64 Quotes About Fables

But though I might fill the world with dragons I never had the slighest real doubt that heroes ought to fight with dragons. I must stop to challenge many child-lovers for cruelty to children. It is quite false to say that the child dislikes the fable because it is moral. Very often he likes the moral more than the fable. Adults are reading their own weary mockery into a mind still vigorous enough to be entirely serious.

How foolish was the fox. How blind. To not see, not value the friendship, the affection, the trust the brown bird offered him.

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.]

The priest's lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal's doom. My grandmother's lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.

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.

For what are the Aegyption Hierogliphicks, and the whole History of the Pagan Gods; the Hints, and Fictions of the Wise Men of Old, but in Effect, a kind of Philosophical Mythology ; Which is, in truth, no other, then a more Agreeable Vehicle found out for Conveying to us the Truth and Reason of Things, though the medium of Images and Shadows.

A foolish friend may cause more woeThan could, indeed, the wisest foe.

Puisqu'aussi bien on fait seul le voyageEt que l'amour n'est jamais partagé,Le sage pense à lui avant que son poil grise...Il est dur de l'apprendre âgé :Comme on est seulDans son linceul,On est tout seul dans sa chemise.

Tis the Fate of All Gotham-Quarrels, when Fools go together by the Ears, to have Knaves run away with the Stakes.