular and powerful book of devotion. ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... their praus to trade in Aru, and to buy tripang and birds' nests. It is not impossible that something similar to what they related to me really happened when the early Portuguese discoverers first came to Aru, and has formed the foundation for a continually increasing accumulation of legend and fable. I have no doubt that to the next generation, or even before, I myself shall be transformed into a magician or a demigod, a worker of miracles, and a being of supernatural knowledge. They already believe that all the animals I preserve will come to life again; ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... frequent migrations are a proof of the rude and infant state of their communities; and whose warlike exploits, so much celebrated in story, only exhibit the struggles with which they disputed the possession of a country they afterwards, by their talent for fable, by their arts, and their policy, rendered so famous in ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... some light summer fabric, and her rounded arms and neck were partially bare. She looked so white and cool, so self-possessed, and, with all her smiles, so devoid of warm human feeling, that Dennis felt a sudden chill at heart. The ancient fable of the sirens occurred to him. Might she not be luring him on to his own destruction? At times he almost hoped that she loved him; again, something in her manner caused him to doubt everything. But there were not, as in the case of Ulysses and his crew, friendly ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... throne. All this is history; it is the story of the development and progress of the most remarkable man of modern times. You can read the story in countless books; for now, after Napoleon has been dead for over seventy years, the world is learning to sift the truth from all the chaff of falsehood and fable that so long surrounded him; it is endeavoring to place this marvellous leader of men in the place he should rightly occupy—that of a great man, led by ambition and swayed by selfishness, but moved also by a desire to do noble things ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... began to relate one, by the readiness with which it adapted itself to the childish purity of his auditors. The objectionable characteristics seem to be a parasitical growth, having no essential connection with the original fable. They fall away, and are thought of no more, the instant he puts his imagination in sympathy with the innocent little circle, whose wide-open eyes are fixed so eagerly upon him. Thus the stories (not ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... book is presented to you as a token of esteem and gratitude. 10. The warrior fell back upon the bed a lifeless corpse. 11. The apple tastes and smells delicious. 12. Lord Darnley turned out a dissolute and insolent husband. 13. In the fable of the Discontented Pendulum, the weights hung speechless. 14. The brightness and freedom of the New Learning seemed incarnate in the young and scholarly Sir Thomas More. 15. Sir Philip Sidney lived and died the darling of the Court, and the gentleman and ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the nerves of an entomologist when he puts his hand on a specimen unknown, undescribed. The hunter trembles when he espies in the thicket the royal hart whose existence has been called a fable. My emotion was all of this, intensified; nearer, perhaps, to the feeling of the elected mortal who has discovered a new continent. For I ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... of Saint Bartholomew. This was the emancipation of the human mind. These were the fruits of the great victory of reason over prejudice. France had rejected the faith of Pascal and Descartes as a nursery fable, that a courtezan might be her idol, and a madman her priest. She had asserted her freedom against Louis, that she might bow down before Robespierre. For a time men thought that all the boasted wisdom of the eighteenth century was folly; and that those hopes of great political and social ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... prejudices, to a mere instrument of vanity, but even when so disfigured we may still recognize in it some faint feature of a sublime idea. I know no apter symbol of tender sensibility of honour as portrayed by Calderon, than the fable of the ermine, which is said to prize so highly the whiteness of its fur, that rather than stain it in flight, it at once yields itself up to the hunters and death. This sense of honour is equally powerful in the female ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... a beast, but because he is ceasing to be a man. It is the dying man in him that it makes uncomfortable, and he trots, or creeps, or swims, or flutters out of its way—calls it a foolish feeling, a whim, an old wives' fable, a bit of priests' humbug, an effete ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... the change was a fable. I had not long to wait to find I had been utterly deceived. According to Mr. Astor, his reason for his stopping his expensive paper was not as stated! As soon as I discovered this I called together my friends, and as they would have to supply a huge capital ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... story of Slata Baba, or the Golden hagge, which I haue read in some mappes, and descriptions of these countries, to be an idole after the forme of an old woman that being demanded by the Priest, giueth them certaine Oracles, concerning the successe, and euent of things, I found it to be a very fable. [Sidenotes: A fable. The Sea.] Onely in the Prouince of Obdoria vpon the sea side, neare to the mouth of the great riuer Obba, there is a rocke, which naturally (being somewhat helped by imagination) may seeme to beare the shape of a ragged woman, with a child ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... and the deep breathing, (to give it no other name), of the slumberers—in the midst of many deep thoughts, I say, I came to the conclusion that in my present circumstances the worst thing I could do was to think! I remembered the fable of the pendulum that became so horrified at the thought of the number of ticks it had to perform in a lengthened period of time, that it stopped in despair; and I determined to "shut ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... every paragraph or so I would appeal for an explanation of something. Generally I understood well enough, but it was such a delight to hear Ingo strive to make the meaning plain. What a puckering of his bright boyish forehead, what a grave determination to elucidate the fable! What a mingling of ecstatic pride in having a grown man as pupil, with deference due to an elder. Ingo was a born gentleman and in his fiercest transports of glee never forgot his manners! I would make some purposely ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... fable told by Lucian, that while a troop of monkeys, well drilled by an intelligent manager, were performing a tragedy with great applause, the decorum of the whole scene was at once destroyed, and the natural passions of the actors called forth into very indecent ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... and to pray to dead men whom they had dubbed saints, as well as to put faith in many other abominable falsehoods. They found, therefore, no difficulty in persuading the more ignorant people to believe this most blasphemous fable, which from henceforth became one of the most powerful engines for increasing the influence of the priests over the minds of men, though many, both learned and unlearned persons in our own and other countries loudly protested against the novel doctrine, as contrary ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... quotes from was inspired by the performance of the great Pasta in Simone Mayer's weak musical setting of the fable of the Colchian sorceress, which crowded the opera-houses of Europe. The life of the French classical tragedy, too, was powerfully assisted by Rachel. Though the poem on which Cherubini worked was unworthy of his ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... things did not surprise the calm, equable mind of Jem. But perched on the sward on the top were two strange beings, the like of whom Jem had never seen before, and whom his fancy now at once recognized as the mermen of fable and romance. Their faces were dark as that of his sable majesty; their hair was tossed wildly. But they looked the picture of despair, whereas mermen were generally reputed to be jolly. It might be no harm to accost them, and Jem was not shy ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... aught deceived me, my son," observed the herdsman, "else should I say thou wert mocking me with some wild fable; so passing all belief doth it seem, that the son of my lord the king should have been contented to dwell with so poor and humble a man as myself in the ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... the great canyon, which had seemed like a hunter's fable rather than truth. Slone's sight dimmed, blurring the spectacle, and he found that his eyes had filled with tears. He wiped them away and looked again and again, until he was confounded by the vastness and grandeur and the vague ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... 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 often they dart out of themselves ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... vain amusement flies, A fable or a song; By swift degrees our nature dies, Nor can ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... 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. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... and coldness, and disaffection. "The servant is not greater than his lord." All true; he had preached that doctrine to himself for twenty years, and earnestly strove to live by it. I do not say that he sunk under the humiliation; only, don't you remember the fable of the last straw that broke the camel's back? What I do say is, that he had borne hundreds and thousands of "straws." Also, remember it was the Lord who called him from work. Assuredly he did not call himself. I think the master said: "Let him come; it is enough; ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... giant, a terrae filius or son of the earth, who was strong only when his foot was on the earth, lifted in air he became weak as water, a weakness which Hercules discovered to his discomfiture when wrestling with him. The fable has been used as a symbol of the spiritual strength which accrues when one rests his faith on the immediate fact ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... favour till the time of the King's death, January 5, 1066. On his deathbed Edward did all that he legally could do on behalf of Harold by recommending him to the Witan for election as the next king. That he then either made a new or renewed an old nomination in favour of William is a fable which is set aside by the witness of the contemporary English writers. William's claim rested wholly on that earlier nomination which could hardly have been made at any other time than ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... behalf to clear the matter up. He was to be as it happened as unsuccessful in his last embassy as he had been in his first. The old doge, according to the legend which I am bound to say is now generally regarded as a fable, received him coldly and, so the tale runs, invited him to dinner upon a fast day. "In front of the envoys of other princes who were of greater account than the Polentani of Ravenna, and were served before Dante, the larger fish were placed, while in front of Dante was placed the smallest. ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... block relics of the past are the pretty cuts to Mrs. Trimmer's "Fabulous Histories, or The Robins:" these were designed by Thomas Bewick, and engraved by John Thompson, his pupil, who enriched Whittingham's celebrated Chiswick Press with his fine and tasteful work. A numerous series of little fable cuts by the same artist are to be found in this volume. One of the quaintest sets engraved at an early period by John Bewick (the Hogarth of Newcastle), are to "The Hermit, or Adventures of Edward Dorrington," or "Philip Quarll," as ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... traveled widely in the Greek world and in the East, as a preparation for his great task of writing an account of the rise of the Oriental nations and the struggle between Greece and Persia. Herodotus was not a critical historian, diligently sifting truth from fable. Where he can he gives us facts. Where facts are lacking, he tells interesting stories in a most winning style. A much more scientific writer was Thucydides, an Athenian who lived during the epoch of the Peloponnesian War and became the historian of that contest. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... that on the very day of his death (it took place in 735) he was dictating to his amanuensis, and had just completed a book. His works are wonderful for his time, and not the less interesting for a fine cobweb of fable which is woven over parts of them, and which seems in keeping with their venerable character. Thus, in speaking of the Magi who visited the infant Redeemer, he is very particular in describing their age, appearance, and offerings. Melchior, the first, was old, had gray hair, and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... put her finger on the mainspring of it. One needn't assume that there were not other young women at the prince's ball as beautiful as Cinderella, and other gowns, perhaps, as marvelous as the one provided by the fairy godmother. The godmother's greatest gift, I should say, though the fable lays little stress on it, was a capacity for unalloyed delight. No other young girl, beautiful as she may have been, if she were accustomed to driving to balls in coaches and having princes ask her to dance with them, could possibly have looked at that prince the way Cinderella ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... been permitted to exist under the veneer of civilization. She sees clearly what she has to destroy. So do we. No American and Englishman can meet but that they grip hands and thank God together that they are comrades in this Holy War. They are out, like Knights of Fable, to rid the earth of a pestilential monster; and they will not rest until their foot is on his ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... the transition from wood to stone, (a figure carved out of one wooden log must have necessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its sides), these literal changes are as nothing, in the Greek fable, compared to the bestowing of apparent life. The figures of monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs separate enough; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude figures at Branchidae sitting with their hands on their knees. And, briefly, the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas, in the fable, that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal, or, which suited him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had become so very rich that it would have taken him a hundred years only to count his ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to a nymph in the fable he was wrong; but he never addressed to me a word in French that was not in good taste. Before we condemn him, uncle, let us see for ourselves. It is a habit you have always recommended ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... power of journalism, the art of repeating a name again and again with some ridiculous or evil association. The preparation had begun after the first performance of 'The Shadow of the Glen,' Synge's first play, with an assertion made in ignorance but repeated in dishonesty, that he had taken his fable and his characters, not from his own mind nor that profound knowledge of cot and curragh he was admitted to possess, but 'from a writer of the Roman decadence.' Some spontaneous dislike had been but natural, for genius like ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... at him, but they had no more effect upon the culprit than did the grass upon the bad boy in the fable; so the farmer got a long pole and prodded the apple thief until he whined and ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... light filters through the thick trees; its rifts are as rigid as candles. The nymph in the brake is threatening. Another epicene creature flies by her. Love shoots his bolt in midair. Is it from Paphos or Mitylene! What the fable! Music plucked down from the vibrating skies and made visible to the senses. A mere masque laden with the sweet, prim allegories of the day it is not. Vasari, blunt soul, saw but its surfaces. Politian, the poet, got ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... turbulent, and deformed, to which one may lawfully joyne those rocks, those incumbrances, and those hideous monsters. If so it happen, that his Disciple prove of so different a condition, that he rather love to give eare to an idle fable than to the report of some noble voiage, or other notable and wise discourse, when he shall heare it; that at the sound of a Drum or clang of a Trumpet, which are wont to rowse and arme the youthly heat of his companions, turneth to another that calleth ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Granada, in every cave among the rocks of the wild gorge, sleeps an enchanted Moor 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 automobile, with a ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... And they may fall—but who shall date thy end? Lo! all the past has giv'n its light to thee: Expiring Rome, like a departing friend, Gave solemn warning to thy liberty: And e'en the empires, fabulously old In fruitful fable, have a moral told; What say their fallen kings and shrineless God? There is no "right divine" in the fell ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... letter to Monsieur Foscue, that Merchant sends word that he knows nothing at all about me; to which the Rascally Scribe adds, in the Lingua Franca, that I was no doubt an Impostor who had trumped up a convenient Fable of my being a Gentleman, and having Correspondents who would be Answerable for my Ransom in Europe, in order to get better food and treatment until the real truth could be known. Whereupon he tells me that his Highness ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... mentioned by Servius in his commentary on Virgil (it was pointed out to one of the authors by Mr. Mackail). But we did not know that the Star of the story was actually called the "Star-stone" in ancient Greek fable. The many voices of Helen are alluded to by Homer in the Odyssey: she was also named Echo, in old tradition. To add that she could assume the aspect of every man's first love was easy. Goethe introduces the same quality in the fair witch of his Walpurgis Nacht. ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... likely, that out of this simple plot I might weave something attractive; because the reign of James I., in which George Heriot flourished, gave unbounded scope to invention in the fable, while at the same time it afforded greater variety and discrimination of character than could, with historical consistency, have been introduced, if the scene had been laid a century earlier. Lady Mary Wortley Montague has said, with equal truth and taste, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in a breath so long that I could not help thinking of the frog in the fable, that wanted to swell itself as big as the ox. Then I looked into his face earnestly. Slap went the lid of his right eye; down went my head, and up went my heels. We shot through the passage like an arrow, and rose to the surface of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... hopes, and the aspirations which were our own as well as theirs, these writers of our South are living still and will live through the long procession of the years. In the garden of our lives they planted the flowers of poesy, of fable, and of romance. With the changes of the years those flowers may have passed into the realm of the old-fashioned, like the blossoms in Grandmother's garden, but are there any sweeter or more royally blooming ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... 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
... in Rome two sets of antiquities, the Christian, and the heathen. The former, tho of a fresher date, are so embroiled with fable and legend, that one receives but little satisfaction from searching into them. The other give a great deal of pleasure to such as have met with them before in ancient authors; for a man who is in Rome can ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... pleaded pressure of work, an essay—which, in reality, he had abandoned years ago—on Vermeer of Delft. "I know that I am quite useless," she had replied, "a little wild thing like me beside a learned great man like you. I should be like the frog in the fable! And yet I should so much like to learn, to know things, to be initiated. What fun it would be to become a regular bookworm, to bury my nose in a lot of old papers!" she had gone on, with that self-satisfied air which a smart woman adopts when she insists that her one desire is ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... expanded, inch by inch, to spacious provinces, and the Yellow Sea shallowed up with the silt of winters innumerable—waited while the primordial civilisations of Copt, Accadian, Aryan and Mongol crept out, step by step, from paleolithic silence into the uncertain record of Tradition's earliest fable—waited still through the long eras of successive empires, while the hard-won light, broadening little by little, moved westward, westward, round the circumference of the planet, at last to overtake and dominate ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... 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 appears to be the case with me, since I suffered pain in my leg before ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... proposed to rehearse the lustrous story of Rome, from its beginning in the mists of myth and fable down to the mischievous times when the republic came to its end, just before the brilliant period ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... anachronism which the case admits of) that Mr. Archdeacon W. has absolutely introduced the idea of sin into the "Iliad;" and, in a regular octavo volume, has represented it as the key to the whole movement of the fable. It was once made a reproach to Southey that his Don Roderick spoke, in his penitential moods, a language too much resembling that of Methodism; yet, after all, that prince was a Christian, and a Christian amongst Mussulmans. But ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the fable o'er, Which mute attention had approv'd before; Though under spirits love th' accustomed jest, Which chases sorrow from the vulgar breast; Still hearts refin'd their sadden'd tints retain— The sigh gives pleasure and the jest is pain: Scarce ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... other planting or farming community in the United States. Living almost exclusively among themselves, their manners and feelings were homogeneous; and living, too, almost entirely upon the products of their plantations, independent of their market-crops, they grew rich so rapidly as to mock the fable of Jonah's gourd. This wealth afforded the means of education and travel; these, cultivation and high