"Aesop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ingeniously had recourse to a scheme of flying through the air, on a colossal variety of those industrious but not over-delicate insects, the Scarabaeus Carnifex—the only insect, notwithstanding, according to Aesop, privileged to ascend to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... with such a faculty we have no reason for crediting animals. No doubt, our incurable habit of reading the facts of our own moral nature into the actions of beasts and birds accounts for the vogue alike of Aesop's Fables and of such works as the Jungle Books; but what strikes us as cruelty in the tiger is not a moral quality at all, any more than it is a motive of heroism that impels the mongoose to fight cobras. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... so much of an education as placed him far ahead of his schoolmates and quickly abreast of his various teachers. He borrowed every book in the neighborhood. The list is a short one: "Robinson Crusoe," "Aesop's Fables," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Weems's "Life of Washington," and a "History of the United States." When everything else had been read, he resolutely began on the "Revised Statutes of Indiana," which Dave Turnham, the constable, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Aesop, who wrote the fables, being then at Sardis upon Croesus's invitation, and very much esteemed, was concerned that Solon was so ill-received, and gave him this advice: "Solon, let your converse with kings be either short or seasonable." "Nay, rather," replied Solon, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... this intimacy and understanding grew the fable, wherein animals thought, acted, and talked in the terms of human life. This kind of story is illustrated by the "Fables" of Aesop, the animal stories of Ernest Thompson-Seton, the "Jungle Books" of Rudyard Kipling and the "Uncle Remus" stories of Joel Chandler Harris. The fable is a tale rather than ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Syncretic genius, and his associates, by the designation they have chosen, by the terms of their agreement, are bound to cry each other up—to defend one another from the virulent attacks of common sense and plain reason. They are sworn to stick together, like the bundle of rods in AEsop's fable. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... winked. 'That's cool,' said he. 'Next thing, you'll ask me to help you out of the muddle. I know I'm emissary of Providence, but not that kind! You get out of it yourself, like Aesop and the other fellow. Must be dreadful muddle for young orphan o' forty; ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... to school in all less than a year, but this good step-mother encouraged him to study at home and he read every book he heard of within a circuit of many miles. He read the Bible, Aesop's Fables, Murray's English Reader, Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, A History of the United States, Weem's Life of Washington and the Revised Statutes of Indiana. He studied by the fire-light and practiced writing with a pen made from a buzzard's ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... back to tell the father that he is come; with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy who is got into Guy of Warwick, and the Seven Champions, and who shakes his head at the improbability of AEsop's Fables, is Steele's or Addison's, though I believe it belongs to the former. The account of the two sisters, one of whom held up her head higher than ordinary, from having on a pair of flowered garters, and that of the married lady who complained to the Tatler of the neglect of her husband, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... tyrant's wedding-day, The people drown'd their care in drink; While from the general joy did AEsop shrink, And show'd its folly in this way. "The sun," said he, "once took it in his head To have a partner: so he wed. From swamps, and ponds, and marshy bogs, Up rose the wailings of the frogs. "What shall we do, should he have progeny?" Said they to Destiny; 'One sun we scarcely can endure, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... from good; So that he best might solid virtue teach, As some 'gainst sins of their own bosoms preach: He from wise choice did the true means prefer, In the fool's coat acting th' philosopher. Thus hoary Aesop's beasts did mildly tame Fierce man, and moralize him into shame; Thus brave romances, while they seem to lay Great trains of lust, platonic love display; Thus would old Sparta, if a seldom chance Show'd a drunk slave, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... moral not exact, Besides, the tale is false, in fact; And so absurd, that could I raise up, From fields Elysian, fabling. Aesop, I would accuse him to his face, For libelling the four-foot race. Creatures of every kind but ours Well comprehend their natural powers, While we, whom reason ought to sway, Mistake our talents every day. The Ass was never known so stupid To act the part of Tray or Cupid; Nor leaps ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... a fictitious story introducing animals or even inanimate things as rational speakers and actors, for the purpose of teaching or enforcing a moral. The fables of AEsop are almost universally known, and the fables of La Fontaine exhibit a ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Sadi will do well enough when Aesop tells it of a serpent;—he, indeed, can change his skin and be a serpent still; but when the old Sufi, or any one else, tells it of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... have done with the wolf, I must recite that fable of AEsop's, about one who dressed himself up in the garb of a sheep, to impose upon the shepherd, but who shared a very different fate from the one ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... calls for death, my friend, for all his scorns? With Aesop's slave will leave his bush of thorns. But since these trait'rous lords will have my head, Their lordships here upon this homely bed Shall find me sleeping, breathing forth my breath, Till they their shame, and I my fame, attain by death. Live, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... you think he had? Just three: the Bible, Aesop's Fables, and The Pilgrim's Progress. Think of that, you boys and girls who have more books than you can read, and for whom the printing presses are always hard at work. The boy knew these three books almost by heart. He could repeat whole ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... of "Bundle o' sticks, Tom Breeks. Don't let slip 'bout bundle o' sticks," pulled spokesman up short. He turned hurriedly to say, "All right," and inflated his chest to do justice to the illustration of the faggots of Aesop: but Mr. Tom Breeks had either taken in too much air, or the ale that had hitherto successfully prompted him was antipathetic to the nice delicacy of an apologue; for now his arm began to work and his forehead had to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... then the distribution began with the two prime Sunday scholars, and went on in due order of merit, through all degrees, down to the mites who had the painted dolls, and figured handkerchiefs with Aesop's fables in pink or in purple, and then followed the distribution of buns, stout plum buns, no small treat to these ever hungry children, some of whom were nibbling them before they were out of school, while others, more ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Peterkin, "what pleases other people will always please me. Only I wish we have not got King Stork, instead of King Log, like the fabliau [fable] that the Clerk of Saint Lambert's used to read us out of Meister Aesop's book." ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... "Arabian Nights," or "Pilgrim's Progress," or "Mother Goose," had to sit with his hands behind his back while she carefully turned the leaves. Besides these three, there was "Alice in Wonderland," and "AEsop's Fables," there was "Robinson Crusoe," and "Little Women," and two volumes of fairy tales in green and gold with a gorgeous peacock on the cover. Eugene Field's poems had come in the last box, with Riley's "Songs of Childhood" and ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Modern Learning." But Sir William, in his ardour, had thrown out an unguarded opinion, which excited the hostile contempt of Bentley. "The oldest books," he says, "we have, are still in their kind the best; the two most ancient that I know of, in prose, are 'AEsop's Fables' and 'Phalaris's Epistles.'"—The "Epistles," he insists, exhibit every excellence of "a statesman, a soldier, a wit, and a scholar." That ancient author, who Bentley afterwards asserted was only "some dreaming pedant, with ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... extraordinary journey, even as far as Penrith. A large manufactory had been begun there, and a sudden demand for his long staple of white wool had sprung up. Moreover, he had had a prosperous journey, and brought back with him two books for the boy, AEsop's Fables and Robinson Crusoe. ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Royal Library at Windsor, which includes the unique perfect AEsop, and one of the two books on vellum (the Doctrinal of Sapience) printed by Caxton; the Archiepiscopal one at Lambeth, rich in rare early printed books and MSS., and the Chetham and Rylands foundations at Manchester, the latter comprehending the Althorp treasures en bloc. Humphrey ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... have heard strange tales of another round fish, called from its shape the Globe-fish, and from its skin the "Sea-hedgehog"; it is covered with sharp thorns, and has the power, by swallowing air, of so greatly increasing its size (without sharing the fate of the poor toad in AEsop's Fable) that it not only can rise to the surface of the water, but float as long as it pleases. Then there are the blue Flying-herrings, with long fins, which you would see if you took a voyage to Australia. These poor little creatures have enemies both in birds ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... from the best accepted sources. With 62 illustrations. The fables of AEsop are among the very earliest compositions of this kind, and probably have never been surpassed for ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... Amphibians and Reptiles, which either have no spines to erect, or no muscles by which they can be erected, enlarge themselves when alarmed or angry by inhaling air. This is well known to be the case with toads and frogs. The latter animal is made, in AEsop's fable of the 'Ox and the Frog,' to blow itself up from vanity and envy until it burst. This action must have been observed during the most ancient times, as, according to Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood,[21] the word toad expresses in ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... lived a poor slave whose name was Aesop. [Footnote: Aesop (pro. e'sop).] He was a small man with a large head and long arms. His face was white, but very homely. His large ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... out for me on cards. Of grammar, until some years later, I learnt no more than the inflections of the nouns and verbs, but, after a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation; and I faintly remember going through Aesop's Fables, the first Greek book which I read. The Anabasis, which I remember better, was the second. I learnt no Latin until my eighth year. At that time I had read, under my father's tuition, a number of Greek prose authors, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... by Aesop, Rudyard Kipling, and Thompson Seton—had prepared the First Reader Class to accept garrulous and benevolent lions, cows, panthers, and elephants, and the exploring party's absolute credulity encouraged Isaac to higher and yet higher flights, until ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... Englished Galland and Richardson. The tale is very old. It appears as the Brahman and the Pot of Rice in the Panchatantra; and Professor Benfey believes (as usual with him) that this, with many others, derives from a Buddhist source. But I would distinctly derive it from AEsop's market-woman who kicked over her eggs, whence the Lat. prov. Ante victoriam canere triumphum to sell the skin before you have caught the bear. In the "Kalilah and Dimnah" and its numerous offspring it is the "Ascetic with his Jar of oil ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of AEsop,"—thus says Montaigne in his charming essay "Of Books"(7)—"have several senses and meanings, of which the Mythologists choose some one that tallies with the fable. But for the most part 't is only what presents itself at the first view, and is superficial; there being ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... licentiate, "are the times of AEsop come back to us, when the cock conversed with the fox, and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... light Salmacis, her body throws Upon his bosom, where with yielding eyes She offers up herself a sacrifice To slake his anger, if he were displeas'd: O, what god would not therewith be appeas'd? Like AEsop's cock, this jewel he enjoy'd, And as a brother with his sister toy'd, Supposing nothing else was to be done, Now he her favour and goodwill had won. But know you not that creatures wanting sense, By nature have a mutual appetence, And, wanting organs to advance ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... may be seen round the border of the baptismal vase of St. Louis, in Millin's Antiquites Nationales. A part of the border in the Tapestry is a representation of subjects from Aesop's Fables. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... be admitted that might be liable to misconstruction by the Council of Nice. The Comic Muse has been too apt to mistake liberty for license, and has been proportionably licentious; the Comic Ballads will be as particular as Seneca or Aesop in their regard for good morals. Nothing, in short, will be inserted but what is cut out for the female ear. To conclude—the said Melodies will be issued by Messrs. Clementi and Co., of Cheapside. Be sure to ask for "Comic Melodies," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... like delicacies by the bale for the whole household, could we reasonably expect the girl to announce the fact, in the parlor above, in the same tone in which she ordinarily states that the butcher has called for his orders? Aesop, in his very first fable, (as arranged by good Archdeacon Croxall,) has inculcated but a mean opinion of the cock who forbore to crow lustily when he turned up a jewel of surpassing richness, in the course of his ordinary scratching, and under his own very beak; why, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... hard for one boy to make a fight. Even your bully does not like to "pitch on" an inoffensive school-mate. You remember AEsop's fable of the wolf and the lamb, and what pains the wolf took to pick a quarrel with the lamb. It was a little hard for Pewee to fight with a boy who walked quietly to and from the school, without ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... before that period, it is as certain as any thing can be proved from historical language, that this part of Genesis is taken from Chronicles, and that Genesis is not so old as Chronicles, and probably not so old as the book of Homer, or as AEsop's Fables; admitting Homer to have been, as the tables of chronology state, contemporary with David or Solomon, and AEsop to have lived about the end of the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... fabulist, said to be humpbacked; hence, "an AEsop" means a humpbacked man. The young son of Henry VI. calls his uncle Richard of Gloster "AEsop."—3 Henry VI. act v. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... theories were seething. "How to compose operas without music" might be the title of all his prose theoretical works. Not having a tail, this fox, therefore, solemnly argued that tails were useless appanages. You remember your AEsop! Instead of melodic inspiration, themes were to be used. Instead of broad, flowing, but intelligible themes, a mongrel breed of recitative and parlando ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Preface" is, I find, promised with my story. If there are any among my readers who loved Aesop's Fables chiefly on account of the Moral appended, they will perhaps be pleased to turn backward and learn what I have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... indeed, might the Muses wonder at the rise of the novel and its vast developments, for the classic literature presents no similar works. One of Plato's dialogues or Aesop's fables is as near an approach to a prose romance as antiquity in its golden eras can offer. The few productions of the kind which appeared during the decline of literature in the early Christian centuries, as the "Golden ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... purple-clad Queen Bess, He would have wrought for them the best he knew And led more loftily his actor-crew. How coolly he misquoted. 'Twas his art— Slave-scholar, who misquoted—from the heart. So when we slapped his back with friendly roar Aesop awaited him without the door,— Aesop the Greek, who made dull masters laugh With little tales of FOX and DOG and CALF. And be it said, mid these his pranks so odd With something nigh to chivalry he trod And oft the drear and driven would defend— The little shopgirls' ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... at the contrast between these twin sisters, yet their resemblance to their former selves when, six years before, she had visited England. It was the same Janie who, at seven years old, devoured books of geography and history, but laid down Aesop's Fables in disgust, unable to detect truth embedded in fiction. It was the same Millie who used coaxingly to beg for stories "all about naughty children—very naughty children—and please, auntie, ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Revised (1674) by Elkanah Settle; and The Empress of Morocco. A Farce (1674) by Thomas Duffet, with an Introduction by Maximillian E. Novak. Already published in this series are reprints of John Ogilby's The Fables of Aesop Paraphras'd in Verse (1668), with an Introduction by Earl Miner and John Gay's Fables (1727, 1738), with an Introduction by Vinton A. Dearing. Publication is assisted by funds from the Chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles. Price to members of the Society, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... Kilmarnock in June 1786. It contained some of his most justly celebrated poems, the results of his scanty leisure at Lochlea and Mossgiel; among others "The Twa Dogs,"—a graphic idealization of Aesop,—"The Author's Prayer," the "Address to the Deil," "The Vision" and "The Dream," "Halloween," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the lines "To a Mouse" and "To a Daisy," "Scotch Drink," "Man was made to Mourn," the "Epistle to Davie," and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... British Museum, among them a beautiful one dealing with King Arthur and the Round Table. These works are of rare charm, no less for their pleasing style and depth of feeling than for their simplicity of expression and clearness of narrative. Her second effort was a poetical rendering of many of AEsop's fables, done either as a favour or a tribute of love for her protector. This was followed by a translation of the Purgatory of St. Patrick in Ireland, taken from ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... conception of the fables was based upon the combination of two ideas—that of the stiff dry moral apologue of AEsop, and that of the short story. By far the most important of these two elements was the latter. With the old fabulists the moral was the excuse for the fable; with La Fontaine it was the other way ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... rail, bear false witness, swear, forswear, fight and wrangle, spend their goods, lives, fortunes, friends, undo one another, to enrich an harpy advocate, that preys upon them both, and cries Eia Socrates, Eia Xantippe; or some corrupt judge, that like the [350]kite in Aesop, while the mouse and frog fought, carried both away. Generally they prey one upon another as so many ravenous birds, brute beasts, devouring fishes, no medium, [351]omnes hic aut captantur aut captant; aut cadavera quae lacerantur, aut corvi qui lacerant, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Shakespeare or a Milton. Even supposing that we could breed men having the tenacity of bulldogs, or, like the Spartans, 'lacking the wit to run away in battle,' would the world be any the better? Many of the noblest specimens of the human race have been among the weakest physically. Tyrtaeus or Aesop, or our own Newton, would have been exposed at Sparta; and some of the fairest and strongest men and women have been among the wickedest and worst. Not by the Platonic device of uniting the strong and fair with the strong and fair, regardless of sentiment and morality, nor yet by his other device ...
— The Republic • Plato
... AEsop, in so far as he was historical, would seem to have been a Phrygian slave, or at least one not to be specially and symbolically adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty. He lived, if he did live, about the sixth century before Christ, in the time of that ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Maggie, reviving a little in the desire to vindicate the variety of her reading. "I know the reading in this book isn't pretty; but I like the pictures, and I make stories to the pictures out of my own head, you know. But I've got 'AEsop's Fables,' and a book about Kangaroos and things, and ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... laughed at as too trifling to record; but it is a small characteristick trait in the Flemish picture which I give of my friend, and in which, therefore I mark the most minute particulars. And let it be remembered, that Aesop at play is one of the instructive ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... augmenting it a thousand fold, and anchoring it fast in the constitution of the country. True, they are assured by radical Republicans that as soon as the negro man is secured, the colored woman and the white woman also shall be equally distinguished. Had this age an AEsop, he would tell again his story of the goat and the fox at the bottom of the well. How to get out, of course, was the question. After long and anxious thought, a happy expedient struck the fox. "Do you, friend goat, rear yourself ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... neighbours can't entertain them, I fancy, or you. What a dreary thing a dinner party made up of such people must be—like "Aesop's Fables," where the cows and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... about two square miles in extent, it was formerly a separate state, and is said to have received the name of AEgina from the daughter of AEsop. It is supposed that the first money of Greece was coined in ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... fabulist. A great mistake it was, on the part of Doctor S., that the second book in the Latin language which I was summoned to study should have been Phaedrus—a writer ambitious of investing the simplicity, or rather homeliness, of Aesop with aulic graces and satiric brilliancy. But so it was; and Phaedrus naturally towered into enthusiasm when he had occasion to mention that the most intellectual of all races amongst men, viz., the Athenians, had raised a mighty statue to one who belonged to the same class in a social sense ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... endeavours to give as little resistance to the water as possible: his supporters are numerous, but slender; and there is an interval between each. He tells me this idea first struck him from reading Aesop's fable of the Reed and the Oak: the reed, by yielding, was unhurt by a tempest, which tore up the sturdy oak by ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... The Spanish Tragedy, which, though far inferior to Shakespeare's Hamlet, resembled it in many ways. This likeness has caused scholars to suspect that Kyd wrote the early Hamlet; and their suspicions are strengthened by an ambiguous and apparently punning allusion to AEsop's Kidde in the passage by Nash mentioned above. A crude and brutal German play on the subject has been discovered, which is believed by many to be a translation of Kyd's original tragedy. If this is true, it shows how enormously Shakespeare ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... combining, with aphorisms and maxims, philological explanations of the divine text, stories illustrative of its doctrines, into which not only saints and heroes, but also animals and inanimate objects, are introduced, and not a few of the fables that pass as AEsop's are to be found in the Jatakas of Ceylon. There are translations into Singhalese of the greater part of its contents, and so attractive are its narratives that the natives will listen the livelong night to recitations ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... face, spretae injuria formae [Vergil]. [person who is ugly] eyesore, object, witch, hag, figure, sight, fright; monster; dog [Coll.], woofer [Coll.], pig [Coll.]; octopus, specter, scarecrow, harridan^, satyr^, toad, monkey, baboon, Caliban, Aesop^, monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui lumen ademptum [Lat.] [Vergil]. V. be ugly &c adj.; look ill, grin horribly a ghastly smile, make faces. render ugly &c adj.; deface; disfigure, defigure^; distort &c 23; blemish ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... plays mean secret plays; they are very nice ones. All our plays are very strange ones. Their nature I need not write on paper, for I think I shall always remember them. The 'Young Men's' play took its rise from some wooden soldiers Branwell had; 'Our Fellows' from AEsop's Fables; and the 'Islanders' from several events which happened. I will sketch out the origin of our plays more explicitly if I can. First, 'Young Men.' Papa bought Branwell some wooden soldiers at Leeds; when papa came home it was night, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... were poets or fabulists, and could invest inanimate objects with all the qualities and feelings of animate ones; if, with all the magic of old AEsop, we could make pots and kettles talk, and endue barn-door fowls with the spirit of philosophy, we should be tempted to say that the great gates of Beaufort House, together with the stone Cupids ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... attained to the age of sixteen he had read aloud to his mother—not once, but several times—the "Vicar of Wakefield", "Robinson Crusoe," the "Pilgrim's Progress," and "Tales of a Grandfather", "Aesop's Fables," and a variety of tales and stories and histories of lesser note—all of which he stored up in a good memory, and gave forth in piecemeal to his unlettered companions as opportunity offered. Better ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Virgin Birth, Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, Zacharias and the Angel Gabriel, Jesus and the Sinner, are on par with the eroticism of the Old Testament. The interpolations, the myth, and fable also compare with the first revelation, and, in his opinion, he prefers Andersen's Fairy Tales, or AEsop's Fables. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... we went, One first, the other following his steps, As minor friars journeying on their road. The present fray had turn'd my thoughts to muse Upon old Aesop's fable, where he told What fate unto the mouse and frog befell. For language hath not sounds more like in sense, Than are these chances, if the origin And end of each be heedfully compar'd. And as one thought bursts from another ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born. One after another he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of Aesop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with his own head ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bodies and put herself into one, and her son into the other and gave orders to such of her servants as knew of her intentions to carry them away in the night time. Now their road was to be thence to the sea-side and there was a ship ready to carry them into Egypt. Now Aesop, one of her servants, happened to fall upon Sabion, one of her friends, and spake of this matter to him, as thinking he had known of it before. When Sabion knew this, [who had formerly been an enemy of Herod, and been esteemed one of those that laid snares for and gave the poison ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... of special publications beginning with a reprint of JOHN OGILBY, The Fables of Aesop Paraphras'd in Verse (1668), with an Introduction by Earl Miner. Ogilby's book is commonly thought one of the finest examples of seventeenth-century bookmaking and is illustrated with eighty-one plates. ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... stolen by some Phoenician mariners, carried to Samos, and bought by Iadmon, one of the geomori, or landed aristocracy of the island. The little girl grew day by day more beautiful, graceful and clever, and was soon an object of love and admiration to all who knew her. AEsop, the fable-writer, who was at that time also in bondage to Iadmon, took an especial pleasure in the growing amiability and talent of the child, taught her and cared for her in the same way as the tutors whom we keep to educate ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Aesop knew human nature very well when he wrote his fable of the old man and his ass, who tried to please everybody and ended up by pleasing nobody. Bearing this in mind, Madame Midas determined to please herself, and take ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... head upon the dressing-table and laughed heartily. She had suddenly bethought herself of Aesop's fable of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... were copies, and many originals that were very displeasing. He loved a fine free landscape by Lee, that gave him the broad plains, the green lanes, and running streams of his own land; a group of animals by Landseer, as full of speech and sentiment as if they were designed by Aesop; above all, he delighted in the household humour and homely pathos of Wilkie. And if a higher tone of imagination pleased him, he could gratify it without difficulty among his favourite masters. He possessed some specimens of Etty worthy of Venice when it was alive; he could ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... the frogs that have helped to point the gibes of Aristophanes, the morals of AEsop, and which have always been, more or less, regarded as the low ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... curious thing, to which I was an eyewitness in the course of nature. I have little reluctance to consent, not only because the affair was not a little striking in itself—as the reader will soon see—but because, like AEsop's Fables, it bears a good moral at ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... within each Book, and grouped after their Fables. The name is spelled "Aesop" in Riley, "Esop" in Smart and in the Contents. Inconsistencies in fable numbering are described at the beginning ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... opinion he dwelt in France a century later. His collection of 107 "Fox Fables" won wide popularity, for their wit and point combined with their apt use of Biblical phrases to please the medieval taste. The fables in this collection are all old, many of them being AEsop's, but it is very possible that the first knowledge of AEsop gained in England was derived from a Latin translation ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... AESOP, novelist, nature faker. Little is known of his childhood except that he was fond of dogs and played with the cat. Later he made animals his life's study. A. discovered the zoological principal that a turtle can run faster than a rabbit, and ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... application of the epithet "theological" to Jewish literature. Solomon ben Sakbel composes a satiric romance in the Makamat[12] form, describing the varied adventures of Asher ben Yehuda, another Don Quixote; Berachya Hanakdan puts into Hebrew the fables of AEsop and Lokman, furnishing La Fontaine with some of his material; Abraham ibn Sahl receives from the Arabs, certainly not noted for liberality, ten goldpieces for each of his love-songs; Santob de Carrion is a beloved Spanish bard, bold enough to tell unpleasant truths unto a king; Joseph ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... mind of Julian, after it had been purified from the errors and follies of his education. His sentiments were changed; but as it would have been dangerous to have avowed his sentiments, his conduct still continued the same. Very different from the ass in Aesop, who disguised himself with a lion's hide, our lion was obliged to conceal himself under the skin of an ass; and, while he embraced the dictates of reason, to obey the laws of prudence and necessity." [29] The dissimulation of Julian lasted about ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... predominates and tends to comprise the whole. Men spun their fictions from the materials with which their minds were stored, much as we do to-day, and the result was a cycle of beast-fables—an Odyssey of the brute creation. Of these the tales of Aesop are the best examples. The beast-fable has never quite gone out of fashion, and never will so long as men retain their world-wonder, and childishness of mind. A large part of Gulliver's adventures belong to this class of literature. It was only the other day that Mr. Kipling gave us his Just-so ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... he saw was impossible if anything had seemed unbelievable in this elfin girl. She laid open upon the table a finely illuminated copy, in Greek, of Aesop's Fables, written on vellum ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... is related of the celebrated Galen:—A Roman magistrate, little, ugly, and hunch-backed, had by his wife a child exactly resembling the statue of AEsop. Frightened at the sight of this little monster, and fearful of becoming the father of a posterity so deformed, he went to consult Galen, the most distinguished physician of his time, who counseled him to place three statues of love ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... fable about as unjust to the ocean, as some of AEsop's are to the animals. The ocean is a magnanimous element, and would scorn to assassinate a poor fellow, let alone taunting him in the act. But I don't understand what you say about enmity couched in friendship, and ruin ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... is the French air! and what an etourdi bete is one of our untravelled islanders! When he would make his court to me, let me die but he is just AEsop's ass, that would imitate the courtly French in his addresses; but, instead of those, comes pawing upon me, and doing all things so ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... about you; statues and vases sowed everywhere without distinction; sugar loaves and minced pies of yew; scrawl work of box, and little squirting jets- d'eau, besides a great sameness in the walks, can not help striking one at first sight, not to mention the silliest of labyrinths, and all Aesop's fables in water; since these were ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... East unfavourable to the dignity of women." They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the sexes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while AEsop's fable of the Lion and the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... imitation to the general scope, reserving to himself the right to vary the particular form in each fable as he thinks fit. [18] The careful way in which he defines at what point his obligations to Aesop cease and his own invention begins, shows him to have had something of the trifler and a great deal of the egotist. His love of condensation is natural, for a fabulist should be short, trenchant, and almost proverbial in his ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... erected a large statue to AEsop, and placed him, though a slave, on a lasting pedestal; to show, that the way to honour lies open indifferently ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... peculiar to the Southwest will take their user to the Aztecs, to Spain, and to the border of ballads and Sir Walter Scott's romances. I found that I could not comprehend the coyote as animal hero of Pueblo and Plains Indians apart from the Reynard of Aesop and Chaucer. ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... suppose he would. That's the very meaning of the story. But how moral you've become all of a sudden at twelve o'clock at night! Instead of being Mrs Radcliffe, I shall think you're Mr Aesop." ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... dilettanteism, a universal Smart Alec who knew less about more things than any other animal in England. He was one of those persistently pestiferous insects tersely called by Carlyle "critic flies"—a descendant of that placed by aesop in St. Paul's cupola. They presume to judge all things, great and small, by their "half-inch vision"—take the measure of cathedrals and interpret to the world the meaning of brainy men! Unfortunately, the "critic fly" ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... History of Aesop is involved, like that of Homer, the most famous of Greek poets, in much obscurity. Sardis, the capital of Lydia; Samos, a Greek island; Mesembria, an ancient colony in Thrace; and Cotiaeum, the chief city of a province of Phrygia, contend for the distinction of being ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... fast slipping beyond his control, to be sure, as he engaged in these endless schemes; and ill-disposed people of the day said that the king was like Aesop's dog, lapping the river dry in order to get at the skins floating on the surface. The Duke of Parma was driven to his wits' ends for expedients, and beside himself with vexation, when commanded to withdraw his ill-paid ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Plot. From Aesop's Fables to Kipling's Jungle Books literature is full of animal stories. But there is no dog story better told than this and none that appeals more to our deeper sympathies. It is more of a character sketch than a short story, the incidents and characters being bound together ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... brothers Thomas and John Bewick's first efforts in wood-engravings, early and crude as they undoubtedly were. They are to be found in Hutton "On Mensuration," and also in various children's and juvenile works, such as AEsop's and Gay's Fables. We give some of the earliest known of their work in this very ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... amusingly, with almost as much freedom of speech as if he had had a private press of his own, and had issued dainty little tractates on Dutch paper to be fought for by bibliophiles. His prejudices, his desultoriness, his occasional lack of correctness of fact (he speaks of "Fontaine's Translation" of AEsop, and makes use of the extraordinary phrase, "The whole Council of Trent with Father Paul at their head," than which a more curious blunder is hardly conceivable), his wayward inconsistencies, his freaks of bad taste, would in all probability ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... act; and when seeing a Plautus in one's hand, he ask'd what booke it was, and being told it was comedy, and too difficult for him, he wept for sorrow. Strange was his apt and ingenious application of fables and morals, for he had read AEsop; he had a wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid that were read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them. As to his piety, astonishing were his applications of Scripture upon occasion, and thus early, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... this book as a little boy and used to talk lovingly of Kit and his friends, Jum-Jum and the Cockyolly Bird. Alas! Kit (Mrs. Dearmer's son Christopher) and his gifted mother have been claimed as victims by the World War. Paul revelled in "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Swiss Family Robinson," "Don Quixote," "Treasure Island," "The Arabian Nights," "Gulliver's Travels," and classical legends. As he grew older he passed on to "The ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... same manner at Rome, during the banishment of Cicero,(214) when some verses of Accius,(215) which reproached the Greeks with their ingratitude in suffering the banishment of Telamon, were repeated by AEsop, the best actor of his time, they drew tears from the eyes of the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... a pair of stars would not kindle to greater warmth than did those elderly orbs into which Harry poured his gaze. Nevertheless, he plunged into their blue depths, and fancied he saw heaven in their calm brightness. So that silly dog (of whom Aesop or the Spelling-book used to tell us in youth) beheld a beef-bone in the pond, and snapped at it, and lost the beef-bone he was carrying. O absurd cur! He saw the beefbone in his own mouth reflected in the treacherous ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... For the most complete history of the Esopic Fable, see vol. i of Mr. Joseph Jacobs' edition of The Fables of Aesop, as first printed by Caxton in 1484, with those of Avian, Alfonso, and Poggio, recently published by Mr. David Nutt; where a vast amount of erudite information will be found on the subject in all its ramifications. Mr. Jacobs, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... However, there is the apparently authenticated anecdote of young Goldsmith's turning the tables on the fiddler at his uncle's dancing-party. The fiddler, struck by the odd look of the boy who was capering about the room, called out "AEsop!" whereupon Goldsmith is said to have ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... moment when this order was going to be put in execution, Mad. de Fleury was sitting in the midst of the children, listening to Babet, who was reading AEsop's fable of The old man and his sons. Whilst her sister was reading, Victoire collected a number of twigs from the garden: she had just tied them together; and was going, by Sister Frances' desire, to let her companions try if they could break the bundle, when the attention ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... ancient and modern learning. The controversy took its rise from an essay of Sir William Temple's upon that subject; which was answered by W. Wotton, B.D., with an appendix by Dr. Bentley, endeavouring to destroy the credit of AEsop and Phalaris for authors, whom Sir William Temple had, in the essay before mentioned, highly commended. In that appendix the doctor falls hard upon a new edition of Phalaris, put out by the Honourable Charles Boyle, now Earl of Orrery, to which Mr. Boyle replied at ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... taught, in despite of Aesop, that animals never spoke. The uttermost that can be advanced with any show of confidence is, that if they spoke at all, they spoke in unknown tongues. Supposing the fact, is this a reason why they should not be respected? Quite the contrary. If the tongues were unknown, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... he was a little noisy in his mirth, that the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all the learning on the other side of eight years old. I perceived him to be a very great historian in Aesop's Fables; but he frankly declared to me his mind, that he did not delight in that learning, because he did not believe they were true. For which reason I found he had very much turned his studies, for about a twelve-month past, into the lives ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... and he met at dinner both guests unto Archias, the poet, when the proud comedian dared to make comparison with Tully. Why Roscius art thou proud with AEsop's crow, being prankt with the glory of others' feathers? Of thyself thou canst say nothing and if the cobbler hath taught thee to say Ave Caesar disdain not thy tutor because thou pratest in a King's chamber. What sentence thou utterest on the stage flows ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... was that he first gave proofs of his inclination to poetry, by translating some of AEsop's Fables into English verse, which he communicated to some learned men, who understood Latin better than he, by whose assistance and advice he published them. He was one of the troop of guards belonging to the earl, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... which we have shewn in the illustration) consist of incidents connected with the battle, and add greatly to its interest. Some of the earlier scenes are very amusing, having evidently been suggested by the fables of AEsop and Phaedrus; there are griffins, dragons, serpents, dogs, elephants, lions, birds, and monsters that suggest a knowledge of pre-Adamite life (some biting their own tails, or putting their heads into their neighbours' mouths), interspersed with representations of ploughing, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... Americans; and third, to give freedom and grace in the bodily attitudes and movements which are involved in reading and speaking. The stories given are for the most part adaptations of favorite tales from folklore,—Andersen, Grimm, AEsop, and the Arabian Nights having ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... the squall, and the large plantain leaves flew about, torn into ribbons. We now turned to the right, and crossed a prairie. L'Encuerado required breath, for his load weighed at least eighty pounds, although, like AEsop's burden, it would surely get lighter at every meal. An enormous rock, which had tumbled down from one of the surrounding mountains centuries past, offered us a retreat sheltered from the wind. At this moment a ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... and history,—mighty warriors, celebrated heroes, eloquent orators, illustrious painters, renowned architects, great historians, immortal poets, and wonderful deities; Spartan mothers, Thermopylae defenders, and Persian invaders; beautiful Helen, muscular Hercules, crusty Diogenes, deformed AEsop, silver-tongued Demosthenes, fleet-footed Mercury, drunken Silenus, stately Juno, and lovely Venus,—a confused procession of mortals and immortals ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... and far more frequently than you imagine he will receive a wrong impression by confusing words like zeal and seal of similar sound and totally different meaning. A teacher accidentally found out that her class supposed that the "kid" which railed at the wolf in Aesop's fable was a little boy, and I have had a child tell me that he saw at Rouen the place, where Noah's ark was burned, of course he meant Jeanne d'Arc. "The mastery of words," says Miss Arnold, "is an essential ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... suppose, for a source sufficiently diffusive, said, that Mind must be in the air, which, when all men breathed, they were filled with one intelligence. And when men have larger measures of reason, as AEsop, Cervantes, Franklin, Scott, they gain in universality, or are no longer confined to a few associates, but are good company for all persons,—philosophers, women, men of fashion, tradesmen, and servants. Indeed, an older philosopher ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... as it has reached us, consists of nearly a hundred pieces. Of these three-fourths are fables proper; being not so much translations from the Greek of Aesop as versions of the traditional stories, written and unwritten, which were the common inheritance of the Aryan peoples. Mixed up with these are a number of stories which are not strictly fables; five of them are about Aesop himself, and there are also stories told of ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... her children Aesop's fables to read, in the hope of educating and improving their minds; but they very soon brought the book back, and the eldest, wise beyond his years, delivered himself as follows: This is no book for us; it's much too childish and stupid. You can't make ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... puffed, pasty face, swelling around a pair of pale fish-like eyes, that distinguished him,—the Conte Leandro Lombardoni; indeed, had gone to the Castelmare palace as "Apollo," in a costume which young Ludovico Castelmare, the Marchese Lamberto's nephew, would insist on mistaking for that of Aesop; and had now, according to a programme perfectly well known previously throughout the city, come to the Circolo as "Dante." The Tuscan "lucco," or long flowing gown, had at least the advantage of concealing from the public eye much that the Apollo ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... with the heat oppressed, One day composed himself to rest: But while he dozed as he intended, A mouse, his royal back ascended; Nor thought of harm, as Aesop tells, Mistaking him for someone else; And travelled over him, and round him, And might have left him as she found him Had she not—tremble when you hear— Tried to explore the monarch's ear! Who straightway woke, with wrath immense, And shook his head to cast her thence. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... AEsop," he said, slyly, "I would have added another touch to a certain tale. Observe, please!—even after the Lamb has been devoured he is still the object of calumny on the part of the Wolf! Well, well! Mademoiselle, come ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and fables tell us, Or old folk lore whispers low, Of the origin of all things, Of the spring from whence they came, Kalevala, old and hoary, AEneid, Iliad, AEsop, too, All are filled with strange quaint legends, All ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... certainly this year of 1666 will be a year of great action; but what the consequences of it will be, God knows! Thence to the 'Change, and from my stationer's thereabouts carried home by coach two books of Ogilby's, his AEsop and Coronation, which fell to my lot at his lottery. Cost me L4 besides the binding. So home. I find my wife gone out to Hales, her paynter's, and I after a little dinner do follow her, and there do find him at worke, and with great content I do see it will be a very brave ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... period of his art found Velasquez a realist heavy in colour and brush-work, and without much hint of the transcendental realism to be noted in his later style. The dwarfs, buffoons, the AEsop and the Menippus are the result of an effortless art. In the last manner the secret of the earth mingles with the mystery of the stars, as Dostoievsky would put it. The Topers, The Forge of Vulcan, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... with an Attic accent, and corrected his elders who dropped the aspirate. With unconscious irony John Stuart Mill wrote in his "Autobiography," "I learned no Latin until my eighth year, at which time, however, I was familiar with 'AEsop's Fables,' most of the 'Anabasis,' the 'Memorabilia' of Xenophon, and the 'Lives of the Philosophers' by Diogenes Laertius, part of Lucian, and the 'Ad Demonicum' and 'Ad Nicoclem' of Isocrates." Besides these ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard |
