"La Fontaine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subject? Is it not the idea which is developed through it, the emotion with which it vibrates, which expands, elevates and ennobles it? What tender melancholy, what subtlety, what sagacity in the master-pieces of La Fontaine, although the subjects are so familiar, the titles so modest? Equally unassuming are the titles and subjects of the Studies and Preludes; yet the compositions of Chopin, so modestly named, are not the less types of perfection in a mode created by himself, and stamped, like all ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... All these stories were fables. Bold as he was arrogant, he affected at this time to look down with a forgiving contempt on the animosity of the nobles. He passed much of his time alone, writing his eternal dispatches to the King. He had a country-house, called La Fontaine, surrounded by beautiful gardens, a little way outside the gates of Brussels, where he generally resided, and whence, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his friends, he often returned to town, after sunset, alone, or with but a few attendants. He avowed that he feared no ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... art of dancing attain such eminent honours in the eyes of mankind, as during the siecle dore of the latter monarch. At an epoch boasting of Moliere and Racine, Bossuet and Fenelon, Boileau and La Fontaine, Colbert and Perrault, (the fairy talisman of politics and architecture,) the court of Versailles could imagine no manifestation of regality more august, or more exquisite, than that of getting up a royal ballet; and the father of his people, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... who was deformed, was elected to succeed La Fontaine in the French Academy. On that occasion it was said that "La Fontaine was very properly succeeded ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... by men of literary mark—by Leonce de Lavergne, and De Mazude in the Revue des deux Mondes—by Charles Labitte, M. Ducuing, and M. de Pontmartin. The latter classed Jasmin with Theocritus, Horace, and La Fontaine, and paid him the singular tribute, "that he had made Goodness as attractive as other French writers had made Badness." Such criticisms as these made Jasmin popular, not only in his own district, but ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... pauvre bete. Un manant lui coupa le pied droit et la tete. Le seigneur du village a sa porte les mit; Et ce dicton picard a l'entour fut ecrit: 'Biaux chires leups, n'ecoutez mie Mere tenchent (grondant) chen fieux (son fils) qui crie.'" (LA FONTAINE, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... you can laugh at me, great man," returned Vauvinet, once more jovial and caressing; "you've turned La Fontaine's fable of 'Le Chene et le Roseau' into an elixir—Come, Gubetta, my old accomplice," he continued, seizing Bixiou round the waist, "you want money; well, I can borrow three thousand francs from my friend Cerizet instead of two; 'Let us be friends, ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... died in 1893; studied medicine and in taking his degree produced as a dissertation his notable "Essai sur les Fables de La Fontaine"; published other essays on Livy, Carlyle, and Mill; professor of esthetics at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1864; published a book on the Pyrenees in 1855, one on Italy in 1866, and one on England ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... derives from cuculus, cogul, cocu, a cuckoo, has taken a queer twist, nor can I explain how its present meaning arose from a shebird which lays her egg in a strange nest. Wittol, on the other hand, from Witan, to know, is rightly applied to one whom La Fontaine calls "cocu et content," the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the hill alloted to the poor, where legions of plain black crosses are drawn up into solid squares on its side and stand alone gloomy—the advanced guard of the army of Death! I mused over the tombs of Moliere and La Fontaine; Massena, Mortier and Lefebre; General Foy and Casimir Perier; and finally descended to the shrine where Abelard reposes by the side of his Heloise. The old sculptured tomb, brought away from the Paraclete, still covers their remains, and pious ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... the case in the vicinity of Chteau-Thierry—the birthplace of La Fontaine—where the view is shut in on all sides by vine-clad slopes, which the spring frosts seldom spare. Hence merely one good vintage out of four gladdens the hearts of the peasant proprietors, who find eager purchasers for their produce ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders would not come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But these men attained literary eminence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... occupied in illustrating one set of ideas or one disposition of character. As early as the 13th century, the word is used in French literature to describe an anecdote thus briefly and artistically told, in prose or verse. The fairy-tales of Perrault and the apologues of La Fontaine were alike spoken of as contes, and stories of peculiar extravagance were known as contes bleus, because they were issued to the common public in coarse blue paper covers. The most famous contes in the 18th century were those of Voltaire, who has been described as having invented the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... curls, and must remember that it is better to be good than to be handsome; with all other wholesome truisms of the kind. They have been to school, and had their minds improved in all modern ways,—have calculated eclipses, and read Virgil, Schiller, and La Fontaine, and understand all about the geological strata, and the different systems of metaphysics,—so that a person reading the list of their acquirements might be a little appalled at the prospect of entering into conversation with them. For all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... his youth, La Fontaine was distinguished for his idleness, but hearing an ode by Malherbe read, he is said to have exclaimed, "I too am a poet," and his genius was awakened. Charles Bossuet's mind was first fired to study by reading, at an early age, Fontenelle's 'Eloges' of men of science. Another ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... try to believe, like La Fontaine," she questioned, "that sorrow and unhappiness are akin to disease, a mental instead of a physical scourge—that it ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Tales, Montaigne's Essays, Shakespeare, Gibbon. Famous literary compositions at different levels or in their various classes are Boccaccio's Decameron, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Aretino, Spenser's Faery Queen, Rabelais, Pilgrim's Progress, La Fontaine's Tales, Rousseau's Confessions, Tristram Shandy, Candide, Don Juan; and even among these how fair a proportion depends for its value and fruitfulness on the student? And, again, on his training. For we are aware of readers who prefer Bunyan to Spenser, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... of Germany and The Netherlands by their presidents, Mrs. Marie Stritt and Miss Elizabeth Baelde; from Great Britain, France, Belgium, Norway and Sweden by fraternal delegates, Mrs. Fawcett, Miss Cecile Cahen, Miss Ida La Fontaine, Miss Thea Holst, Dr. Lydia Wahlstrom; from national organizations by Mrs. Elna Munck, Denmark; Dr. Phil. Kaethe Schirmacher, Germany; Miss Stepankova, Bohemia; Mrs. Lang, Austria; Miss K. Honegger represented the newly affiliated national association ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... is the pedant who read Hannibal a lecture on the art of war; the other is the carrier who knows the road between London and York better than Humboldt, but a new road is prescribed to him and his knowledge becomes useless. This is the state of mind La Fontaine has described so perfectly in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Leibnitz had read Virgil so often, that even in his old age he could repeat whole books by heart; Barclay's Argenis was his model for prose; when he was found dead in his chair, the Argenis had fallen from his hands. Rabelais and Marot were the perpetual favourites of La Fontaine; from one he borrowed his humour, and from the other his style. Quevedo was so passionately fond of the Don Quixote of Cervantes, that often in reading that unrivalled work he felt an impulse to burn his own inferior compositions: to be a sincere admirer ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of horoscopists (the old Chaldaic genethliacs), or those who predicted the fortunes of individuals by an examination of the planet which presided at the natal hour, was as much in vogue as that of any other of the masters of the occult arts; and La Fontaine, towards the end of the seventeenth ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... found in Calila and Dimna, or the later Persian version, made A.D. 1494, of Hossein Vaez, called the Anvari Sohaili, 'the Canopic Lights'—from which, when published in Paris by David Sahid of Ispahan, in the year 1644, La Fontaine drew the substance of many of his best fables.—Let us say, too, that all can be found in the Life of the Seven Sages, or the Book of Sendabad as it was called in Persia, after an apocryphal Indian sage—came by translation—that is to ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... unceasing, steady light which we and millions of myriads besides go to make up. Are we much surer of being alive to-morrow than of being dead in fifty years? "Is there any moment which can certify to its successor?" That is the answer to La Fontaine's octogenarian, planting his trees, despite the gibes of the little beardless boys whom, as is inevitable in such ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... his country; and that, if life should not allow him time to see his endeavours crowned with success, his children will see it? The impatient patriots are like the young men (mentioned in the beautiful fable of LA FONTAINE) who ridiculed the man of fourscore, who was planting an avenue of very small trees, which, they told him, that he never could expect to see as high as his head. 'Well,' said he, 'and what of that? If their ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... misplaced, we see more absurdity than talent in representing a sheep as talking to a wolf. To us fables now present, not what is strange and difficult of comprehension, but mentally fanciful folly. In some few instances in La Fontaine and Gay, the wisdom of the lessons atones for the strangeness of their garb, and the peculiarity of the dramatis personae may tend to rivet them in our minds. There is something also fresh and pleasant in the scenes ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... attitude I surrendered myself to contemplation and reverie, it seemed to me that I touched for a moment the ancient world. Such moments are illuminating, and the light of this one mingles, in my memory, with the dusky greenness of the Jardin de la Fontaine. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Europe through literary channels, Professor Cowell says, "They are the stray waifs of literature, in the course of their long wanderings coming to be recognized under widely different aspects, as when they are used by Boccaccio, or Chaucer, or La Fontaine." ...
— More Jataka Tales • Re-told by Ellen C. Babbitt
... obscene when he could procure it, rather than the merely suggestive, which has never been to his taste. He was familiar with quite a large number of Latin and Greek indecent passages, knew the broader farces of the Canterbury Tales and of the Decameron, and, later, the 'contes' of La Fontaine and the Facetiae of Poggio. As Ste.-Beuve says of Gibbon, I think, he acquired an 'erudite and cold' sort ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sweet country of Vendome. Until the day of Malherbe, the didactic Regnier and the Calvinistic Marot are the only two who could be said to give colour to the preconceived and prevalent notion as to the dryness of French poetry. And even after Malherbe, in the seventeenth century, we find that La Fontaine, the most truly French of French writers, was a passionate lover of Nature. He who can see nothing in the latter's fables beyond the little dramas which they unfold and the ordinary moral which the poet draws therefrom, must confess that he fails ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... into dancings of Verse every now and then, 'a charming RELATION of a certain VOYAGE or Home Tour' (whence or whither, or correctly when, this Editor forgets), ["First printed in 1665," say the Bibliographies; "but known to La Fontaine some time before." Good!—Bachaumont, practically an important and distinguished person, not literary by trade, or indeed otherwise than by ennui, was he that had given (some fifteen years before) the Nickname FRONDE (Bickering of Schoolboys) ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that direction, has developed to frightful proportions. Why should the sight of a bill put me in a rage? It verges on madness. Aisse has not made money. Dernieres Chansons has almost gotten me into a lawsuit. The story of la Fontaine is not ended. I am ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Jacqueline burst out laughing, and did not make much show of opposition. To play the part of his wife, to hear him say to her, to respond with the affectionate and familiar 'toi', was so amusing! It was droll to see her cut out her husband in chemistry, history, and grammar, and make him confound La Fontaine with Corneille. She had such a little air while doing it! And at the close, when he said to her: "If I give you a pony to-morrow, and a good hearty kiss this very minute, shall you be willing to give up getting that degree?" she responded, with such gusto: "Indeed, I ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... illustrations—will give some faint idea of his industry. Besides those already mentioned are Montaigne, Dante, the Bible, Milton, Rabelais, Tennyson's "Idyls of the King," "The Ancient Mariner," Shakespeare, "Legende de Croquemitaine," La Fontaine's ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... the stage and say that he had a bad throat, but that he would try to give Iphigenia's Dream or something of that sort. His courage would prove to be greater than his strength and he would have to stop. He would then fall back on old-time songs or La Fontaine's fables in which he excelled. A skilfully studied mimicry, which seemed entirely natural, underlay his reading. A red handkerchief, which he knew how to draw from his pocket at just the proper moment, always ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... rich enough to assist us, and amiable enough to render obligation delightful, than become the public property of any man, or of any government. . . . If a divinity had given us our choice we should have said—make us La Fontaine, who goes and lives twenty years with some rich friend, as innocent of any harm in it as a child, and who writes what he thinks charming verses, sitting all day under a tree." Such sayings will not bear to be deliberately ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... on the other side of the Channel. For instance, the lines beginning, "How doth the little crocodile" are a parody on "How doth the little busy bee," a song which a French child has, of course, never heard of. In this case Bue gave up the idea of translation altogether, and, instead, parodied La Fontaine's "Maitre Corbeau" ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... his mother all about the town, and sent postcard pictures of its pride, the fortress-like, fifteenth-century church with a vast tower set upon a height. He liked Chateau-Thierry because Jean de la Fontaine was born there, and called it "a peaceful-looking place, just right for the dear fable-maker, who was so child-like and sweet-natured, that he deserved always to be happy, instead of for ever in somebody's debt." ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... who, sad and silent, seemed also to say to me, 'Don't go, young master, don't go.' Hortense, my eldest sister, pressed me in her arms, and Amelie, my little sister, who was in a corner of the drawing room looking at the pictures in a volume of La Fontaine, came up to me, holding ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Sminaire de Villemarie, cited by Faillon, I. 350. Lauson's father owned Montreal. The son's grant extended from the River St. Francis to a point far above Montreal.—La Fontaine, Mmoire sur la Famille ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the East, has often sustained my ardor through nights of toil given to the details of our modern civilization. And will not you, whose naive kindliness can only be compared with that of our own La Fontaine, be glad to ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... Palferine was in despair; his anguish revived Claudine. She rejoiced in the mishap; she took advantage of her suffering to compel La Palferine to take the money and release him from an awkward position. Then followed a variation on La Fontaine's fable, in which a man blesses the thieves that brought him a sudden impulse of tenderness from his wife. And while we are upon this subject, another saying will ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... with great eclat, by the brilliant eloquence of a man who has rendered signal services to philosophy, and whose entire works must not be judged of by the single particular which I am about to mention. In the year 1829, M. Cousin was developing at the Sorbonne the meaning of these verses of La Fontaine, which introduce the fable of ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... you now a German poet whom even the French have translated, and who call him the German La Fontaine." ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the ballerina secured her greatest triumph, and the ballet d'action attained its fullest vitality. The dancer became a power in the State, influencing princes, ministers, and people. Poets were her slaves, and oftentimes philosophers were caught in her toils. From Mdlle. la Fontaine of two centuries since, "la premiere des premieres danseuses," who received the title of "La Reine de la Danse," there being at the time, however, but three other professional dancers in Paris, through ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... first place, the child-like fashion in which Mr Arnold swallowed the results of that very remarkable "science," Biblical criticism, has always struck some readers with astonishment and a kind of terror. This new La Fontaine asking everybody, "Avez-vous lu Kuenen?" is a lesson more humbling to the pride of literature than almost any that can be found. "The prophecy of the details of Peter's death," we are told in Literature and Dogma, "is almost certainly an addition after the event, because it is not at ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... orb, dwindle into natural and so comparative insignificance. Byron was under no delusion as to the grossness of Don Juan. His plea or pretence, that he was sheltered by the superior grossness of Ariosto and La Fontaine, of Prior and of Fielding, is nihil ad rem, if it is not insincere. When Murray (May 3, 1819) charges him with "approximations to indelicacy," he laughs himself away at the euphemism, but when Hobhouse and "the Zoili of Albemarle Street" talked to him ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... n'a jamais manque de charlatans; cette science, de tout temps, fut en professeurs tres fertile. LA FONTAINE. ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... faut jamais dire a la fontaine, je ne boirai pas de ton eau," his Eminence cautioned her, whilst the lines of humour about his mouth emphasised themselves, and his grey eyes twinkled. "Other things equal, marriage is as much the proper state for the laity, as celibacy is the proper state for the ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... introduction to his edition of Pantschatantra, Sec. 209, and after him by Max Mueller in his essay "On the Migration of Fables" (Chips from a German Workshop, iv., 145-209; it was thus a chip from another German's workshop). It came to Europe before the Arabian Nights and became popular in La Fontaine's fable of Perrette who counted her chickens before they were hatched, as the popular phrase puts it. In such a case one can only give a reproduction of the literary source, and it is a problem which of the various forms which appear in the folk books should ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... source of pleasant memories. To live according to my fancy; to work as I wish and in my own way; to do nothing if I wish it; to dream of a beautiful future; to think of you and to know you are happy; to have as ladylove the Julie of Rousseau; to have La Fontaine and Moliere as friends, Racine for a master, and Pere-Lachaise to walk to,—oh! if it would only ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... formed of mistletoe were much worn; and in Sweden, a finger-ring made of its wood is an antidote against sickness. The mandrake, as a mystic plant, was extensively sold for medicinal purposes, and in Kent may be occasionally found kept to cure barrenness; [12] and it may be remembered that La Fontaine's fable, La Mandragore, turns upon its supposed power of producing children. How potent its effects were formerly held may be gathered from the very many allusions to its mystic properties in the literature of bygone years. Columella, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... of vegetables. To-morrow, alas! we return to our packet, much refreshed, however, by two pleasant days on shore, and consoling ourselves for our prolonged voyage by the reflection, that had we gone direct to Havana, we should not have seen Tampico; and, as La Fontaine's travelling ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... second edition of 1766, becoming Essay xxviii, pp. 241-45. This is the text here followed. The poem is an obvious imitation of what its author calls ('Letters from a Nobleman to his Son', 1764, ii. 140) that 'French elegant easy manner of telling a story,' which Prior had caught from La Fontaine. But the inherent simplicity of Goldsmith's style is curiously evidenced by the absence of those illustrations and ingenious allusions which are Prior's chief characteristic. And although Goldsmith included 'The Ladle' and 'Hans Carvel' in his 'Beauties of English Poesy', 1767, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... wild and shy a thing, too passionately set in its course, too homesick for the white fulgurant heights of Heaven to negate itself at the behest of French society and conform to what the academicians declared to be "la vielle tradition francaise." Franck was too much an artist in the spirit of La Fontaine and Germaine Pillon and Poussin and the others who formed that tradition, and who would be assailed in its name fiercely were they to reappear to-day. Moreover, he was of the race of musicians who come to make ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of their private memoirs and their anecdotes illustrates this. To point an anecdote or a repartee, there is no extravagance of falsehood that the French will not endure. What nation but the French would have tolerated that monstrous fiction about La Fontaine, by way of illustrating his supposed absence of mind—viz. that, on meeting his own son in a friend's house, he expressed his admiration of the young man, and begged to know his name. The fact probably may have ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... sovereign and more than one age have found their purest glory to consist. Virgil, Horace, and Livy contributed quite as much as the foundation of the empire to shed lustre on the reign of Augustus. Bossuet, Pascal, and Fenelon, Corneille, Racine, Boileau, Moliere, and La Fontaine, count for quite as much as his great warriors and his able administrators in regard to the splendor of the age of Louis XIV. People are quite right to set this estimate upon the heroes of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... said my uncle, quoting from La Fontaine; and then, opening a pale-blue eye full on Alain, he delivered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... personages in La Fontaine's fable of the Monkey and the Cat, of whom R. cracks the nut and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... could not take for a model what as yet had no collective existence. Now, until the death of Charles II., no French literature could be said to have gathered or established itself; and as yet no ostentation of a French literature began to stir the air of Europe. By the time, however, that Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, Bossuet, and Fontenelle, had begun to fix the attention of foreign courts upon the French language, a necessity, no longer to be disguised, for some modern language as the common organ of diplomacy, had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the winter. This was Xanthus amongst the gods, as Homer tells us; and 'tis by that heavenly name, the nymph Oenone invokes it, in her epistle to Paris. The Trojan virgins used to offer their first favours to it, by the name of Scamander, till the adventure, which Monsieur de la Fontaine has told so agreeably, abolish'd that heathenish ceremony. When the stream is mingled with the Simois, they run together ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague |
