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Aesop   /ˈisˌɑp/   Listen
Aesop

noun
1.
Greek author of fables (circa 620-560 BC).



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"Aesop" Quotes from Famous Books



... AESOP'S FABLES. Illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price, $1.00. These stories, though they were told more than two thousand years ago, and have been printed in hundreds of different editions, still retain their pristine charm, and the children of to-day read them with the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... dedicated to deformity. The members agreed to fight, not about a beautiful woman, but about an ugly man. The hall of the club was adorned by hideous portraits—Thersites, Triboulet, Duns, Hudibras, Scarron; over the chimney was AEsop, between two men, each blind of an eye, Cocles and Camoens (Cocles being blind of the left, Camoens of the right eye), so arranged that the two profiles without eyes were turned to each other. The day that the beautiful Mrs. Visart caught the small pox the Ugly Club toasted ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... be buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation: like as it was with AEsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... who are called profane, such as Xenophon, Plato, Cicero, the Emperor Antoninus, the Emperor Julian, Virgil, etc., to the books which we are told are inspired of God. I can truly say that the fables of Aesop, for example, are certainly more ingenious and more instructive than all these rough and poor parables which are related in ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... 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 ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... piece out a very satisfactory account of the nature and history of the traditional fable by looking up in any good encyclopedia the brief articles under the following heads: Folklore, Fable, Parable, Apologue, AEsop, Demetrius of Phalerum, Babrias, Phaedrus, Avian, Romulus, Maximus ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Your sex's much-lov'd enemy; For other foes we are prepar'd, And Nature puts us on our guard: In that alone such charms are found, We court the dart, we nurse the hand; And this, my child, an Aesop's Fable Will prove much better ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... the case of most 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 ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson

... 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 on the tops of the piers, ay, and the vases of carved ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... 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 designed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... ear turned to the door, holdin' my breath, but not another word or sound came in from the room. In about twenty minutes, as I was sittin' by the table, lookin' at the pictures in the old Aesop's Fables, I was aware o' something moving at the door, and lookin' up I sid my aunt's face lookin' in at the ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... everybody; I suppose that no one, except the old man in Aesop's Fable, ever tried to do so. But I venture to believe that to some Americans, a sincere and truthful portrait of a typical Englishwoman of a certain class may prove attractive, as to us are the studies of a "David Harum," or others whose characteristics interest because—and not in spite of—their ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... 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 ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... first; but wait a minute or two: a little round black knob appears in the middle; gradually it rises higher and higher, till at last you can make out a frog's head, with his great eyes staring hard at you, like the eyes of the frog in the woodcut facing AEsop's fable of the frog and the bull. Not a bit of his body do you see: he is much too cunning for that; he does not know who or what you are; you may be a heron, his mortal enemy, for aught he knows. You move your arm: he thinks it is the heron's bill coming; down he goes again, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... change the stock, or cog a die, And thus deceive the sharpest eye: Nor wonder how his fortune sunk, His brothers fleece him when he's drunk. I own the 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 ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... some respects surpassed all former artists in his power of reproducing scenes in nature. At the same time, Bewick, whose cuts used to be the delight of every child that read "Aesop's Fables," gave a new impulse to wood engraving, while Flaxman rose to be the leading English sculptor, and Wedgwood introduced useful and beautiful ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... ignorant and heedless, and have never read your Aesop. 'Tis he who tells us that the lark was born before all other creatures, indeed before the Earth; his father died of sickness, but the Earth did not exist then; he remained unburied for five days, when the bird in its dilemma decided, for want ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes

... and Thomas Shadwell; Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco 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 ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard

... Like AEsop's traveller, thou blowest hot and cold, life and death, in the same breath, with a view, no doubt, to distract me. How familiarly dost thou use the words, dying, dimness, tremor? Never did any mortal ring so many changes ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... the 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 Man ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... advertisement, a new chum in want of employment, did meet in the usual column of 'The Argus', December 1852. Many could afford to laugh at it, the intelligent however, who had immigrated here, permanently to better his condition, was forced to rip up in his memory a certain fable of Aesop. Who would have dared then to warn the fatted Melbourne frogs weltering in grog, their colonial glory, against their contempt for King Log? Behold King Stork is your reward. 'Tout ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello

... for the sake of reading all the papers that came to town. He read everything he could lay his hands on; the Bible, Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, Life of Washington and Life of Franklin, Life of Henry Clay, AEsop's Fables; he read them over and over again until he could almost repeat them by heart; but he never read a novel in his life. His education came from the newspapers and from his contact with men and things. After he read a book he ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... and ween, but was very unspenserian in manner. As early as the second decade of the century, the horns of Elfland may be heard faintly blowing in the poems of the Rev. Samuel Croxall, the translator of Aesop's "Fables." Mr. Gosse[23] quotes Croxall's own description of his poetry, as designed "to set off the dry and insipid stuff" of the age with "a whole piece of rich and glowing scarlet." His two pieces "The Vision," 1715, and "The Fair Circassian," 1720, though written ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... there not something beautiful in the popular belief that just as the toad is the ugliest of animals, it should often carry the most precious jewel in its head? Is it not just the same thing with men? What a jewel that was that Aesop had, and still ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... 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 ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... 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 that foxes never eat sour grapes. Publications: ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... touch. Even Davy, when he was permitted to look at the wonderful pictures in her "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 Kipling's jungle ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... find copious translations from the ancient classics, as Caesar, Appian, Plutarch, Plautus, Sallust, Aesop, Justin, Boethius, Apulius, Herodian, affording strong evidence of the activity of the Castilian scholars in this department. Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. pp. 406, 407.—Mendez, Typographia Espanola, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... MORE in 1520, or thereabouts, which he represents as if told him by an old wife and nurse, one Mother MAUD. Here are "The Wolf,"—"Brer Wolf"—and the simple-minded Jackass, both are going to confession to Father Fox—"Brer Fox." AEsop is, of course, the common origin of all such tales. The extracts which I have come across, are to be found in a small book compiled by the Rev. THOMAS BRIDGETT, entitled, The Wit and Wisdom of Sir Thomas More. The Baron wishes that with it had been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various

... I came upon some of those faded, yellow pages, folded up in an old text book of AEsop's Latin Fables—the one Tom and I were then using; and I will set down a few of the sentences here, to illustrate what Master Pierson thought might be done with Latin ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... infidels at the same time. Proclaiming the miracles of Christianity to be illusions of imagination or mythical legends,—the inspiration of its records no other or greater than that of Homer's 'Iliad,' or even 'Aesop's Fables;'—rejecting the whole of that supernatural clement with which the only records which can tell us any thing about the matter are full; declaring its whole history so uncertain that the ratio of truth to error must be ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... conversations Landor brings together, sometimes in groups, sometimes in couples, well-known characters, or rather shadows, from the four corners of the earth and from the remotest ages of recorded history. Thus Diogenes talks with Plato, AEsop with a young slave girl in Egypt, Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn in prison, Dante with Beatrice, Leofric with Lady Godiva,—all these and many others, from Epictetus to Cromwell, are brought together and speak of life and love and death, each from his own view point. Occasionally, as in the meeting ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... sea-shore, she was 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 our ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... most celebrated of the Eastern sages, and is supposed by some to be the same as Aesop. The title usually given to a doctor in Persia is Locman al zeman, the Locman of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... the 16th century, to whom is attributed a paraphrase of Aesop's Fables, of which Julius Scaliger speaks ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... has given us the story of Androcles and the Lion. He prefaces it by saying that he has no regard "to what AEsop has said upon the subject, whom," says he, "I look upon to have been a republican, by the unworthy treatment which he often gives to the king of beasts, and whom, if I had time, I could convict of falsehood ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... children. These tales tell of beliefs of folk less experienced than we: we have outgrown them. They must be suited to the less experienced: give them to children. Thus runs the common argument. And so we find Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales," AEsop's "Fables," various Indian myths and Celtic legends, and even the "Niebelungen Lied" often given to quite young children. But do we find this reasoning valid when we examine these tales free from the glamour which adult sophistication casts around them? Remember ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... took the book, which was AEsop's Fables, and, in accordance with Briney's intention, it opened exactly at the favorite fable of Gallus Gallinacexis. He was not aware, however, that Briney had kept that place open during the preceding part of ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... 'Imaginary Conversations' are among those numerous works which everybody is supposed to have read, and, having read them, to admire. And unfortunate indeed would be he who could not recognise and appreciate the varied beauty and charm of these prose masterpieces. Here Menelaus and Helen, AEsop and Rhodope, Tiberius and Vipsania, Leofric and Godiva, Roger Ascham and Jane Grey, and a hundred other heroes and heroines of the past, converse not only with dramatic appropriateness, but with rhetorical force—with ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... what they mean 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 element in learning to read. ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman

... 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 around the conjugal ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... words. They will be "merry and wise." Not a jest will 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

... 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

... countenance, vinegar aspect, hanging look, wry 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 &c (injure) 659; soil &c (render unclean) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... over-influenced, as Ravel and Stravinsky seem to be by the morbidly fascinating—a kind of false beauty obtained by artistic monotony. However, we cannot but feel that he would weave his spell over us—as would the Grimms and Aesop. We feel as much under magic as the "Enchanted Frog." This is part of the artist's business. The effect is a part of his art-effort in its inception. Emerson's substance and even his manner has little to do with a designed effect—his thunderbolts ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... of Aesop and others of 1784, when Bewick's special gifts began to emerge, the cuts on laid paper appeared weak in comparison with his later work. Bewick was still using wood engraving as a cheaper, more quickly executed substitute for the woodcut. The designs were based upon Croxall's ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen

... 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 ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... been printed prior to 1500, the most important exception being the Annals of Tacitus, of which the editio princeps was in 1515. Between the years 1478 and 1500, the following Greek works had been published, and in this order: Aesop, Homer, Isocrates, Theocritus, the Anthology, four plays of Euripides, Aristotle, Theognis, and nine plays of Aristophanes. Follow the dates of the editiones principes of the other ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... 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

... determine; and besides, it gives Applause to one of the most drolling and bantering Performances that this drolling Age has produc'd, I mean Dr. Bentley's Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris, and the Fables of AEsop, examin'd. ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins

... Aesop's fable about the mountain which gave birth to a mouse may be a relic of Totemism; so also may be the mountain symbols on the standards of Egyptian ships which appear on pre-dynastic pottery; the black dwarfs of Teutonic mythology were ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... like wit, But, on examination near, To his confusion will appear, 530 By Truth's fair glass, to be at best A threadbare jester's threadbare jest; Who frisks and dances through the street, Sings without voice, rides without seat, Plays o'er his tricks, like Aesop's ass, A gratis fool to all who pass; Who riots, though he loves not waste, Whores without lust, drinks without taste, Acts without sense, talks without thought, Does every thing but what he ought; 540 Who, led by ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... eloquence, and of all good and prudent action. The right instruction of youth does not consist in cramming them with a mass of words, phrases, sentences, and opinions collected from authors. In this way the youth are taught, like Aesop's crow in the fable, to adorn themselves with strange feathers. Why should we not, instead of dead books, open the living book of nature? Not the shadows of things, but the things themselves, which make an ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... must be look'd into; And, since by wrong thou gott'st authority, Maintain it bravely by firm policy; At least, unprofitably lose it not; For he that liveth in authority, And neither gets him friends nor fills his bags, Lives like the ass that Aesop speaketh of, That labours with a load of bread and wine, And leaves it off to snap on thistle-tops: But Barabas will be more circumspect. Begin betimes; Occasion's bald behind: Slip not thine opportunity, for fear too ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe

... easily ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of so-called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save when we imagine, with Aesop, that arbores loquuntur non tantum ferae. Some even affirm that they have never observed in themselves this "miraculous" activity, as though there were no difference, or only one of quantity, between sweating ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... 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, indeed, seems ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... sister were learning still better things at their mother's knee, alternately hearing and reading stories from the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress," "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," and other books, common now, but rare enough in ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... man, soon made the cat tumble over the cascade. This may be 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 apologues ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... a box of books, the marvel of which cannot begin to be described. Andrew's books were but five or six, chosen for great quantity and small bulk; tightly and toughly bound little books of which the Bible was first. This was his book of fairies, his Aesop; his book of wanderings and story, of character and mystery; his revelations, the source of his ideality, the great expander of limitations; his book of love and adventure and war; the book unjudgable ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... resuscitated our knowledge of the existence of the seed-storing habit. Mr. Moggridge points out that the ancients were familiar with the facts, and quotes the well-known fable of the ant and the grasshopper, which La Fontaine borrowed from Aesop. Mr. Moggridge (page 5) goes on: "So long as Europe was taught Natural History by southern writers the belief prevailed; but no sooner did the tide begin to turn, and the current of information to flood from north to south, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... of the dress he is a Roman: "My native land is Rome;" and this Roman turns out to be AEsop, "poet laureate;" there is no room for doubt: we are in the Middle Ages. AEsop recites his fables in such a new and graceful manner, with such a pleasing mixture of truth and fancy, that he never told them better, not even when he was a Greek slave, and saved his ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... thing is to find honest people who want to be simply my equals; but if we must choose, tyranny for tyranny, I prefer that which held the bodies of Aesop and Epictetus in slavery but left their minds free, to that which promises only material ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... to dinner, and Aesop was ordered to furnish the choicest dainties that money could procure. The first course consisted of tongues, cooked in different ways and served with appropriate sauces. This gave rise to much mirth and many witty remarks by ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... Roscius 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 from the censure ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... 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

... sarcasm. Of all the philosophers, Plato {123d} alone was not to be found there, but it seems he lived in a republic of his own building, and which was governed by laws framed by himself. Aristippus and Epicurus were in the highest esteem here as the most polite, benevolent, and convivial of men. Even AEsop the Phrygian was here, whom they made use of by way of buffoon. Diogenes of Sinope had so wonderfully changed his manners in this place, that he married Lais the harlot, danced and sang, got drunk, and played a thousand freaks. Not ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... backbite, 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, either ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... personate characters that are not their own. Different men, in different ages of the world, have had recourse to different modes of writing, for the promotion of virtue. Some have had recourse to allegories, others to fables. The fables of Aesop, though a fiction from the beginning to the end, have been useful to many. But we have a peculiar instance of the use and innocence of fictitious descriptions in the sacred writings. For the author of the christian religion made use of parables on many ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... magnificent, but not what you would have cared for. At least, they were far from my taste. In honour of the occasion, certain veteran actors returned to the stage, which they had left long ago, as I imagined, in the interests of their own reputation. My old friend Aesop, in particular, had failed so much that no one could be sorry he had retired; his voice gave way altogether. AS for the rest of the festival, it was not even so attractive as far less ambitious shows generally ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... 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 ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... hated. Therefore unto him hastily she goes, And, like 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 a step, Mov'd by love's ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... 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 round. His moral, added in a conventional tag, or ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... the Rite, depends on, 136-m. Advancement in the Rite, those entitled to, 136-m. Adversity, blessings and advantages of, 145-m. Aeschylus accused of representing the Mysteries on the stage, 384-l. Aeschylus and others declare life is not a scene of repose, 691-u. Aesop and others declare the object of suffering is beneficial, 691-u. Aesch Mezareph says the seven lower Sephiroth represent seven metals, 798-l. Affliction, a loneliness in, 189-m. Affliction, words go but little way into the depths of, 189-m. Agathodaemon, or Kneph, represented ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... take you to the Summer Gardens, where you see the trees beyond the Marble Palace," said Mr Henshaw. "I wish to show you the statue of Kryloff, the Russian Aesop, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... 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 ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 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 and fishes. When ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... thoughts made her to be hated. Therefore unto him hastily she goes, And, like light Salmacis, her body throws Upon his bosom, where with yielding eyes She offers up herself a sacrifice To slake her anger, if he were displeased: O, what god would not therewith be appeased? 50 Like AEsop's cock, this jewel he enjoyed, And as a brother with his sister toyed, 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 ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... 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 ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... 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 all the languages of Europe the habit of swelling. It has been ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... 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 ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... 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

... national phrases are kept, and all others successively picked out and thrown away. Something like the same process had gone on, long before, with the originals of these books. The world takes liberties with world-books. Vedas, Aesop's Fables, Pilpay, Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad, Robin Hood, Scottish Minstrelsy, are not the work of single men. In the composition of such works the time thinks, the market thinks, the mason, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... this arch, from the point of view of the question treated in this chapter, rests not on its sculptured panels and medallions,—spoils taken at random from older structures, from which the arch has received the nickname of AEsop's crow (la cornacchia di Esopo),—but on the inscription engraved on each side of the attic. "The S. P. Q. R. have dedicated this triumphal arch to Constantine, because instinctu divinitatis (by the will of God), ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... 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 ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... well known that several of the most distinguished authors of antiquity, and among them AEsop and Terence, were or had been slaves. Slaves were not always taken from barbarous nations, and the chances of war reduced ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... which would be puerile if they meant to be naturalists, render them piquant moralists; for they are not really interpreting animals, but under the mask of animals maliciously painting men. Such fables are morally interesting and plausible just because they are psychologically false. If AEsop could have reported what lions and lambs, ants and donkeys, really feel and think, his poems would have been perfect riddles to the public; and they would have had no human value except that of illustrating, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... Homer was the first and the great reading book of the Greeks, the Iliad and the Odyssey being the Bible of the Greek people. Then followed Hesiod, Theognis, the Greek poets, and the fables of Aesop. [16] Reading, declamation, and music were closely interrelated. To appeal to the emotions and to stir the will along moral and civic lines was a fundamental purpose of the instruction (R. 5). A modern writer well characterizes the ancient instruction ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... to these, her accumulation of pet specialities included a seven-fingered starfish, which is supposed by the ignorant to be peculiarly inimical to the adventurous cat that swalloweth it; and a ring-horned pandalus or 'Aesop prawn,' which queer creature Master Bob appropriately christened 'The Prawnee Chief,' much to the annoyance of Miss Nell, who had become quite grand now in her language, becoming 'puffed up,' as Bob said, with her newly-acquired 'knowledge'—a 'little' of which, as ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... unhappily, the current of his life was turned by the success of his first volume, which was published at 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 some of his most popular songs. This epitome ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Fables of AEsop in Latin. New edition, with Vocabulary, edited by Rev. Wm. Veitch, ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... eldest son of Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby; a distinguished critic and poet, and professor of poetry at Oxford. The allusion is to Arnold's essay, Sweetness and Light. The phrase, "sweetness and light," is one which Aesop uses in Swift's Battle of the Books to sum up the superiority of the ancients over the moderns. "As for us, the ancients, we are content, with the bee, to pretend to nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice, that is to say, our flights and our language; for ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... rapid colour-change is seen in cuttlefishes, where it is often an expression of nervous excitement, though it sometimes helps to conceal. It occurs with much subtlety in the AEsop prawn, Hippolyte, which may be brown on a brown seaweed, green on sea-lettuce or sea-grass, red on red seaweed, and so ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... that he is a 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, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various

... Orders; they drew better boys, more suited to religion, out of the fifth class, than they do now out of the second or first, although now much better authors are read there. Formerly there was nothing but the Parables of Alan <of Lille, fl. 1200>, the moral distichs of Cato, Aesop's Fables, and a few others, whom the moderns despise; but the boys worked hard, and made their own way over difficulties. Now when even in small schools the choicest authors are read, ancient and modern, prose and poetry, there ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... 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, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Aethiop woman posted at the door, With blubber lip and nostril, he descries. Nor will he see again, nor e'er before Had seen a visage of such loathsome guise: Ill-favoured — such was Aesop feigned of yore: If there, she would have saddened Paradise. Greasy and foul and beggarly her vest; Nor half ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... successful Wat Tyler, in the kingdom which by that time Solomon had left to his foolish son, Rehoboam. Little did Solomon imagine that when he advanced Jeroboam he was preparing the instrument of his son's ruin, and that this Ephraimite would prove to be like the viper Aesop tells of, which a kind-hearted man took in from the cold, but which when roused by warmth from ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... prolonged melodies. Already in his active, but musically-barren brain, 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 was ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... destruction when the cathedral was burned in 1106;—from the unfinished state of the story;—from its containing some Saxon names unknown to the Normans;—and from representations taken from the fables of AEsop being worked on the borders, whereas the northern parts of Europe were not made acquainted with these fables, till the translation of a portion of them by Henry Ist, who thence obtained his surname of Beauclerk.—These ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... strainer, to the Sigeans for the Prytaneum." The second, which says, "I also am the gift of Phanodicus," repeating the substance of the former inscription, adds, "if any mischance happens to me, the Sigeans are to mend me. AEsop and his brethren made me." The lower inscription is the more ancient. It is now nearly obliterated. Kirchhoff considers it to be not later than ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... therefore, he could not dispatch Memory, he sought to immure her. Since Valerie's sovereignty was so fast stablished that it could not be moved, he sought to rule his heart out of his system. Had it been possible, he would, like Aesop's Beaver, have ripped the member from him and gone heartless ever after. The Fabulous Age being dead, Anthony made the best shift he could, and strove to bury kingdom and queen together so deep within him that their ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem; and I can not help thinking that, if Aesop had noticed them, he would have made a fable about God trying to reconcile their strife, and when he could not, he fastened their heads together; and this is the reason why when one comes the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... in all the rest of Hellas, for during many generations gold has been always flowing in to them from the whole Hellenic world, and often from the barbarian also, and never going out, as in the fable of Aesop the fox said to the lion, 'The prints of the feet of those going in are distinct enough;' but who ever saw the trace of money going out of Lacedaemon? And therefore you may safely infer that the inhabitants are the richest of the ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato

... to play; men and women do not really understand each other, what rules between them being not so much sympathy as habitual trust, idealisation, or satire; foreigners' minds are pure enigmas, and those attributed to animals are a grotesque compound of AEsop and physiology. When we come to religion the ineptitude of all the feelings attributed to nature or the gods is so egregious that a sober critic can look to such fables only for a pathetic expression ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... Best 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; ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson



Words linked to "Aesop" :   fabulist



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