"Tales" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chambers with the visionary lives, now ended, of meek, brown sisters from Goa or Macao, gave to Rudolph intimations, vague, profound, and gravely happy, as of some former existence almost recaptured. Once more he felt himself a householder in the Arabian tales. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... Never believe these tales until you investigate them. Invariably you will find not generosity but extravagance and utter lack of forethought, caused the ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... influences leading to drunkenness they found the medical use of alcoholics. The early efforts of these women were chiefly in rescue work through Gospel temperance meetings, and visitations of jails and poor-houses. By reason of this contact with the effects of inebriety they learned many sad tales of ruined lives, blighted homes and lost souls, through the appetite for strong drink created, or aroused, by alcoholic prescription. They saw, as time passed, that some of the drunkards reclaimed through their influence lapsed again into their evil habits because a little ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... horse, gazed over towards the Indian reservation idly. How vain, in all likelihood, were the wonderful tales of gold ledges lying within its prohibited borders. What a madness was brewing in the camps all around as the day for the reservation opening rapidly approached! How they would swarm across its hills and valleys—those gold-seeking men! What ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... following pages and you will find listed a few of the outstanding boys' and girls' books published by Grosset and Dunlap. All are written by well known authors and cover a wide variety of subjects—aviation, stories of sport and adventure, tales of humor and mystery—books for every mood and every ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... unscalable, and might have remained virgin until this century of hardy climbers, had not Charles the Eighth had a fancy to hear (not to see!) what was on top. Up went a few of his bravest satellites, hoisting themselves on to the aerial plateau by means of ropes and ladders, and bringing down wondrous tales of impossible chamois, savage, brilliant-coloured birds, and singular vegetation, which stories promptly went into all the geographies of the day and were believed until a more practical explorer named Jean Liotard climbed up, to please ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... that after I had told J. P. one of the best tales in my collection he would say: "Well, go on, go on, come to the point. For God's sake, isn't there any ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... His shadowy Flale hath thresh'd the Corn That ten day-labourers could not end, Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend. 110 And stretch'd out all the Chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength; And Crop-full out of dores he flings, Ere the first Cock his Mattin rings. Thus don the Tales, to bed they creep, By whispering Windes soon lull'd asleep. Towred Cities please us then, And the busie humm of men, Where throngs of Knights and Barons bold, In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold, 120 With store of Ladies, whose bright eies Rain influence, and judge the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... be telling tales out of school to tell you, Louis. He came for a key to the first-class ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... Door—her years are few— Loves me, more than her elders do; Says, my wrinkles become me so; Marvels much at the tales I know. Says, we shall marry when ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... reactions are qualified. This is the fundamental explanation of the fact that married men and women frequently become interested in others than their partners in matrimony. I may also just allude to the fact that the large body of the literature of intrigue, represented by the tales of Boccaccio and Margaret of Navarre, is based on ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... that there is no good to be obtained from tales of fighting and bloodshed,—that there is no moral to be drawn from such histories. Believe it not. War has its lessons as well as Peace. You will learn from tales like this that determination and enthusiasm ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... called Idle Days on the Yann, the wonders of that voyage. Now the tale being one of marvellous beauty, found its way into a volume we call A Dreamer's Tales where it may be found to this day with other wondrous tales of ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or Bertie Stanhope. And here perhaps it may be allowed to the novelist to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers by maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the Northern cities, the activity of employment agencies (especially for female domestic help) with drummers and agents in Southern communities has served to spread tales of high wages and to provide transportation for large numbers.[11] Again, many who have been to the urban centers return for visits to their more rural home communities with show of better wages in dress, in cash ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... and all were well, And then we'll speed us to our native land. Quezox: But, noble Francos, we now wend our way To meet the vermin which do suck our blood, And they with tongues which serpent-like can charm May fool thee with their tales of dire intent. Francos: (striking his breast): Fear not, they soon shall feel how vain it were To seek to trick one who, in halls of state, Hath met the wiles of shrewd, self-seeking men, But to ward off attack with virtue's shield. Captain and Seldonskip approach. ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... our attention next. These are celebrated animals, on account of the strange and fabulous tales related of the species known as the Egyptian ichneumon, which, among the people of Egypt, is domesticated, and was once held as a sacred animal. Besides the Egyptian ichneumon, there are several other species in Africa—one belonging to Abyssinia, and no less than six ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... formations are exhibited; and have you personally excavated from their matrices the various fossils which form the hieroglyphics of the science? Have you, in fact, ever seen one in a thousand of these minerals and fossils in situ? Or are you dependent on the tales of travelers, the specimens of collectors, the veracity of authors, the accuracy of lecturers, aided by maps of ideal stratifications, in rose-pink, brimstone-yellow, and indigo-blue, for your profound ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... he know what was going to happen in the great countries of Europe? He would find it difficult, no doubt, to assign to England her correct position on the map. And yet his warnings were strangely intense. Had they any connection with the tales of political sedition of which the Omdeh had so often spoken? Nothing belonging to the present seemed to matter to him now; his thoughts and visualizing were riveted on the agony of the world which he foretold. His prayers were for this new agony and world-wide ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... show her print and footsteps in our faces." The next day the pinnace rowed "to another river in the bottom of the bay" to pick up the stragglers who had stayed to rest with the Maroons. The company was then reunited in the secret haven. Wonderful tales were told of the journey across the isthmus, of the South Sea, with its lovely city, and of the rush through the grass in the darkness, when the mule bells came clanging past, that night near Venta Cruz. The sick men recovering from their calentures "were thoroughly revived" ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... says, among other things in a work written by her, that wishing to answer the repeated questions of her eight-year-old son on his origin, and unwilling to saddle him with nursery tales, she disclosed the truth to him. The child listened to her with great attention, and, from the day that he learned what cares and pains he had caused his mother, he clung to her with a tenderness and reverence not noticed in him before, and showed the same reverence toward other women ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... sober stay-at-homes, intoxicated with music and lights and supper and too many people talking at once. Sally's eyebrows and teeth alone would have been enough to set all the birds singing in the dullest coppices decorum ever planted, let alone the tales she had to tell of all the strange and wonderful things that had come to pass at the Erskine Peels', who were the givers of the party, and always did things on ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... this secluded and musing girl had associated all that she read in tales of romance and chivalry with the image of the brave and loyal stranger. He it was who animated her dreams of the Past, and seemed born to be, in the destined hour, the deliverer of the Future. Around this image grouped all the charms that the fancy of virgin woman can raise ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... always read history, or tales, or poetry; and in the evening did whatever he felt inclined to do—which brings me to what occupied him the last hours of the daylight, for a good part of this ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... scriptural story, or to the praise of his Maker, how remote so ever from anything like religion the general strain of his writings might be. Witness the Lamentation of Mary Magdalene in the works of Chaucer, and the beautiful legend of Hew of Lincoln, which he has inserted in his Canterbury Tales; witness also the hymns of Ben Jonson. But these fragments alone will not entitle their authors to be enrolled among sacred poets. They indicate the taste of their age, rather than their own; a fact which may be thought to stand rather ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... to me necessary to dwell upon its corrupt phases. If truth compels one sometimes to state unpleasant facts in portraying historic characters, it is as needless and unjust as in private life to repeat idle and unproved tales, or to draw imaginary conclusions from questionable data. The conflict of contemporary opinion on the simplest matters leads one often to the suspicion that all personal history is more or less disguised fiction. The ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... incantation or juggling, and moniti in Lithuanian. The linguistic researches of Pictet, Pott, Benfey, Kuhn, and others show that in primitive times singing, poetry, hymns, the celebration of rites, and the relation of tales, were identical ideas, expressed in identical forms, and even the name for a nightingale had the same derivation. So also the names of a singer, poet, a wise man, and a magician, came ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... like thinking that red is green, because the two fade into each other in the colours of the rainbow. It is really difficult to decide when we come to the extreme edge of veracity, when and when not it is permissible to create an illusion. A standing example, for instance, is the case of the fairy-tales. We think a father entirely pure and benevolent when he tells his children that a beanstalk grew up into heaven, and a pumpkin turned into a coach. We should consider that he lapsed from purity and benevolence if he told his children that in walking home that evening he had seen ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... negro I knew well, who, after having been often thus transported from island to island, at last resided in Montserrat. This man used to tell me many melancholy tales of himself. Generally, after he had done working for his master, he used to employ his few leisure moments to go a fishing. When he had caught any fish, his master would frequently take them from him without paying him; and at other times some other white people would serve him in the same ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... wilderness, a woodman of the faith." He seeks hardships and conquers them. The setting is the illumitable forest in the remote past. The forest, like the sea, makes an irresistible appeal to the imagination. Either may be the scene of the marvellous and the thrilling. Quite unlike the earliest tales, this story is enriched with description and exposition; nevertheless, it has their simplicity and dignity. It reminds us of certain of the great Biblical narratives, such as the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal and the victory of Daniel over the ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... the Tower as thick as if an hundred men had been there throwing.' Several people were killed and many 'grievously scalded and wounded.' The history of the storm has been told in verse, and the lines were painted on tablets and placed in the church. Mrs Bray found 'the wildest tales' of the storm floating among the people in the neighbourhood, and, amongst them, 'One story is that the devil, dressed in black and mounted on a black horse, inquired his way to the church, of a woman who kept a little public-house on the moor. ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Thrilling tales of the great west, told primarily for boys but which will be read by all who love mystery, rapid action, and adventures in the great ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... the marechale de Mirepoix excelled herself in keeping up a continual flow of lively conversation. Never had messieurs de Cosse and de Richelieu appeared to equal advantage. The king laughed heartily at the many humorous tales told, and his gaiety was the more excited, from his believing that I was in utter ignorance of his infidelity. The champagne was passed freely round the table, till all was one burst of hilarious mirth. A thousand different ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Mr. and Mrs. Pennefather made it a principle of action to have the home life cheerful, pleasant, and attractive, so that when the sisters come in toward evening, tired physically, and mentally depressed and exhausted by the long strain of hearing tales of misery, and seeing sights of wretchedness and squalor the day through, they could be cheered not only by the words of sympathy and love of their associates, but by the silent, ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... thrilling tales he told, For all the tunes the fiddle knew, For all the glorious nights of old We boys and he have rollicked through, For laughter all unknown to wealth That roared responsive to a pun, A hale, ripe age and ruddy health ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... are doing Mahbub an injustice in your thoughts," Silva said, gravely. "You have heard certain tales of the Thugs, perhaps—tales distorted and magnified and untrue. In the old days, as worshippers of Kali, they did, sometimes, offer her a human sacrifice; but that was long ago. To say a man is a Thug is not to say he is ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... is that deep down in the hearts of the majority of the human race there exists a profound attachment to the ideals of gallantry and chivalry which were nourished by the stories we loved in childhood, and by the tales of Scottish prowess, in prose and poetry, selected for the school-books in use by the children ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... all peoples, as we can see from the fairy-tales and child-stories in our own and other languages, this attribution of motherhood to all things animate and inanimate is common, as it is in the folk-lore and mythology of the adult members of primitive races ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... protection,—more, in fact, than spikes in the top, which tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save much fruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit. But if the fence were papered with fairy-tales, would he not stop to read them until it was too late for him to climb into the garden? I don't know. Human nature is vicious. The boy might regard the picture of the garden of the Hesperides only as an advertisement ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Certainly. Don't whisper an objection. Munoz owes you that reparation. His conduct has been—we will not describe it—we will hope that he means to make amends for it. Unquestionably he will. My dear cousin, nothing can resist you. You will enchant your grandfather. It will all end, like the tales of the Arabian Nights, in your living in a palace. How delightful to think of this long family quarrel at last coming to a close! But how ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... favor he enjoyed with God were made known to later generations many years after his death, through the marvellous occurrences connected with his tomb. Once a Babylonian prince commanded a Jew, Rabbi Solomon by name, to show him the grave of Ezekiel, concerning which he had heard many remarkable tales. The Jew advised the prince first to enter the tomb of Baruch, which adjoined that of Ezekiel. Having succeeded in this, he might attempt the same with the tomb of Ezekiel, the teacher of Baruch. (72) In the presence of his grandees and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... only? If you know what it is, clearly you are a magician. If you do not know, you must confess that you are bringing an accusation of the nature of which you are entirely ignorant. To think that you should be so ignorant not only of all literature, but even of popular tales, that you cannot even invent charges that will have some show of plausibility! For of what use for the kindling of love is an unfeeling chilly creature like a fish, or indeed anything else drawn from the sea, unless indeed you propose to bring forward in support of your ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... make these matters plain, or so desirous to narrate them faithfully. I knew the Master; on many secret steps of his career I have an authentic memoir in my hand; I sailed with him on his last voyage almost alone; I made one upon that winter's journey of which so many tales have gone abroad; and I was there at the man's death. As for my late Lord Durrisdeer, I served him and loved him near twenty years; and thought more of him the more I knew of him. Altogether, I think it not fit that so much evidence should perish; the truth is a debt ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a black coal the words "Bear Valley Camp." On this suggestion the children called for a bear story, and lying back on the green mat of boughs, Samson told them of the great bear of Camel's Hump which his father had slain, and many other tales of the wilderness. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... on the dangers and privations of such an expedition. The Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehannah, rivers that were then better known in tales than to the inhabitants of New-England, were all crossed; and after a painful and hazardous journey, the adventurers reached the first of that collection of small interior lakes, whose banks are now so beautifully decorated with villages and farms. Here, in the bosom of savage tribes, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... on Cain St. between Fort and Butler Sts. She is an ex-slave and on a previous occasion had given the writer an interesting account of slavery as she knew it. When the writer approached her concerning superstitious signs, ghost tales, conjure etc., Mrs. Heard's face became lit with interest and quickly assured the writer that she believed in conjuring, ghosts, and signs. It was not long before our interview began. Mrs. Heard, although seventy or seventy-five years old, is very intelligent in her expression ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... thing Was at the door; right hot had been the day Which they amid the trees had passed away, And now betwixt the tulip beds they went Unto the hall, and thoughts of days long spent Gathered about them, as some blossom's smell Unto their hearts familiar tales did tell. But when they well were settled in the hall, And now behind the trees the sun 'gan fall, And they as yet no history had heard, Laurence, the Swabian priest, took up the word, And said, "Ye know from what has gone before, That in my youth I followed mystic lore, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... your lord faithfully, be courteous to your fellows. Despise no poor man. Carry no tales. Tell no lies. Don't play at dice or cards. Take to your lord's favourite sport. Beware of idleness. Always be at hand when you're wanted. Diligence will get you ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... wealth; rather he looked grieved and shocked. Before I had time to recover myself my own name was read off in the even, unimpassioned tones of the lawyer. She left me her jewelry, pictures, and other valuables. It seemed like one of the fairy tales of my childhood. There was something pathetic, too, in the wording of her will: "I hope they will adorn a happier woman than I have been," as if that, too, were ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... town was so great and full of marvels, and luxury, and entertainment, as to excite the astonishment of continental visitors. It swarmed with soldiers, adventurers, sailors who were familiar with all seas and every port, men with projects, men with marvelous tales. It teemed with schemes of colonization, plans of amassing wealth by trade, by commerce, by planting, mining, fishing, and by the quick eye and the strong hand. Swaggering in the coffee-houses and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the officials of the Record Office—held to even as early as 1381. The reason for this judgment is that the preserved records are written in a decidedly good Chancery hand, a style of writing which only a professional Chancery clerk is supposed to have been master of. [Footnote: See Tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims, Stokes & Co., Intro., by Furnivall, p. X note.] Consequently either Chaucer must have been a regular Chancery clerk, or he employed a clerk to write up the records. If he did the latter—as seems most likely—it is hard to see what work of importance can ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... show not one bit of goodness or pleasantness to the person that does the most for you and has all the care of you, but the first stranger that comes along you can be all honey to them, and make yourself out too good for common folks, and go and tell great tales how you are used at home, I suppose. I am sick of it!" said Miss Fortune, setting up the andirons and throwing the tongs and shovel into the corner, in a way that made the iron ring again. "One might as good be a stepmother at once, and done with it! ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... the Sun, which has these several years been building, and is now just completed. This man signalized himself, both under Decius and Valerian, for his bitter hatred of the Christians, and his untiring zeal in the work of their destruction. The tales which are told of his ferocious barbarity, would be incredible, did we not know so well what the hard Roman heart is capable of. It is reported of him, that he informed against his own sisters, who had embraced the Christian faith, was ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... believed that Addison had employed Gildon to write against him, and had encouraged Phillips to asperse his character.[230] We cannot, now, quite demonstrate these alleged facts; but we can show that Pope believed them, and that Addison does not appear to have refuted them.[231] Such tales, whether entirely false or partially true, may be considered in this inquiry of little amount. The greater events must ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... these tales were, in the main, imaginary; but they marked the fact that in Usurtasen III. the military glories of the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... ever dies? There is only change. For people in the coming times the economist and the expert in politics may have the beauty and wisdom old men have known in poems and strange tales. A mammoth building is as romantic to a new age as were the subtle carvings of Phidias to Greeks of old. For the master of commerce an oil-driven steel ship has the beauty old folk have seen in cloudy pyramids ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... a good subject," said Dalrymple. "You will of course find excellent portraits of all these people at Versailles; and a lively description of their court, mode of life, and so forth, if my memory serves me correctly, in the tales of Anthony, Count Hamilton. But with all this, I dare say, you are ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... tend to the same conclusions. One day it is a discovery of cinerary vases, the next, it is etymological research; yet again it is ethnological investigation, and the day after, it is the publication of unsuspected tales from the Norse; but all go to heap up proof of our consanguinity with the peoples of history—and of an original ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... these false gospels and their childish tales, and commanded Christian men only to believe what the Bible tells us about our Lord's childhood; for that is enough for us, and that will help us better than any magical stories and childish fairy tales of man's invention, to believe rightly that ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... the noiseless and solemn heaven; the peculiar radiance of the stars; and even the sterile and severe features of the earth, which those stars light up with their chill and ghostly serenity, serve to deepen the effect of the wizard tales which are instilled into the ear of childhood, and to connect the less known and more visionary impulses of life with the influences, or at least with the associations, of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... contrived to be of the party, were greatly surprised to hear and to see how civil Michael was to his sons. He pressed them to eat of the very best, as he did to Chapeau, and talked to them about the war, listened to all their tales, and had altogether lost the domineering authoritative tone of voice, with which he usually addressed his own family; it was only in talking to Annot that he was the same hot-tempered old man as ever. The two young men themselves were ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Rabbit gave her bonnet strings a jerk. She always did this when she was angry, and the sight of that disagreeable bird reminded her of the time she had told tales on Little Jack Rabbit. ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... wine to his paler brother, "Let us tell tales of the past to each other; I can tell of a banquet, and revel, and mirth, Where I was king, for I ruled in might; For the proudest and grandest souls on earth Fell under my touch, as though struck with blight. From the heads of kings I have torn the crown; ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... afterwards landed and spoiled the countrie of Sussex and Hampshire. King Egelred assembled the whole power of all his subiects, and comming to giue them battell, had made an end of their cruell harieng the countrie with the slaughter of them all, if earle Edrike with forged tales (deuised onelie to put him in feare) had not dissuaded him from giuing battell. The Danes by that [Sidenote: The Danes returne into Kent.] meanes returning in safetie, immediatlie after the feast of saint Martine, returned into Kent, and lodged with their nauie ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... fire, peppering away at the Bavarians at the bottom of the street. It was in his blood, he said; he had been hankering for something of the kind ever since the days of his boyhood, down there in Alsace, when he had been told all those tales of 1814. "Ah! you dirty loafers! you dirty loafers!" And he kept firing away with such eagerness that, finally, the barrel of his musket became so hot it ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... fuss themselves, and try to bring everything about them into a fuss as long as they live, and who die without leaving any trace of their career. But D'Aubigne wrote a great deal both in prose and in verse; he wrote the Histoire universelle of his times, personal Memoires, tales, tragedies, and theological and satirical essays; and he wrote with sagacious, penetrating, unpremeditated wit, rare vigor, and original and almost profound talent for discerning and depicting situations ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in the first century, puts aside the fabulous tales previously circulated concerning the island[1]; he gives due credit to the truer accounts of Onesicritus and Megasthenes, and refers to the later works of ERATOSTHENES and ARTEMIDORUS[2] the geographers, as to its position, its dimensions, its cities, its natural ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and would tell tales, so I flung them away," he explained; "and I put the stones in there while you were in Nice, the night before we left. Come, let's get on again;" and he re-screwed the cap over one of the finest hauls of jewels ever made in modern ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... of these craft foregather in the ship-chandler's shops, where the floor is strewn with sawdust, the armchairs are capacious, and the environment harmonizes with the tales that are told. It is an informal club of coastwise skippers and the old energy begins to show itself once more. They move with a brisker gait than when times were so hard and they went begging for charters at any terms. A sinewy ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the pity. There's plenty about us that loves their drink a vast deal too well. I can tell you strange tales about some of them. I've known hardworking fellows, that have kept sober all the year, go up at the year's end, with all they have saved, to Adelaide, and put it into the publican's hand, telling him, 'There, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... least allow any necessity for Chaucer's poetry, especially the Canterbury Tales, being considered obsolete. Let a few plain rules be given for sounding the final e of syllables, and for expressing the termination of such words as ocean, and natioen, &c. as dissyllables,— or let the syllables to be sounded in such cases be marked by a competent metrist. This ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... two young women of about eighteen or twenty, and a young widow. The children sang, danced, indulged in all sorts of fun and frolic, looked at picture-books which were explained to them, listened sometimes to fairy-tales and sometimes to instructive narratives, and played games, some of which were pure pastime and others channels of instruction. Among the little people, who enjoyed themselves right royally, there was a constant coming and going. Now one mother brought her little one, and now another fetched ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... by superstitious fear, recalled to my mind an image and a situation that had been beautifully sketched by Miss Bannerman in "Basil," one of the striking (though, to rapid readers, somewhat unintelligible) metrical tales published early in this century, entitled "Tales of Superstition and Chivalry." Basil is a "rude sea boy," desolate and neglected from infancy, but with feelings profound from nature, and fed by solitude. He dwells ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... original work, Godwin in 1805 turned publisher. It was a disastrous inspiration, due apparently to his wife, who believed herself to possess a talent for business. The firm was established in Skinner Street, Holborn, and specialised in school books and children's tales. They were well-printed, and well-illustrated, and Godwin, writing under the pseudonym of Edward Baldwin, to avoid the odium which had now overtaken his own name, compiled a series of histories with his usual industry and conscientious finish. Through years ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... partial truths, with facts only partially and imperfectly recalled as a framework, he builds his fantastic tales. He read the newspapers regularly, but could not even recall the name of the ill-fortuned ship, or any particulars about the accident. But what of that?—he could readily fill in the hiatuses with his fabrication. He failed entirely in the attempt to reproduce the story given him, and used the talk ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... caught sight of her, standing, in habit and terai, on the open space where her tent had been, supervising the departure of her last load of luggage, and listening patiently to tales of coolie villainy and extortion poured forth by her Kashmiri ayah, on a high note ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... lily?" he asked, for he spoke English imperfectly, and preferred his own poetical tongue. "May your path be always bright, lady!" he said, as he shook my hand warmly at parting; "and ye'll come and see me when ye come again, and bring me tales from the old country." The simple wish of Donnuil Dhu has often recurred to me in the midst of gayer scenes and companions. It brought to mind memories of many a hearty welcome received in the old man's Highland home, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... that I had heard many tragic tales of his wonderful heroism among the unfriendly Indians, and he told me that I had heard many a "da—er lie," too, he reckoned. He never killed an Indian in cold blood in his life. He told me that if the Indians had not been trespassed upon, ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... glad to see ye; but if father was to spy me talking friendly wi' ye, now that I'm hearty, and you havin' no more call to me, he'd be all'ays a watching and thinkin' I was tellin' o' tales, and 'appen he'd want me to worrit ye for money, Miss Maud; an' 'tisn't here he'd spend it, but in the Feltram pottusses, he would, and we want for nothin' that's good for us. But that's how 'twould be, an' he'd all'ays be a jawing and a lickin' of I; so don't mind me, Miss Maud, and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... admiration, and wondered how your neighbor over the way had been so entirely untouched by his homage. I watched their intercourse in society, I saw her gay smile, her cordial greeting; I marked his frank address, his lofty courtesy. Their manner told no tales. The eager world was baulked, and ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... recalled the thrills of emotion with which he had listened to these tales. Ah, Soller! The epoch of holy innocence in which he had first opened his eyes upon life to the accompaniment of miraculous stories and commemorations of heroic struggles! The House of the Moon he had lost forever, and also the credulity and ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... heart, and was, besides, a living index to almost every chapter and verse you might wish to find in it. In all other respects, too, his memory was equally amazing. My native place is a spot rife with old legends, tales, traditions, customs, and superstitions; so that in my early youth, even beyond the walls of my own humble roof, they met me in every direction. It was at home, however, and from my father's lips in particular, that they ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... her gently into a chair, and seating himself on the edge of the table, told her the adventure. And Miss Penkridge, who was an admirable listener to fictitious tales of horror, proved herself no less admirable in listening to one of plain fact, and made no comment until ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... and we must begin with a glance at the history of the rimed pentameter couplet, which he carried to the highest point of effectiveness thus far attained. This form had been introduced into English, probably from French, by Chaucer, who used it in many thousand lines of the 'Canterbury Tales.' It was employed to some extent by the Elizabethans, especially in scattered passages of their dramas, and in some poems of the early seventeenth century. Up to that time it generally had a free ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... "for your own sake I pray you put up that sword, which we think is one whereof tales have been told. To fight is useless, for I have bowmen who can shoot you down and spears that can outreach you. General Olaf, a brave man should know when to surrender, especially if ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... city of his birth, and in London; and had in one way and another picked up a smattering of anatomy, music, electricity, and telegraphy. Until he was sixteen years of age, he had read nothing but novels and poetry and romantic tales of Scottish heroes. Then he left home to become a teacher of elocution in various British schools, and by the time he was of age he had made several slight discoveries as to the nature of vowel-sounds. Shortly ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... glad you spoke the truth; but your companion did not tell tales of you. Now, look here, sir: I suppose you know you've behaved like an ungrateful ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... his hands, which proceeding was instantly stopped by Christian. "It was the Sleeping Beauty, which you don't know one bit about, and I do, and ever so many more tales. She used to tell me them in the middle of the night, when I couldn't sleep, and they were so nice and so funny! She shall tell you some after tea. And we'll make her sing too. Papa, did you ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Why, just listen to the tales your lawful spouse is spreading now! It appears that I am a scoundrel and a villain, that I have ruined you and the children. All of you are unhappy, and I am the only happy ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Finnish legends when he was on a yachting cruise, which he translated into an ungainly English. The tales are utterly worthless, not a spark of romance from beginning to end, only typical of an age which I humbly thank ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the present 'Romola,' as in many respects more directly linking itself with George Eliot's great poetic effort, 'The Spanish Gypsy,' we turn for a little to 'Felix Holt,' the next of her English tales. It would be perhaps natural to select, from among the characters here presented to us, in illustration of life consciously attuning itself to the highest aim irrespective of any end save that aim itself, one or other of the two ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... duty or politeness could not bridge. No stories of the desert were ever told at home, though it was so easy to tell them to Burleigh or Mathewson, those contrasts in a pale fitter of clothes and a herculean rustler of dry-goods boxes. But echoes of the tales came to the father through his assistants. He had the feeling of some stranger spirit in his own likeness moving there in the streets of his city under the talisman of a consanguinity that was nominal. One day he put an inquiry to the general manager concretely, though in a way ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... something like a frown contracted the Governor's pale brows; "ever since the settlement was formed I've been pestered with tales of gold, and a pretty expense it has run me into sending parties out to search for it. Why, only six months ago a rascally prisoner gulled one of my officers into letting him lead an expedition into the bush—the fellow had filed down a brass bolt—" he looked up and caught sight of the ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... boys would come trooping into her shop after "the hounds" how often had not Ernest heard her say to her servant girls, "Now then, you wanches, git some cheers." All the boys were fond of her, and was he, Ernest, to tell tales ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... ordinaries yearly to compound with you; have gotten riches for yourself and servants by subversion of the laws, and by abuse of your authority in causing divers pardons of the Pope to be suspended until you, by promise of a yearly pension, chose to revive them; and also by crafty and untrue tales have sought to create ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tales that you would have thought me the Shah of Persia's chief poet. Seltanetta shed tears like a fountain after rain. She does ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... tales of the descent of showers of blood from the clouds which are so common in old chronicles, depends, says Mr. Berkeley, the mycologist, upon the multitudinous production of infusorial insects or some of the lower algae. To this category ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... so colorless. The legend which made her a poison-brewing Maenad has been proved a lie—but only at the expense of the whole society in which she lived. The simple northern folk, familiar with the tales of Chriemhild, Brynhild, and Gudrun, who helped to forge this legend, could not understand that a woman should be irresponsible for all the crimes and scandals perpetrated in her name. Yet it seems now clear enough that not ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Romans into the Hellenic provinces and the assemblage of Greek literati in Rome, naturally procured a public even among the Italians for the Greek literature of the day, for the epic and elegiac poetry, epigrams, and Milesian tales current at that time in Greece. Moreover, as we have already stated(8) the Alexandrian poetry had its established place in the instruction of the Italian youth; and thus reacted on Latin literature all the more, since the latter ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... hear tales of the sea. Bunker Blue had told them some, and I am afraid they were not altogether ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Christmas Tree Cove • Laura Lee Hope
... to read of the straits to which Poe was often reduced for a little money, and to know that all this time he was writing those immortal tales which would now make a man's fortune as soon as produced. It is true that he had two or three times good salaried positions,—good for that day,—but he never kept them long, and his chronic state was one of poverty, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... story of his daring progress into the wilds of the upper Mississippi Valley, and the rumors he had there heard of the great river which flowed into the South Sea, Spanish officials in the halls of Montezuma were receiving the tales of their adventurers, who had penetrated to strange lands laved by the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... disquieting influence yet." "France and Germany are looked upon as certain to lead off the ball, and Germany, it is generally thought, will be found at the head of the set and take the initiative. Preparations for a big fight continue in every direction." "Russia, if we can believe the tales from that unreliable country, is quietly making preparations on a tremendous scale to have her ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... beaver—should soon be engaged in one of those merciless struggles of the wild which keep animal life down to the survival of the fittest, and whose tragic histories are kept secret under the stars and the moon and the winds that tell no tales. ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... many a story told in rhyme and prose. But age has rusted what the poet writ, Worn out his language, and obscured his wit; In vain he jests in his unpolished strain, And tries to make his readers laugh in vain. Old Spenser next, warmed with poetic rage, In ancient tales amused a barbarous age; An age that yet uncultivate and rude, Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued 20 Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods, To dens of dragons and enchanted woods. But now the ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... doubt of the genuineness of his fears, if not of his intentions. Strange stories were told in the Tenderloin—tales of treachery punished and ingratitude revenged. Jimmy knew several young men who appeared out of the East Side at Melcher's signal. They were inconspicuous fellows, who bore fanciful dime-novel names—Dago ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... me; and though it is pleasant enough to see these youngsters moving about and playing together so seriously, as if the whole world depended on their kisses (as indeed it does somewhat), yet I don't think my tales of the past interest them much. The last harvest, the last baby, the last knot of carving in the market-place, is history enough for them. It was different, I think, when I was a lad, when we were not so assured of peace and continuous plenty as we are now—Well, well! Without putting you to ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris |
