Quotes about fable

Roman Payne - Hope and Despair

I just wish moments weren’t so fleeting!' Isaac called to the man on the roof, 'They pass so quickly!' 'Fleeting?!' responded the tilling man, 'Moments? They pass quickly?! . . . Why, once a man is finished growing, he still has twenty years of youth. After that, he has twenty years of middle age. Then, unless misfortune strikes, nature gives him twenty thoughtful years of old age. Why do you call that quickly?' And with that, the tilling man wiped his sweaty brow and continued tilling; and the

David Rakoff -

Is there some lesson on how to be friends?I think what it means is that central to livinga life that is good is a life that's forgiving.We're creatures of contact regardless of whetherwe kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together.Though it may spell destruction, we still ask for more--since it beats staying dry but so lonely on shore.So we make ourselves open while knowing full wellit's essentially saying "please, come pierce my shell.

C. JoyBell C. -

‎They are angry with me, because I know what I am." Said the little eagle. "How do you know that they are angry with you?" "Because, they despise me for wanting to soar, they only want me to peck at the dirt, looking for ants, with them. But I can't do that. I don't have chicken feet, I have eagle wings." "And what is so wrong with having eagle wings and no chicken feet?" Asked the old owl. "I'm not sure, that's what I'm trying to find out." "They hate you because you know that you are an eagle

Mokokoma Mokhonoana -

Some women have kissed—and some are kissing—a lot of frogs, even though the very first man that they have each kissed was and is still a prince.

G.K. Chesterton - The Everlasting Man

In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chinese embroideries or the gold lacquer of Chinese pottery,

Thomas A. Edison -

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the reli

Chris Tinniswood - Nostradormouse

our destinies are intertwinedlike the stems of ivy on an oak tree.

Chris Tinniswood - Nostradormouse

Thank-you, son,’ said his father. ‘I want you to know we’re bothproud of you. Take care, and keep in touch if you can.’‘Or even better, visit!’ said his mother, ‘our home isn’t completewithout you!

Justin Dobbs -

And yet it was also true that the tumor could not be removed by our doctor, and as a result of that a strange medication had been given him that enabled my brother to become even more of an enigma than he was before, and as a result of that there came to exist not only the machine and the inertia that came with it, but a change of perspective among the townsfolk that was a result of their interactions with the various phases of my brother. And so it was that when the flood began to rear its terr

Justin Dobbs - Billy's Room

Inside the room there sat a rocker, which she sat on, and which had rocked her while she sipped the beer, because in spite of herself she had become so giddy to have so quickly relieved her heart that she allowed herself to lean backwards while in the rocker, which had made it possible for the rocker to rock her, although it was not her intention to be so rocked. Also there stood an ironing board with a still hot iron on it that was burning a yellow shift, and there was, among several items that

Robert G. Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses

We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these records of the past, philosophies and dreams, and efforts stained with tears, of great and tender souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death, to answer the eternal questions of the Whence and Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of shattered glass, a mirror that would, in ve

Christopher Hitchens - and War: Journeys and Essays

The enduring rapture with magic and fable has always struck me as latently childish and somehow sexless (and thus also related to childlessness).

Mehmet Murat ildan -

The job of reflection is to add a dimension of fable to the reality!

The Bhagavad Gita -

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.

Sharon Salzberg - Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.

Walt Whitman - Complete Prose Works

Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious—surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic,

Benjamin Franklin - Remarks Concerning the Savages

A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded — such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him.‘What you have told us,’ says he, ‘is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all int

Robert G. Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses

We know that there are many animals on this continent not found in the Old World. These must have been carried from here to the ark, and then brought back afterwards. Were the peccary, armadillo, ant-eater, sloth, agouti, vampire-bat, marmoset, howling and prehensile-tailed monkey, the raccoon and muskrat carried by the angels from America to Asia? How did they get there? Did the polar bear leave his field of ice and journey toward the tropics? How did he know where the ark was? Did the kangaroo

Oliver Neubert - Chantel's Quest for the Silver Leaf

When I grow up, maybe I will bethe first one to circle the sea.Or maybe I will just spend all my daydoing everything my way.Maybe I will be in a world of my ownI just hope not alone.I just know that whatever I doI will never, ever forget about you.

John Berwick Harwood - Reign of Terror Volume 2: Great Victorian Horror Stories

Our house was an old Tudor mansion. My father was very particular in keeping the smallest peculiarities of his home unaltered. Thus the many peaks and gables, the numerous turrets, and the mullioned windows with their quaint lozenge panes set in lead, remained very nearly as they had been three centuries back. Over and above the quaint melancholy of our dwelling, with the deep woods of its park and the sullen waters of the mere, our neighborhood was thinly peopled and primitive, and the people r

A. Lee Brock - Penny Willan and the Well: A Fairy Tale of Ode

Rain turned to ice,and lightning splintered, it splicedthe black sky, it seeped a bright white.All animals they fled,from the sky as it bled,pale death that fell veiling the night.

A. Lee Brock - Penny Willan and the Well: A Fairy Tale of Ode

Envy said, “Girl, I remember well,ye, who I flung from Hell,and not a day has passed, I haven’t missedthe loss of your soul that I mourned,I’ve been bereft and forlorn,for the sweet taste of your flesh I’ve yet to kiss.But no worries—bygones,that’s the past—long gone,I don’t hold a grudge, no, in no way.And though your family they did swindlemy joy of flaying ye on a spindle, I begrudge ye not a little, so let’s play.So, merely toss your token in my well,and all your dreams I will unveil,for ye

A. Lee Brock - Penny Willan and the Well: A Fairy Tale of Ode

In hundreds of years of wish fulfillment,never once to the demon’s bereavement,had a wish gone unable to be yielded.It was love this day, which defeated the curse,and there in Hell there was little worse,than the dark forces of evil gone unwielded.

Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

In Pliny I read about the invention of clay modeling. A Sicyonian potter came to Corinth. There his daughter fell in love with a young man who had to make frequent long journeys away from the city. When he sat with her at home, she used to trace the outline of his shadow that a candle’s light cast on the wall. Then, in his absence she worked over the profile, deepening, so that she might enjoy his face, and remember. One day the father slapped some potter’s clay over the gouged plaster; when the

A. Lee Brock -

Dead tree branches rattled,the cold wind seethed, it prattled of abominations about to unfold.A lone wolf howled,the full moon it prowled,ready for evils untold.

Thomas Paine - The Age of Reason

It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost.

Russell Kirk - The Roots of American Order

Like Solon, Plato intended to write a long fable about legendary Atlantis; like Solon, he never did write it. Yet there existed beyond the Atlantic an unvisited land, after all, and it is more strange than any of Plato's myths that Plato's apprehension of order and justice should be a living influence among the people of that land, twenty-four centuries after the mystical philosopher's soul departed from Athens.

Erich Maria Remarque - Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

The story of the herd of seals. Hundreds of them on a beach; among them the hunter killing one after the other with a club. Together they could easily have crushed him— but they lay there, watching him come to murder, and did not move; he was only killing a neighbor— one neighbor after the other. The story of the European seals. The sunset of civilization. Tired shapeless Götterdämmerung. The empty banners of human rights. The sell-out of a continent. The onrushing deluge. The haggling for the l

Robert G. Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses

It has always been a mystery to me how Adam, Eve, and the serpent were taught the same language. Where did they get it? We know now, that it requires a great number of years to form a language; that it is of exceedingly slow growth. We also know that by language, man conveys to his fellows the impressions made upon him by what he sees, hears, smells and touches. We know that the language of the savage consists of a few sounds, capable of expressing only a few ideas or states of the mind, such as

Margaret Atwood - The Tent

I could end this with a moral,as if this were a fable about animals,though no fables are really about animals.

Justin K. McFarlane Beau -

A gossip spread a rumor, and became notorious from the deed. The gossip then started a fire beyond their control, and when it spread, the gossip spread the word around, but people just ran away. The gossip died in the fire they started, longing for warmth they could not find or keep when they did. And no one spread the word, about the gossips' death.

Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

And the weird weird thing about this story of Angela's Ring was that it didn't even have a point to it, no happy ending, no lesson to be learnt.It was like one person's cry of pain, echoing out on and on and on trough the generations, even after that person was long long dead.

Napoleon Bonaparte -

What is history but a fable agreed upon?