Fables Quotes

“How do I hate the tide of vulgar thought!
Profane, unjust, with childish folly fraught;
It breaks and bends the rays of truth divine,
And by its own conceptions measures mine.
[...]
Hippocrates arrived in season,
Just as his patient (void of reason!)
Was searching whether reason's home,
In talking animals and dumb,
Be in the head, or in the heart,
Or in some other local part.
All calmly seated in the shade,
Where brooks their softest music made,
He traced, with study most insane,
The convolutions of a brain;
And at his feet lay many a scroll--
The works of sages on the soul.
Indeed, so much absorb'd was he,
His friend, at first, he did not see.
A pair so admirably match'd,
Their compliments erelong despatch'd.
In time and talk, as well as dress,
The wise are frugal, I confess.
Dismissing trifles, they began
At once with eagerness to scan
The life, and soul, and laws of man;
Nor stopp'd till they had travell'd o'er all
The ground, from, physical to moral.
My time and space would fail
To give the full detail.”
― Jean de la Fontaine, Fables

“You, Iris, 'twere an easy task to praise;
But you refuse the incense of my lays.
In this you are unlike all other mortals,
Who welcome all the praise that seeks their portals;
Not one who is not soothed by sound so sweet.
For me to blame this humour were not meet,
By gods and mortals shared in common,
And, in the main, by lovely woman.
That drink, so vaunted by the rhyming trade,
That cheers the god who deals the thunder-blow,
And oft intoxicates the gods below,--
The nectar, Iris, is of praises made.
You taste it not. But, in its place,
Wit, science, even trifles grace
Your bill of fare; but, for that matter,
The world will not believe the latter.”
― Jean de la Fontaine, Fables

“A person often meets his destiny on the road they took to avoid it.”
― Jean de la Fontaine, Fables