mental attainments, and, with these, the elegances of refined life. The country was vast and fertile; the Mississippi, flowing by their homes, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... merely of a species; he is Renard, an individual, with a personality of his own; Isengrin is not merely a wolf, he is the particular wolf Isengrin; each is an epic individual, heroic and undying. Classical fable remotely exerted an influence on certain branches of the Romance; but the vital substance of the epic is derived from the stores of popular tradition in which material from all quarters—the North of Europe and the Eastern world—had been ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... illustrations of the fable of this play, compare Hyginus, Fab. clxxxiv., who evidently has a view to Euripides. Ovid, Metam. iii. fab. v. Oppian, Cyneg. iv. 241 sqq. Nonnus, 45, p. 765 sq. and 46, p. 783 sqq., some of whose imitations I shall mention in my notes. With the opening speech of this play compare the ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... names have reference to the exceeding brittleness of its long tail, which often breaks in many pieces in the hands of the enemy trying to capture the lizard. That these pieces ever join and heal together is of course a silly fable. As a matter of fact, the body in a comparatively short time grows a new tail, which, however, is much shorter and stumpier than the old one. The new piece is often of a different color from the rest of the body and {99} greatly resembles ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... distinguish each from the rest, which may be done by diversity of matter, which always makes some diversity of management. The old and middle comedy simply represented real adventures: in the same way some passages of history and of fable might form a class of comedies, which should resemble it without having its faults; such is the Amphitryon. How many moral tales, how many adventures, ancient and modern; how many little fables of Aesop, of Phaedrus, of Fontaine, or some other ancient ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... unemployment this scheme was on a par with the method of the tailor in the fable who thought to lengthen his cloth by cutting a piece off one end and sewing it on to the other; but there was one thing about it that recommended it to the Vicar—it was self-supporting. He found that there would be no need to use all the money he had extracted from the semi-imbecile old ladies for ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... giraffe, with his prehensile lip, raised nearly twenty feet in the air, can browse upon these trees without difficulty. Not so the elephant, whose trunk cannot reach so high; and the latter would often have to imitate the fox in the fable, were he not possessed of a means whereby he can bring the tempting morsel within reach—that is, simply by breaking down the tree. This his vast strength enables him to do, unless when the trunk happens to be one of the largest ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the wolf in the fable appreciated the kindness of the crane. Why not thank him with the same simplicity with which he served you. You are a real wolf; you are for ever disparaging, detracting, or blaming ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... to extend beyond the period of the flood, and from these the "dark idolater of chance," who would rejoice to prove that "Book of Books" a splendid fable, draws his deductions. But how he fails. The learned men of China, those held in the greatest repute amongst a people where such a reputation is not easily obtained, themselves admit, that the history ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... come so near doubting the principle to which he adhered as at this time. A few days went a long way in Chellaston towards making a stranger, especially if he was a young man with good introduction, feel at home there, and the open friendliness of Chellaston society, acting like the sun in AEsop's fable, had almost made this traveller take off his coat. Had Robert been a person who had formerly agreed with him, it is probable that when the subject was opened, he would have confessed the dubious condition ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... last great conflict between truth and error is but the final struggle of the long-standing controversy concerning the law of God. Upon this battle we are now entering,—a battle between the laws of men and the precepts of Jehovah, between the religion of the Bible and the religion of fable and tradition. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... of a fable they used to employ, When I was a little boy: How once through fear of the marriage-bed a young man, Melanion by name, to the wilderness ran, And there on the hills he dwelt. For hares he wove a ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... much doubt it. I am a child in these matters. I had only seen a chicken in its wild state once or twice before we came down here. I had never dreamed of being an active assistant on a real farm. The whole thing began like Mr. George Ade's fable of the author. An author—myself—was sitting at his desk trying to turn out something that could be converted into breakfast food, when a friend came in and sat down on the table and told him to go right on ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... of Jenny's unobtrusive scribbling lay before him. A caricature of himself, reading (the book was upside-down). In the background a dancing couple, recognisable as Gombauld and Anne. Beneath, the legend: "Fable of the Wallflower and the Sour Grapes." Fascinated and horrified, Denis pored over the drawing. It was masterful. A mute, inglorious Rouveyre appeared in every one of those cruelly clear lines. The expression of the face, an assumed aloofness and superiority tempered by a feeble envy; ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the heroes of Grecian history and even of Grecian fable. We are inspired by ancient poetry and eloquence, as well as by the bards and orators of modern times. Painting and sculpture are the equal admiration of every refined age. The virtue of patriotism has been illustrated by savage as well as civilized life. Thus every recorded event of the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... Amerinus, with all his misfortunes, injustices, and miseries, is now to us no more than the name of a fable; but to those who know it, the fable is, I think, more ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... the whole of the Old Testament the vine is represented as one of the most precious blessings bestowed by the Creator upon man. In the incomparable fable of Jotham, when he lifted up his voice on the summit of Mount Gerizim, and cried to the men of Shechem, 'Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you,' he told them that when the trees of the forest went forth to anoint them a ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... Fagalde's celebrated chocolate factory and the old churchyard high above the river—while our horses were being changed—and then resumed our journey to the Pas de Roland. [Footnote: So-called from the fable that Roland, coming to the place and wishing to cross, found the rocks barring his passage, so kicked them, whereupon they parted for him to pass between.] The scenery now became very charming, the winding river (Nive) adding ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... I believe to the great German antiquaries, his history seems a model history of a nation. You watch the people and their story rise before you out of fable into fact; out of the dreary darkness of the unknown north, into the clear light of civilized ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... a pilgrimage to Mount Kaf, to pay their homage to the Simorg. From this poem, written five hundred