Fable/history

Famous quotes containing the words fable and/or history:

    But there’s another knowledge that my heart destroys
    As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy’s
    Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
    That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company;
    Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
    That I am still their servant though all are underground.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)