Quotes & Sayings About Fables

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

What do you know of the Knights?" he asked.

Fin shrugged. "I thought knights were only in children's stories until a few days ago."

Jeannot smiled. "A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance."

"Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren't true. You might be knights, but I don't see any shining armor," Fin said.

Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. "Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run. — A.S. Peterson

The bearers of fables are very welcome. — Monique Wittig

I would by all means have men beware, lest Aesop's pretty fable of the fly that sate on the pole of a chariot at the Olympic races and said, 'What a dust do I raise,' be verified in them. For so it is that some small observation, and that disturbed sometimes by the instrument, sometimes by the eye, sometimes by the calculation, and which may be owing to some real change in the sky, raises new skies and new spheres and circles. — Francis Bacon

Though President Obama was at his smooth and polished best the other night, two aspects of his worldview came into sharper relief - his reflexive hostility toward and misunderstanding of business and his reliable resort to left-wing fables about race relations. — Mona Charen

One of the oldest mythological fables tells of Mercury playing at dice with Selene and winning from her the five days of the epact (thus totaling the 365 days of the year and harmonizing the lunar and solar calendars). — Richard Arnold Epstein

The Bible account of the creation of Eve is a preposterous fable. — Thomas Huxley

It is full of interest, it has noble poetry in it and some clever fables and some blood drenched history, some good morals and a wealth of obscenity and upwards of a thousand lies.
(Re The Bible) — Mark Twain

The fable of a god or gods visiting the earth did not originate with Christianity. — Richard Carlile

When you take advice from a cat, there are always consequences. — Elora Bishop

Will they remember us, Aravan? Will Mankind remember us at all? ...
Mayhap, Gwylly, mayhap. Mayhap in their legends and their fables. Mayhap in naught but their dreams. — Dennis L. McKiernan

It's now the British Muse's fables That lie on maidens' bedside tables And haunt their dreams. They worship now The Vampire with his pensive brow, — Alexander Pushkin

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables. — Michel De Montaigne

I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Somebody's been feeding the boy fables. Probably the king's niece. Humph. Nice girl. Too many romantic notions, though. — Patrick W. Carr

There are not too many fables about man's misuse of sunflower seeds. — Richard Brautigan

He (Mohammed) seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected; he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. — Thomas Aquinas

Another notable difference between these
fables and their Muggle counterparts is that
Beedle's witches are much more active in seeking their fortunes than our fairy-tale heroines. Asha, Altheda, Amata and Babbitty Rabbitty are all witches who take their fate into their own hands, rather than taking a prolonged nap or waiting for someone to return a lost shoe. — J.K. Rowling

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

There, at the centre, are the artists who really form the consciousness of their time; they respond deeply, intuitively to what is happening, what has happened, and what will happen, and their response is expressed in metaphor, in image and in fable. — John Wain

Lascelles threw himself into the carriage, snorting with laughter and saying that he had never in his life heard of anything so ridiculous and comparing their snug drive through the London streets in Mr. Norrell's carriage to ancient French and Italian fables where fools set sail in milk-pails to fetch the moon's reflection from the bottom of a duckpond ... — Susanna Clarke

It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes. — Aesop

The Allwise Creator hath been dishonored by being made the author of fable and the human mind degraded by believing it. — Thomas Paine

We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We're starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools. We've become accustomed of late of putting little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons. We're spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools. The Bible states these great moral lessons better than any other man-made book. — Fisher Ames

It cannot be denied that as institutions, churches do good work. They operate schools and hospitals. Their charity outreaches, which take care of the homeless, sick, and hungry, have real impacts on communities. And while there are certainly hellfire-and-brimstone preachers around, there is counterweight in Presbyterian and Methodist ministers, who are grounded in a modicum of rationality, using Biblical stories as fables to teach psychological and ethical principles. — Gudjon Bergmann

The palpable sense of mystery in the desert air breeds fables, chiefly of lost treasure ... It is a question whether it is not better to be bitten by the little horned snake of the desert that goes sidewise and strikes without coiling, than by the tradition of a lost mine. — Mary Hunter Austin

Lyotard addresses... in Postmodern Fables... [that] ideas of difference, alterity and multiculturalism have become nothing more than streams of cultural capital, streams which themselves fashion, and are fashioned by, the demands of the global market. Hence, the following irony: 'What cultural capitalism has found is the marketplace of singularities'. The result of this discovery, which even reduces the 'postmodern' celebration of difference or otherness to a marketable strategy, is that ideas are stripped of their intrinsic value (value-rationality) and are judged by their value as commodities. This leads to the production of thought that is itself devoid of difference, for streams of cultural capital 'must all go in the right direction' and 'must converge'. Global capitalism, while appearing to affirm the potentiality of cultural differentiation, in fact subordinates difference and alterity to an instrumental logic of exchange, performance and control. — Nicholas Gane

Absorption, where fables will be no longer required. He then teaches us how Vikramaditya the Brave became King of Ujjayani. Some nineteen centuries ago, the renowned city of Ujjayani witnessed the birth of a prince to whom was given the gigantic name Vikramaditya. Even the Sanskrit-speaking people, who are not usually pressed for time, shortened it to "Vikram", and a little further West it would infallibly have been docked down to "Vik". Vikram was the second son of an old king Gandharba-Sena, concerning whom little favourable has reached posterity, except that he became an ass, married four queens, and had by them six sons, each of whom was more learned and powerful than the other. It so happened that in course of time the father died. Thereupon his eldest heir, who was known as Shank, succeeded to the carpet of Rajaship, and was instantly — Anonymous

I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told. Those of humble birth suffer their heartbreaks and celebrate their triumphs unnoticed by the bards, leaving no trave in the fables of their time. — Elizabeth Blackwell

For, from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night. And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power. — Thomas Hobbes

I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people. — Frederick The Great

Management and union may be likened to that serpent of the fables who on one body had two heads that fighting each other with poisoned fangs, killed themselves. — Peter Drucker

We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and new Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries — Thomas Paine

If thou trusteth to the book called the Scriptures, thou trusteth to the rotten staff of fables and falsehood. — Thomas Paine

A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables. — Richard Whately

One writes fables in periods of oppression. — Italo Calvino

Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the holy tears of pity
to unbind the martyr from the stake
break all the chains
put out the fires of civil war
stay the sword of the fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the Church from the white throat of Science?
Is it a small thing to make men truly free
to destroy the dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power
the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the fiend of fear? — Robert G. Ingersoll

I directed a piece of theater in Italy. We took nine fables from the town and we created a play. — Vincent Schiavelli

Don't rely too much on labels, for too often they are fables — Charles Spurgeon

The fable says that the tortoise won in the end, which is consoling, but the hare shows a good deal of speed and few signs of tiring. — Northrop Frye

The devil does not exist. I do not believe he exists. Nor do I believe the old saying that the devil's greatest accomplishment was to convince the majority of mankind that he does not exist. For me Satan and a literal hell are fables born of Christianity's desire to control humanity by increasing its fear of death. After all, I'm five thousands years old and I've never met Satan. — Christopher Pike

The dreams of childhood - it's airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond; so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown ... — Charles Dickens

Whatever truths or fables you may find in a thousand books, it is all a tower of Babel unless love holds it together. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. — Thomas Aquinas

She yawned. If the Lords of Entropy were to manifest themselves on Earth again as they had in the legendary past she felt she might welcome them as a relief, at least, to her boredom. Not, of course, that she believed in those terrible prehistoric fables, though sometimes she could not help wishing that they had really existed and that she had lived in them, for they must surely have been more colourful and stimulating than this present age, where dull Reason drove bright Romance away: granite scattering mercury. — Michael Moorcock

It is quite easy for stupid people to be happy; they believe in fables, and they trot on in a beaten track like a horse on a tramway. — Ouida

Fables from before the Anaheiming. — William Gibson

When you read The Arabian Nights you accept Islam. You accept the fables woven by generations as if they were by one single author or, better still, as if they had no author. And in fact they have one and none. Something so worked on, so polished by generations is no longer associated with and individual. In Kafka's case, it's possible that his fables are now part of human memory. What happened to Quixote could happen to to them. Let's say that all the copies of Quixote, in Spanish and in translation, were lost. The figure of Don Quixote would remain in human memory. I think that the idea of a frightening trial that goes on forever, which is at the core of The Castle and The Trial (both books that Kafka, of course, never wanted to publish because he knew they were unfinished), is now grown infinite, is now part of human memory and can now be rewritten under different titles and feature different circumstances. Kafka's work now forms a part of human memory. — Jorge Luis Borges

Our house was an old Tudor mansion. My father was very particular in keeping the smallest peculiarities of his home unaltered. Thus the many peaks and gables, the numerous turrets, and the mullioned windows with their quaint lozenge panes set in lead, remained very nearly as they had been three centuries back. Over and above the quaint melancholy of our dwelling, with the deep woods of its park and the sullen waters of the mere, our neighborhood was thinly peopled and primitive, and the people round us were ignorant, and tenacious of ancient ideas and traditions. Thus it was a superstitious atmosphere that we children were reared in, and we heard, from our infancy, countless tales of horror, some mere fables doubtless, others legends of dark deeds of the olden time, exaggerated by credulity and the love of the marvelous. ("Horror: A True Tale") — John Berwick Harwood

Lies, fables and romances must needs be probable, but not the truth and foundation of our faith. — Johann Georg Hamann

If I could, I would live forever in this moment. But no one can live in a moment, and time moves on. — Elora Bishop

It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system. — Will Durant

Science Fiction has always been and will always be a fable teacher of morality. — Ray Bradbury

READ. You have no business wanting to be a writer unless you are a reader. You should read fantasies and essays, biographies and poetry, fables and fairy tales. Read, read, read, read, read. — Kate DiCamillo

Without stories, we'd have even more trouble recognizing what's real. — Amy Neftzger

The mysteries, on belief in which theology would hang the destinies of mankind, are cunningly devised fables whose origin and growth are traceable to the age of Ignorance, the mother of credulity. — Edward Clodd

Lucilla saw Verus die, and then Lucilla died. Secunda saw Maximus die, and then Secunda died. Epitynchanus saw Diotimus die, and Epitynchanus died. Antoninus saw Faustina die, and then Antoninus died. Such is everything. Celer saw Hadrian die, and then Celer died. And those sharp-witted men, either seers or men inflated with pride, where are they? For instance the sharp-witted men, Charax and Demetrius the Platonist and Eudaemon, and any one else like them. All ephemeral, dead long ago. Some indeed have not been remembered even for a short time, and others have become the heroes of fables, and again others have disappeared even from fables. Remember this then, that this little compound, thyself, must either be dissolved, or thy poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere. — Marcus Aurelius

We do not just fear our predators, we are transfixed by them. We are prone to weave stories and fables and chat endlessly about them. — Peter Benchley

History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth. — Jean Cocteau

The marsh toads interviewed the eagle
'How come you venture so high?
Aren't you scared you'll hit the ceiling
That blue metal dome they call the sky?'

The eagle knew these earth-bound creatures
Were ignorant of
boundless space
And couldn't conceive
of infinities
Not being born to the wind's embrace."
From Bachchoo's Fables — Farrukh Dhondy

Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables. — Sappho

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. — Isaac Asimov

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
Fables for Our Time, Moral of "The Owl Who Was God" (1940) — James Thurber

CHILDHOOD I That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court, nobler than Mexican and Flemish fables; his domain, insolent azure and verdure, runs over beaches called by the shipless waves, names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celt. At the border of the forest - dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare, - the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea. Ladies who stroll on terraces adjacent to the sea; baby girls and giantesses, superb blacks in the verdigris moss, jewels upright on the rich ground of groves and little thawed gardens, - young mothers and big sisters with eyes full of pilgrimages, sultanas, princesses tyrannical of costume and carriage, little foreign misses and young ladies gently unhappy. What boredom, the hour of the "dear body" and "dear heart." II — Arthur Rimbaud

In the cloudy swirl of misleading ideas surrounding public discussion of addiction, there's one that stands out: the misconception that drug taking by itself will lead to addiction - in other words, that the cause of addiction resides in the power of the drug over the human brain. It is one of the bedrock fables sustaining the so-called War on Drugs. — Gabor Mate

India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trignometry, quandratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop. — Lin Yutang

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms. — Khaled Hosseini

After reading Edgar Allan Poe. Something the critics have not noticed: a new literary world pointing to the literature of the 20th Century. Scientific miracles, fables on the pattern A+ B, a clear-sighted, sickly literature. No more poetry but analytic fantasy. Something monomaniacal. Things playing a more important part than people; love giving away to deductions and other forms of ideas, style, subject and interest. The basis of the novel transferred from the heart to the head, from the passion to the idea, from the drama to the denouement. — Jules De Goncourt

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

Such is the passage, x. 14, where, after giving an account that the sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the command of Joshua, (a tale only fit to amuse children). This tale of the sun standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without being known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows anything about it. — Thomas Paine

The world is lying in misery, we ourselves are sinners, men are perishing in sin every day. The gospel is the sole means of escape; let us preach it to the world while yet we may. So desperate is the need that we have no time to engage in vain babblings or old wives' fables. While we are discussing the exact location of the churches of Galatia, men are perishing under the curse of the law; while we are settling the date of Jesus' birth, the world is doing without its Christmas message. — J. Gresham Machen

What did the mat say to the door? You must be really aDOORable to open up to everyone who knock at you. And I welcome everyone and what do I get? People stepping all over me — Ana Claudia Antunes

The story of Terisa and Geraden began very much like a fable. She was a princess in a high tower. He was a hero come to rescue her. She was the only daughter of wealth and power. He was the seventh son of the lord of the seventh Care. She was beautiful from the auburn hair that crowned her head to the tips of her white toes. He was handsome and courageous. She was held prisoner by enchantment. He was a fearless breaker of enchantments.
As in all the fables, they were made for each other. — Stephen R. Donaldson

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

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

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 ITS GUERDON, THEY ARE ALL VANISHING, FLEEING TO FABLES, CANNOT BE MOORED. - Ralph Waldo Emerson — Ransom Riggs

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

A hakawati is a teller of tales, myths, and fables. A storyteller, and entertainer. A troubadour of sorts, someone who earns his keep by beguiling an audience with yarns. Like the word "hekayah" story, fable, news, hakawati is derived from the Lebanese word "haki", which means talk or conversation. This suggests that in Lebanese the mere act of talking is storytelling. — Rabih Alameddine

The noblest study of mankind is Man, says Man. — James Thurber

What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Not my job to judge, boy." Baba Yaga filled and lit the pipe again. "But I do observe that its difficult to escape familiar patterns. When you live your life with cruel words, you look for people to give them to you. When you escape and evil stepmother, you take an uncaring bride. When your father throws you out, you love someone who won't love you back. And to keep yourself in cruelty, you're willing to risk head and hands on the mayors side board. Keep the pattern going. Hm." ~ Baba Yaga, Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables, Steven Harper, Pg. 32. — Steven Harper

I have come to the conclusion that a goodly number of the fables that pass under the name of the Samian slave, Aesop, were derived from India, probably from the same source whence the same tales were utilised in the Jatakas, or Birth-stories of Buddha. — Joseph Jacobs

2PE1.16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 2PE1.17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 2PE1.18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. — Anonymous

All our language is composed of brief little dreams; and the wonderful thing is that we sometimes make of them strangely accurate and marvelously reasonable thoughts. What should we be without the help of that which does not exist? Very little. And our unoccupied minds would languish if fables, mistaken notions, abstractions, beliefs, and monsters, hypotheses, and the so-called problems of metaphysics did not people with beings and objectless images our natural depths and darkness. Myths are the souls of our actions and our loves. We cannot act without moving towards a phantom. We can love only what we create. — Paul Valery

Do you have children, Dominick?"
"Nope."
"Well if you did," she said, "you would most likely read them not only Curious George but also fables and fairy tales. Stories where humans outsmart witches, where giants and ogres are felled and good triumphs over evil. Your parents read them to you and your brother. Did they not?"
"My mother did," I said.
"Of course she did. It is the way we teach our children to cope with a world too large and chaotic for them to comprehend. A world that seems, at times, too random. Too indifferent. Of course, the religions of the world will do the same for you, whether you're a Hindu or a Christian or a Rosicrucian. They're brother and sister, really; children's fables and religious parables ... — Wally Lamb

It's in my blood, as magic is in yours." His mouth is still smiling, but his tone is somber. "I couldn't stop writing even if I wanted to. — Elora Bishop

The way some people read the parables reminds me of Aesop's Fables. And the way others read them reminds me of the way some discern clue after perplexing clue in their Beatle albums as evidence for a cover-up of Paul's having died in a car accident. — Jared C. Wilson

Not stories told by wolf or man to frighten children, of Wolfbane and of werewolves, of grasht and goblins and of silly vampires, fables to frighten cowards with the threat of evil and of sin. But the power that lives beyond those stories, and makes them strong indeed, that lives in nightmares and in sleep. That is ribbed into the very fabric of conscious being. The power of love and hate. — David Clement-Davies

At the bottom of the box were two big fairy-tale collections our father had sent us sometime after our parents divorced in 1963. I was four and my sister was five. We never saw him again. One book was a beautifully illustrated collection of Russian fairy tales inscribed, "To Rachel, from Daddy." The other, a book of Japanese fables, was inscribed to me. It had been years since I had opened them. I stared at the handwriting. Something seemed a bit off. Then it dawned on me - both inscriptions bore my own adolescent scrawl. I had always remembered the books and our father's dedications as proof of his love for us. Yet, how malleable our memories are, even if our brains are intact. Neuroscientists now suggest that while the core meaning of a long-term memory remains, the memory transforms each time we attempt to retrieve it. In fact, anatomical changes occur in the brain every single time we remember. As Proust said, "The only paradise is paradise lost. — Mira Bartok

National literature begins with fables and ends with novels. — Joseph Joubert

Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes. — Thomas Jefferson

Okay. He had a point but it wasn't like I could tell him anything. I
could see me now: Guess what? You ever watch Clash of the Titans or
read any Greek fables? Well those gods are real and yeah, I'm sort of
a descendant of them. Kind of like the stepchild no one wants to claim.
Oh, and I hadn't even been around mortals until three years ago. Can
we still be friends? — Jennifer L. Armentrout

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). — David Jeremiah

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. 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. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable. — Hypatia

We all love stories, even if they're not true. As we grow up, one of the ways we learn about the world is through the stories we hear. Some are about particular events and personalities within our personal circles of family and friends. Some are part of the larger cultures we belong to - the myths, fables, and fairy tales about our own ways of life that have captivated people for generations. In stories that are told often, the line between fact and myth can become so blurred that we easily mistake one for the other. This is true of a story that many people believe about education, even though it's not real and never really was. It goes like this: Young children go to elementary school mainly to learn the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. These skills are essential so they can do well academically in high school. If they go on to higher education and graduate with a good degree, they'll find a well-paid job and the country will prosper too. — Ken Robinson

I was reading my son some fables; it made for good nighttime reading. These stories were very vivid and very strange and occasionally bizarrely violent. It was a very free landscape. — Patrick DeWitt

Men do not invent Myths. They only invent fables, and tell lies. True Myths create themselves, and find their expression in the men who serve their purpose. — Denis Johnston

It's kind of strange ... All these so-called myths and fables. Everyone seems to have the same ones. They cross cultures and continents. Everyone has their own versions of unicorns, witches, even the Fates. Now we know why. Because they're real. — Maurissa Guibord

2Ti4.3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 2Ti4.4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. — Anonymous