years ago, we cite the following passage, as a proof of the identity of mysticism in all periods. The tone is quite modern. In the fable, the birds were soon weary of the length and difficulties of the way, and at last almost all gave out. Three only persevered, and arrived before the throne ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... ancients to priests and heroes, and used in their sacrifices. "A crown of bay" was the earnestly-desired reward for great enterprises, and for the display of uncommon genius in oratory or writing. It was more particularly sacred to Apollo, because, according to the fable, the nymph Daphne was changed into a laurel-tree. The ancients believed, too, that the laurel had the power of communicating the gift of prophecy, as well as poetic genius; and, when they wished to procure pleasant dreams, would place a sprig under ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to be found? The nobleman went up stairs and down, through halls and passages; yet none of those whom he met had heard of the bird. So he returned to the emperor, and said that it must be a fable, invented by those who had written the book. "Your imperial majesty," said he, "cannot believe everything contained in books; sometimes they are only fiction, or what is called ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... must import a wooden leg." At Dunsinnane the old prejudice broke out. "Sir," said he to Boswell, "Macbeth was an idiot; he ought to have known that every wood in Scotland might be carried in a man's hand. The Scotch, Sir, are like the frogs in the fable: if they had a log, they would make a king of it." We will quote here a stanza which contains quite a serious application of the pun; and for Hood's purpose no other word could so happily or so pungently ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... The reader of it nowadays, we suspect, will think its success not very expensively achieved, and it certainly has a main fault that makes it strangely disagreeable. When the past was chiefly the affair of fable, the storehouse of tradition, it was well enough for the poet to take historical events and figures, and fashion them in any way that served his purpose; but this will not do in our modern daylight, where a freedom with the truth is ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... your pity, and have a right to claim it: for it is only since I loved you that I have recognized my own great needs and deficiencies. Complete the work you have unconsciously begun, dearest. Reverse the fairy fable, and let the beautiful princess come to waken with her kiss the slothful prince, who else might ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... of Colle. "Sapia was my name," she said, "but sapient I was not[28], for I prayed God to defeat my countrymen; and when he had done so (as he had willed to do), I raised my bold face to heaven, and cried out to him, 'Now do thy worst, for I fear thee not!' I was like the bird in the fable, who thought the fine day was to last for ever. What I should have done in my latter days to make up for the imperfect amends of my repentance, I know not, if the holy Piero Pettignano had not assisted me with his prayers. But who art ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... majority, can keep open all the markets, or at least sufficient ones for their objects, the cries of the tobacco-makers, who are the minority, and not at all in favor, will hardly be listened to. It is truly the fable of the monkey pulling the nuts out of the fire with the cat's paw; and it shows that G. Mason's proposition in the convention was wise, that on laws regulating commerce, two thirds of the votes should be requisite to pass them. However, it would have been trampled under ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... that civil war had risen a new nation, mighty in the vastness of its limitless resources, the realities within its reach surpassing the dreams of fiction, and eclipsing the fancy of fable—a new nation, yet rosy in the flesh, with the bloom of youth upon its cheeks and the gleam of morning in its eyes. No one questioned that commercial and geographic union had been effected. So had Rome re-united its faltering provinces, maintaining the limit of its imperial ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... what I have said: he's a stripling. Is it worth while talking about an ignoramus and a savage, who wishes to remain an ignoramus and a savage, and does not conceal the fact? You see: he reasons as the bear in the fable bent ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... this charming story is supposed to have but little foundation in fact. Many of Rodrigo's legendary exploits are still less authentic; but history and fable unite in declaring him a warrior of no common stamp. His master, King Ferdinand, as we have said, invaded the territories of his brothers and friends, besides those of his enemies. Garcia, Ramirez, and Bermudez successively fell before his attacks, which Rodrigo, in the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... in the Maccabees, we rely upon the Lord to fight our battles, without lifting a weapon in our defence, or, like the wagoner in the fable, we content ourselves with calling on Hercules, we shall find in the end that 'Faith without Works is dead.' ... The world, as you say, is 'the world'—a quarrelling, vicious, fighting, plundering world—yet it is a very good world ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... ecclesiastical unity. From the Imperial city Episcopacy gradually radiated over all Christendom. The position assumed by Dr. Lightfoot—that it commenced in Jerusalem—is without any solid foundation. To support it, he is obliged to adopt the fable that James was the first bishop of the mother Church. The New Testament ignores this story, and tells us explicitly that James was only one of the "pillars," or ruling spirits, among the Christians of the Jewish capital. [62:2] The very same ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... the child for religious education; and that an education based on "reality," as in this method we would adopt, is too arid, and tends to dry up the founts of spiritual life. Such reasoning, however, will not be accepted by religious persons. They know well that faith and fable are "as the poles apart," since fable is in itself a thing without faith, and faith is the very sentiment of truth, which should accompany man even unto death. Religion is not a product of fantastic ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... upon the whole, my view of the operations of the Colonization Society, in relieving the slave States of the evil which weighs them down more than a hundred tariffs, is illustrated by an old fable, in which it is stated, that a man was seen at the foot of a mountain, scraping away the dust with his foot. One passing by, asked him what he was doing? I wish to remove this mountain, said he. You fool, replied the other, you can never do it in that way. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... any of your learned correspondents inform me whether the fable of Cupid and Psyche was invented by Apuleius; or whether he made use of a superstition then current, turning it, as it suited his purpose, into the beautiful fable which has been handed down to us as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... downright improvements, so that, if he had not given us the genuine 'Prometheus,' he had given us something better. In such a case we should all reply, but we do not want something better. Our object is not the best possible drama that could be produced on the fable of 'Prometheus'; what we want is the very 'Prometheus' that was written by AEschylus, the very drama that was represented at Athens. The Athenian audience itself, and what pleased its taste, is already ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... any of these facts. Nor does Dr. Rendel Harris suggest why it is so dangerous an operation to dig up the mandrake which he identifies with the goddess, or why it is essential to secure the assistance of a dog[248] in the process. The explanation of this fantastic fable gives an important clue ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... had reached his height, played only his own music; he played divinely and incomprehensibly; next to his passion for music was his greed for gold. These three facts sum up all we really know about the master—the rest fades off into mist—mystery, fable and legend. We do know, however, that he composed several pieces of music so difficult that he could not play them himself, and of course no one else can. Imagination can always outrun performance. Paganini had no close friends; no confidants: he never mingled in society, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... edit., fol. cccvj. rev. Poor Caxton (towards whom the reader will naturally conceive I bear some little affection) is thus dragooned into the list of naughty writers who have ventured to speak mildly (and justly) of Anselm's memory. "They feign in another fable that he (Anselm) tare with his teeth Christ's flesh from his bones, as he hung on the rood, for withholding the lands of certain bishoprics and abbies: Polydorus not being ashamed to rehearse it. Somewhere they call him a red dragon: ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... over their breasts, and which they are obliged to rub with salt continually, to keep them from putrefaction." Thus even the great salt trade of the interior of Africa is not wholly untinged with fable. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... in Syracuse pleased themselves with the fable that their fountain, Arethusa, had been a Grecian nymph, who, like themselves, had crossed the sea to Sicily. The poetry of Theocritus, read or sung in sultry Alexandria, must have seemed like a new welling up of the waters of Arethusa ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... meeting four men on the way who were going from Kumbakumba to Chama to beat up recruits for an attack on the Katanga people. The request was sure to be met with alarm and refusal, but it served very well to act the part taken by the wolf in the fable. A grievance would immediately be made of it, and Chama "eaten up" in due course for daring to gainsay the stronger man. Such is too frequently the course of native oppression. At last Kumbakumba's town came in sight. Already the large district of Itawa has tacitly ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... here on excellent terms with us all. You can interview, if you will, any member of the household. You can make your inquiries at the station from which he departed. Your appearance here at such an untimely hour, and your barely veiled accusations, remind me of the fable of the bull in the china shop. If you think that we have locked your brother up here, pray search the house. If you think," she added, with curling lip, "that we have murdered him, pray bring down an army of detectives, invest the place, and pursue your investigations in whatever direction you ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lies in the indolence or faithlessness of those who ought to take the lead in the redress of public grievances. The whole history of low traders in sedition is contained in that fine old Hebrew fable which we have all read in the Book of Judges. The trees meet to choose a king. The vine, and the fig tree, and the olive tree decline the office. Then it is that the sovereignty of the forest devolves upon the bramble: then it is that from a base ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from the past. It is a thing separate and alone: gorgeous, dazzling, strong, and rarely beautiful. Totally unlike the art of the old masters, it takes its scenes from Nature and actual living life—depending not on myth, legend or fable. It discards pure imagination, and by holding a mirror up to Nature has done the world the untold blessing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... now to human proofs of the dignity of learning, we find that among the heathen the inventors of new arts, such as Ceres, Bacchus, and Apollo, were consecrated among the gods themselves by apotheosis. The fable of Orpheus, wherein quarrelsome beasts stood sociably listening to the harp, aptly described the nature of men among whom peace is maintained so long as they give ear to precepts, laws, and religion. It has been said that people would then be happy, when kings were ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... rather large square. The spacious rooms within it have some literary interest, as at one time occupied by Ephraim Chambers, the encyclopaedist (1680-1750), and by the more famous Oliver Goldsmith. The whole building, renovated within and without, is now held by a social club. For many years a fable was believed that a subterranean passage connected it with the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... "Fact and Fable in Psychology," remarks that the modern forms of irregular healing present apt illustrations of occult methods of treatment which were in vogue long ago. And chief among these is the mental factor, whether utilized when the patient is awake or when ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... father like son," says the fable, And is justified clearly in Abel; No bowling he fears And his surname appears An extremely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... the falconers always keeping their young birds hooded six weeks, till they are quite tamed. He offered to train it, if Fritz would part with it; but this Fritz indignantly refused. I told them the fable of the dog in the manger, which abashed Fritz; and he then besought his brother to teach him the means of training this noble bird, and promised to present him with ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... learn a good deal about the personages you mention from Bulfinch's "Age of Fable," from Alexander S. Murray's "Manual of Mythology," and from Mrs. Clement's "Handbook of Legendary and Mythological Art"; but the poems of Homer,—the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey,"—of both of which there are good English translations,—are the chief ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... the proverb, the sages appear from the earliest times to have used the fable also; this is illustrated by the fable of Jotham in Judges ix. 6-21. Of the riddle a famous examples is that of Samson in Judges xiv. 14, 18, which combines rhythm of sound with rhythm of thought and well illustrates the form of the ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... lad, what is't you read— Romance or fairy fable? Or is it some historic page Of kings and crowns unstable?' The young boy gave an upward glance— 'It is the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... was given this letter to read, and I suggested the utmost caution in obeying this request, for, as the old rat in the fable said, there might be "concealed mischief in this heap of meal" I called for the other two letters, and found they were written by the same hand Willis says: "Oh! I know the old boss too well, he's true as steel; he won't ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... lover in fable In such a predicament stand, A letter I wrote to my MABEL, To ask for her heart and her hand, With compliments worded so nicely, A lifelong devotion I swore; She's answered—and left me precisely As wise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... "You will perhaps say, that it is easy for me to preach against riches; but like the Fox in the fable, the grapes are sour. I speak, however, with indifference of the good that Providence has placed beyond my reach. Geoffrey, I was once the envied possessor of wealth, which in my case was productive of ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... so eager and unsophisticate that he can note that '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' they dance in round, they ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the harmless folly of the time. We shall grow old apace, and die Before we know our liberty. Our life is short, and our days run As fast away as does the sun; And, as a vapor or a drop of rain, Once lost, can ne'er be found again: So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade, All love, all liking, all delight Lies drowned with us in endless night. Then while time serves, and we are but decaying, Come, my Corinna, come, let's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... third of the great series, MacFlecknoe, is Dryden's masterpiece of satiric irony; a purely personal attack upon his rival, Shadwell, "Crowned King of Dulness, and in all the realms of nonsense absolute". Finally, the Hind and the Panther represents a new development of the "satiric fable". Dryden gave to British satire the impulse towards that final form of development which it received from the great satirists of the next century. There is little that appears in Swift, Addison, Arbuthnot, Pope, or even Byron, for ...
— English Satires • Various
... to make out similar hypotheses, and thus to exhibit the absurdity of your Communal pretensions. Should a Commune say, "No person shall be arrested in future, and it is prohibited under pain of death to learn by heart the fable of the wolf and the fox." What could you say to that? Nothing, unless you admitted that you were mistaken just now in supposing, that the integrity of the Commune ought to have no other limit but the right of equal independence of all the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... and often, that America is not old enough to have developed a legendary era, for such an era grows backward as a nation grows forward. No little of the charm of European travel is ascribed to the glamour that history and fable have flung around old churches, castles, and the favored haunts of tourists, and the Rhine and Hudson are frequently compared, to the prejudice of the latter, not because its scenery lacks in loveliness or grandeur, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... living in large families has many economic advantages. We all know the edifying fable of the dying man who showed to his sons by means of a piece of wicker-work the advantages of living together and assisting each other. In ordinary times the necessary expenses of a large household of ten members are considerably ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... curiosity and speculation than that of George Eliot. Had she only lived earlier in the century she might easily have become the centre of a mythos. As it is, many of the anecdotes commonly repeated about her are made up largely of fable. It is, therefore, well, before it is too late, to reduce the true story of her career to the lowest terms, and this service has been well done by the author of the present ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... Richelieu made the theatre one of his favourite pursuits, and though not successful as a dramatic writer, his encouragement of the drama gradually gave birth to genius. Scudery was the first who introduced the twenty-four hours from Aristotle; and Mairet studied the construction of the fable, and the rules of the drama. They yet groped in the dark, and their beauties were yet only occasional; Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Crebillon, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... oozing from an amber moon Illumines footing on forbidden wall; Where, 'stead of pursy jeweler's display, Parading peacocks brave the passer-by, And swans like angels in an azure sky Wing swift and silent on unchallenged way. No land of fable! Of the Hills I sing, Whose royal women tread with conscious grace The peace-filled gardens of a warrior race, Each maiden fit for wedlock with a king, And every Rajput son so royal born And conscious of his age-long heritage He looks askance at Burke's becrested page ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... a poem of essential worldly wisdom, to be bracketed with Browning's equally oracular "The Statue and the Bust," fable and poem forming ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... entangling ourselves with the almost hopeless difficulties they raise as to whether a character as a whole is good or bad. Moreover, the goodness or badness of character is not absolute, but relative to the current form of civilisation. A fable will best explain what is meant. Let the scene be the Zoological Gardens in the quiet hours of the night, and suppose that, as in old fables, the animals are able to converse, and that some very wise creature who had easy access to all the cages, say a philosophic ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Chaldæa, it is now impossible to know. But the Hebrews received the Mysteries from the Egyptians; and of course were familiar with their legend,—known as it was to those Egyptian Initiates, Joseph and Moses. It was the fable (or rather the truth clothed in allegory and figures) of OSIRIS, the Sun, Source of Light and Principle of Good, and TYPHON, the Principle of Darkness and Evil. In all the histories of the Gods and Heroes lay couched and hidden astronomical details and the history of the operations ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... constructive scale. So this enterprise, in my fond and fatuous fancy, is associated with the sweet Mae Marsh as The Wild Girl of the Sierras—one of the loveliest bits of poetry ever put into screen or fable. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... this fable, he expresses no opinion as to the merits of the controversy between the Red-faced Man and the Hare that, without search on his own part, presented itself to his mind in so odd a fashion. It is one on which ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... spurred Poe and Whitman to experiment with new forms. But Lowell revealed early extraordinary gifts of improvisation, retaining the old tunes of English verse as the basis for his own strains of unpremeditated art. He wrote "A Fable for Critics" faster than he could have written it in prose. "Sir Launfal" was composed in two days, the "Commemoration Ode" ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Upon this it pleased God that he should fall asleep, and in his sleep Santiago appeared to him with a good and cheerful countenance, holding in his hand a bunch of keys, and said unto him, "Thou thinkest it a fable that they should call me a knight, and sayest that I am not so: for this reason am I come unto thee that thou never more mayest doubt concerning my knighthood; for a knight of Jesus Christ I am, and a helper of the Christians against the Moors." While he was thus ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... at last he said. "Your Maud is not for me, nor those like me. Between us and you is that 'great gulf fixed;'—what did the old fable say? I forget.—Che sara sara! I am but as others: I am but what I ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... once embraced in Windsor Forest, where the Norman laid his broad palm on a space a hundred and twenty miles round, and, like the lion in the fable of the hunting-party, informed his subjects that that was his share. The domain dwindled, as did other royal appurtenances. Yet in 1807 the circuit was as much as seventy-seven miles. In 1789 it embraced sixty thousand acres. The process of contraction has since been accelerated, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Vidularia, which was lost in the Middle Ages) all have the same general character, with the single exception of the Amphitruo. This is more of a burlesque than a comedy, and is full of humour. It is founded on the well- worn fable of Jupiter and Alcmena, and has been imitated by Moliere and Dryden. Its source is uncertain; but it is probably from Archippus, a writer of the old comedy (415 B.C.). Its form suggests rather a development of the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... [3] "What 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 all his peerage ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... satisfactorily prove the historical existence of Christ, and that they have to winnow through a vast amount of chaff to get at his presumed philosophy, and the facts in his life, which like that of Buddha is wrapped up in traditional fable. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... and the history of Ireland, but through this mist there shine a few great and sunlike figures whose glory cannot be altogether hidden, and of these figures Cormac is the greatest and the brightest. Much that is told about him may be true, and much is certainly fable, but the fables themselves are a witness to his greatness; they are like forms seen in the mist when a great light is shining behind it, and we cannot always say when we are looking at the true light and when at the ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... about us. Is one to give free rein to his fancy or imagination; to see animal life with his "vision," and not with his corporeal eyesight; to hear with his transcendental ear, and not through his auditory nerve? This may be all right in fiction or romance or fable, but why call the outcome natural history? Why set it down as a record of actual observation? Why penetrate the wilderness to interview Indians, trappers, guides, woodsmen, and thus seek to confirm your observations, if you have all the while been "struggling against fact and ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... judgment the right course would steer, Know well each ancient's proper character, His fable subject scope in every page, Religion, country, genius of his age Without all these at once before your eyes, Cavil you may, but never criticise. Be Homers works your study and delight, Read them by day and meditate by night, Thence form your judgment thence your maxims bring And trace the muses ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... Nugent, obtained for him, from Dr. Madox, Bishop of Worcester, the vicarage of Snitterfield, worth about 140l. After having inserted some small poems in Dodsley's Collection, he published (in 1767) Edgehill, for which he obtained a large subscription; and in the following year, the fable of Labour and Genius. In 1771, his kind patron, Lord Willoughby de Broke, added to his other preferment the rectory of Kimcote, worth nearly 300l. in consequence of which ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... interest. It is construction that is now desired; and he who studies history only that he may vanquish belief in the interest of knowledge cannot command the attention of those whose attention is best worth having. That fable is fable and mythus mythus no one need now plume himself on informing us, provided he has nothing further to say. Of course, we raise no childish and sentimental objection to what is called "negative criticism." It may not be the best possible policy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... are more moral in the country, or that they here remain longer uncorrupted than in towns, whether large or small. Nor is it proved that in former times the country possessed any advantage in these respects, as compared with our own days and with the modern town. The entire fable of rural innocence appears to rest, not upon an actual comparison between town and country, but rather upon the more lively interest felt in town life, and especially in the life of the great towns: in towns, immorality has been more carefully studied and more ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... seems to have been conveyed there by fairies; and at the base the eye is charmed by the fine and picturesque forest of Bourgtheroulde: villages elegantly grouped, enrich with their beautiful fabrics each bank of the Seine which majestically traverses a luxurious landscape. Romance, fable, and the tradition of shepherds and peasants describe Robert the Devil as Governor of Neustria, and a descendent of Rollo the celebrated Norman chief, whose name was changed to Robert, Duke of Normandy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. On three cloths were figures of the Incas with their wives, on medallions, with their Ayllus and a genealogical tree. Historical events in each reign were depicted on the borders. The fable of Tampu-tocco was shown on the first cloth, and also the fables touching the creations of Viracocha, which formed the foundation for the whole history. On the fourth cloth there was a map of Peru, the ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... with,—who has never enjoyed the peculiar advantages to be derived from the society of little dirty boys, never been admitted to the felicity of popular songs, nor exercised his pluck in a rough-and-tumble, nor ventilated himself in wholesome "giddy, giddy, gout,"—to whom dirt-pies are a fable! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... with it. The common law of inheritance may be expected to keep both the original and the variety mainly true as long as they last, and none the less so because they have given rise to occasional varieties. The tailless Manx cats, like the curtailed fox in the fable, have not induced the normal breeds to dispense with their tails, nor have the Dorkings (apparently known to Pliny) affected the permanence of the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... reckons nine Pharaohs, who reigned for a century and a half, and each of them built pyramids and founded cities, and appear to have ruled gloriously. They maintained, and even increased, the power and splendour of Egypt. But the history of the Memphite Empire unfortunately loses itself in legend and fable, and becomes a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too, they receive the fable instead of the moral of their Aesop. They are to me, however, deeply interesting, as a sect which I think must contribute more than all other sects to the new faith which ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in the centre), creeds, conventions fall away and become of no account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated and look'd upon, it expands over the whole earth and spreads to the roof of heaven. The quality of BEING, in the object's self, according to its own central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto—not criticism by other standards and adjustments thereto—is ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... world in pursuit of a living skeleton called Death in Life—I recollect at the time very few people, among the guests of a certain elegant translator of English poetry, understood the mystic meaning of a fable as true as it was fanciful. Myself alone, perhaps, as I sat buried in silence, thought of the whole generations which as they were hurried along by life, passed on their way without living. Before my eyes rose faces of women ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... saviour to deliver— A Son of Man, in love and might! A holy fire, of life all-giver, He in our hearts has fanned alight. Then first heaven opened—and, no fable, Our own old fatherland we trod! To hope and trust we straight were able, And knew ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... said Mrs. Arrowpoint, bitterly. "Every one else will say that for you. You will be a public fable. Every one will say that you must have made an offer to a man who has been paid to come to the house—who is nobody knows what—a gypsy, a Jew, a ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot |
