Fables Quotes - Page 10

• Lies, fables and romances must needs be probable, but not the truth and foundation of our faith.

  Johann Georg Hamann

  Faith, Lying, Romance

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• The minute that you bring a unicorn into a story, you know that it's a fairy tale or a fable, because unicorns don't exist as animals. They exist as fantasy creatures.

  Gloria Vanderbilt

  Animal, Stories, Unicorn

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• The professionals resemble and recognize each other by virtue of the stigmata that their trade has left upon them. They are like the dog in the fable, whose collar has made an indelible mark around his neck. The amateur is the shaggy wolf whom no dog had better trust too far.

  Jacques Barzun

  Dog, Necks, Virtue

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fiction, Literature, Biographies

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco (1982). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.36, Harvard University Press

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• It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astr

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dream, Appreciate, Giving

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.482, Simon and Schuster

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• Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
  Aim above morality.
  Be not simply good;
  be good for something.
  All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men and brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God

  Henry David Thoreau

  Brother, Men, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (1894). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau”

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• We find collected in this book [The Bible] the superstitious beliefs of the ancient inhabitants of Palestine, with indistinct echoes of Indian and Persian fables, mistaken imitation of Egyptian theories and customs, historical chronicles as dry as they are unreliable and miscellaneous poems, amatory, human and Jewish-national, which is rarely distinguished by beauties of the highest order but frequently by superfluity of expression, coarseness, bad taste, and genuine Oriental sensuality.

  Max Nordau

  Book, Echoes, Expression

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• Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

  Tony Kushner

  Gay, Ridiculous, Realms

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• We are not afraid of predators, we're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters.

  E. O. Wilson

  Survival, Monsters, Fascination

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• . . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them.

  Gerry Spence

  Tyrants, America, People

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• Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die Live. House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, old man and young maid, Day's toil and it's guerdon, They are all vanishing, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spring, Sleep, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.445, Harvard University Press

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• The ancients had a taste, let us say rather a passion, for the marvellous, which caused grouping together the lofty deeds of a great number of heroes, whose names they have not even deigned to preserve, and investing the single personage of Hercules with them. In our own time the public delight in blending fable with history. In every career of life, in the pursuit of science especially, they enjoy a pleasure in creating Herculeses.

  Francois Arago

  Hero, Passion, Science

  "Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men". Book by François Arago, translated by William Henry Smyth, Baden Powell and Robert Grant. Chapter: 'Joseph Fourier', p. 408, 1859.

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• Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: It is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them.

  Gustave Le Bon

  People, Psychology, Sphinx

  Gustave Le Bon (2012). “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind”, p.70, Courier Corporation

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• But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fall, Years, Elephants

  Bertrand Russell (1998). “Autobiography”, p.725, Psychology Press

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• When I was a kid, the book that I liked the most was 'Aesop's Fables.' There was a version of it that my father read stories to us kids out of. I liked the idea of the short story format.

  Mark Mothersbaugh

  Father, Book, Kids

  "Mark Mothersbaugh Revisits His Literary Roots" by Danielle Wiener-Bronner, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 05, 2012.

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

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Fighting, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.59, Cosimo, Inc.

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• ...An editorial of the Journal AMA, Jan 8, 1949, discussed the Gerson Therapy under the heading 'Frauds and Fables'. At that time, Dr. Gerson's lawyer wrote a letter to the JAMA, threatening a suit for libel...The editorial was withdrawn...(leaving) columns which were blank.

  Charlotte Gerson

  Dark, Leaving, Age

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• The fable runs that the gods mix our pains and pleasure in one cup, and thus mingle for us the adulterate immortality which we alone are permitted here to enjoy. Voluptuous raptures, could we prolong these at pleasure, would dissipate and dissolve us. A sip is the most that mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Running, Pain, Delight

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”, p.75

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• Many people don’t realize the extent to which stories influence our behavior and even shape our culture. Think about how Bible stories teach the fundamentals of religion and rules of conduct. Think of the fables and parables that molded your values. Think of how stories about your national, cultural or family history have shaped your attitudes about yourself and others.

  Lawrence Shapiro

  Attitude, Thinking, People

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• All that remains is a fate whose outcome alone is fatal. Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty. A world remains of which man is the sole master. What bound him was the illusion of another world. The outcome of his thought, ceasing to be renunciatory, flowers in images. It frolics-\-\-in myths, to be sure, but myths with no other depth than that of human suffering and, like it, inexhaustible. Not the divine fable that amuses and blinds, but the terrestrial face, gesture, and drama in which are summed up a difficult wisdom and an ephemeral passion.

  Albert Camus

  Drama, Flower, Passion

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• Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.

  Edward Abbey

  Philosophy, Lying, Mean

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• I have watched constantly that in our work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether my productions deal with fable or with stories of living action.

  Walt Disney

  Spiritual, Stories, Action

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

  Thomas Huxley

  Bible, Creation, Accounts

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• I'm a big fan of a lot of graphic novels - 'Fables,' 'Y: The Last Man' and 'The Walking Dead,' which I like a lot more.

  Cobie Smulders

  Men, Walking Dead, Fans

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

  Sergio Leone

  Taken, Reality, America

  Interview With Marlaine Glicksman, www.americansuburbx.com. December 28, 2012.

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