Fables Quotes

All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story.

I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

From this, without doubt, sprang the fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own.

It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard, if we do not strive as well as pray.

Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes.

It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.

Fables take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.

Wherever modern Science has exploded a superstitious fable or even a picturesque error, she has replaced it with a grander and even more poetical truth.

Italianate Englishmen are incarnate devils ... for they first lustfully condemn God, then scornfully mock his word, and also spitefully hate and hurt all the well wishers thereof.... They count as fables the holy mysteries of religion.

Death's a fable. Did not Heaven inspire your equal Elements with living Fire blown from the Spring of Life? Is not that breath Immortal? Come; ye are as free from death as He that made ye: Can the flames expire which he kindled?

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, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.

As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.

The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, then that this universall Frame, is without a Minde. And therefore, God never wrought Miracle, to convince Atheisme, because his Ordinary Works Convince it. It is true, that a little Philosophy inclineth Mans Minde to Atheisme; But depth in Philosophy, bringeth Mens Mindes about to Religion.

To me [Christianity] was all nonsense based on that profane compilation of fables called the Bible.

We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries.

If you choose bad companions, no one will believe that you are anything but bad yourself.

It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables.

History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?

Put your shoulder to the wheel.

The American public is a very specialized public. The reason it is taken as a realistic film is because inside the fable, I've put that kind of reality in. And it could easily be called, instead of Once Upon a Time in America, Once Upon a Time There Was a Certain Kind of Cinema. Because it was also an homage to cinema.

There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten - before the end is told - even if there happens to be any end to it.

The fable of a god or gods visiting the earth did not originate with Christianity.

Human excellence, parted from God, is like a fable flower, which, according to Rabbis, Eve plucked when passing out of paradise--severed from its native root, it is only the touching memorial of a lost Eden; sad, while charming--beautiful, but dead.

Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.

There, at the centre, are the artists who really form the consciousness of their time; they respond deeply, intuitively to what is happening, what has happened, and what will happen, and their response is expressed in metaphor, in image and in fable.

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.

The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence or veiled in fable; and the world perhaps has lost but little which it needs regret. The origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived: and happily there never was a case in which every interesting incident could be so accurately preserved.

Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.

I can find my biography in every fable that I read.

The Bible account of the creation of Eve is a preposterous fable.

Jacqueline Carey has created a postmodern fable of enormous scope and force. Santa Olivia is at once a cautionary tale of people caught in a web of lies and creeping terror, and a love song to the beauty and power of being different. At the novel's heart is the kind of grace Carey is known for: an illumination of the strength that lies hidden inside all of us.

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.

Little by little does the trick.

When I was quite a boy I had a spasm of religion which lasted six weeks... But I never since have swallowed the Christian fable.

Poetical taste is the only magician whose wand is not broken. No hand, except its own, can dissolve the fabric of beauty in which it dwells. Genii, unknown to Arabian fable, wait at the portal. Whatever is most precious from the loom or the mine of fancy is poured at its feet. Love, purified by contemplation, visits and cheers it; unseen musicians are heard in the dark; it is Psyche in the palace of Cupid.

RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable - omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.

Please all, and you will please none.

Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth.

Still we live meanly like ants, though the fable tells us we were long ago changed into men.

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.

For me, the photography, in its purest form, is a variant of the fable. Another way of saving the appearances - a way of signifying, through this fabulous capture, that this supposed real world is always about to lose its meaning and its reality.

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

The palpable sense of mystery in the desert air breeds fables, chiefly of lost treasure. ... It is a question whether it is not better to be bitten by the little horned snake of the desert that goes sidewise and strikes without coiling, than by the tradition of a lost mine.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Through humility, soul-searching, and prayerful contemplation we have gained a new understanding of certain dogmas. The church no longer believes in a literal hell where people suffer. This doctrine is incompatible with the infinite love of God. God is not a judge but a friend and a lover of humanity. God seeks not to condemn but only to embrace. Like the fable of Adam and Eve, we see hell as a literary device. Hell is merely a metaphor for the isolated soul, which like all souls ultimately will be united in love with God.

Read my little fable: He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed.