Quotes About Fables

Among the fables that inspired the British Admiralty's cartographic assignments to Captain James Cook in the 1770s and Captain George Vancouver in the 1790s was a 1640 account under the name of Bartholomew de Fonte that appeared in a journal with the delightful title 'The Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious.'

In addition, he had a rare first edition of Krylov's Fables, with Krylov's own notes handwritten on many of the pages, inserted into Gardiner's package. The volume had been requisitioned from the private collection of a recently arrested Jewish member of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad.

Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.

Thou shalt not might' reach the head but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart. Also: We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them.

Tell them stories

Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well. Just tell them stories.

The Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith" (1 Timothy 4:1). "The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires . . . they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

Ma tu vivi continuamente nelle favole, solamente non te ne accorgi più. Quando un adulto entra nel mondo delle fiabe non riesce più ad uscirne. Non lo sapevi?

I wanted to show that the fables and mythic tales which the ancients have handed down to us and in which painters and sculptors never cease to find mindless pleasure are the hieroglyphics of a secret, inexhaustible wisdom. I sometimes thought I felt its breath, as though coming from behind a veil.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

Stories have always been told, from the very beginning of existence; I'm just carrying on this tradition.

Stories have a job to do. They can't just lie around like lazybone dogs. They have to teach you something.

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

Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.

I was glad to be gone from that place, for they listened not to simple reason, looked not at the world about them, sought not the truth, believing instead in the literal words of ancient tales - truths, history, parables, myths, legends, fables, and facts intermingled and recorded on their 'infallible' scrolls.

Well, legends are many-legged beasties, aye? But they generally have at least one foot on the truth.

The individual artist is a medium for making representational and deeply meaningful symbols of the community's collective consciousness, whether they are symbols of the community's religion, love, hurt, power, hate, hope, dream, fables, foibles or on and on and on.

No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate--like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history--until it degenerates into fables.

Most fairy tales are pretty dark.

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? How has it happened that all the fine arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, statuary, music, poetry, and oratory, have been prostituted, from the creation of the world, to the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud? [ Letter to judge F.A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816 .]

In the blink of an eye, the fairytales told to children were as real as death and taxes. Vampires, shifters, trolls, demons and creatures of myth, were as real as the air we breathe.

My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.

Many theories of the ancient world seem terribly childish today, a hodge-podge of fables and false comparisons.But our theories will seem childish five-hundred years from now.Every theory is based on some analogy, and sooner or later the theory fails because the analogy turns out to be false. A theory in its day helps to solve the problems of the day.

He was no storyteller, as he had said, but that made it more enjoyable somehow, watching his serious face as he described flying horses and golden apples.