Arabian Tale Quotes

The passion for travelling is, I believe, instinctive in some natures. We have seen men persevere in their enterprises against the most formidable obstacles; and, without means or friends, and even ignorant of the languages of the various countries through which they passed, pursue their perilous journeys into remote places, until, like the knight in the Arabian tale, they succeeded in snatching a memorial from every shrine they visited. ~ James Holman

A tale can start in many ways. Thus, it is many tales, and at the same time each of these is but one way of telling the same story. ~ Juliet Marillier

There was no possibility of redemption in his tale. There wasn't an iota of hope in it. But the truth is, life goes on and stories have to end, and yet not end - which is also one of the features of any great story. ~ Aruni Kashyap

Maybe it was a consequence of reaching the end of the end, finding out the dark, mad, gleaming tale had concluded the only way it could in the real world
with mortal people doing mortal things, a father and daughter, facing their deaths. ~ Marisha Pessl

When, sometime around my fortieth birthday, I was struck by the urge to try to write a novel, I was vastly comforted to learn that Rex Stout didn't write his first Nero Wolfe tale until he was forty-seven, and that he proceeded to write them right up to his death at the age of eighty-eight. It was considerably less comforting to learn that he typically completed a novel in thirty-eight days, and that he always got it right on the first try. P. G. Wodehouse once said, "Stout's supreme triumph was the creation of Archie Goodwin." That's how I've always felt about it, too. When I returned those first Rex Stout books to my librarian, I said to her, "Do you have any more of these Archie Goodwin stories?" She smiled, I recall, and said, "Why, yes. Dozens. ~ Rex Stout

And so they parted. And though the Lord of the Eagles became in after days the King of All Birds and wore a golden crown, and his fifteen chieftains golden collars (made of the gold that the dwarves gave them), Bilbo never saw them again - except high and far off in the battle of Five Armies. But as that comes in at the end of this tale we will say no more about it just now. ~ Anonymous

Mine was the naïveté of the living; now it is the confusion and longing of the dead. Pray when I am finished with this tale, I will go on to something greater. Punishment even would have its shape, its purpose, some conviction of meaning. I cannot imagine eternal flames. But I can imagine eternal meaning. ~ Anne Rice

In this way he continued until he was fourteen years of age, when his extraordinary destiny took him by the hand, and led him, step by step, through adventures so wonderful that words can scarce describe them. ~ Arabian Nights

She told everything as quickly as she could, stringing sentences together the way she had when she was a little girl. By the end of the tale,she found herself defending her mother,angry at the world that made it necessary for her to explain.Impulsively, she grabbed a curry comb and began to brush Red Star's coat vigorously.She brushed for a long time,and tears began to blur her vision.She tried to resign herself to what seemed to be happening.Then a hand covered hers and squeezed affectionately. Mac took the curry comb away,and bent to kiss the back of her hand.
"So,Miss King,will you do me the honor of accompanying me to the social next Friday evening at the Congregational Church?"
Miss King embarrassed herself by saying yes! so loudly that the dozing horse in the stall next to Red Star jumped and kicked the side of his stall in fright.The two young people laughed, and MacKenzie lifted LisBeth into the air and swung her around in his arms.
Sick with apprehension,Jesse had been unable to remain alone for long.She returned to the kitchen to help Augustus with meal preparations, praying earnestly for LisBeth and MacKenzie while she worked.When the two young people burst through the kitchen door together,their happy smiles told the older women all they needed to know.
LisBeth was sobered when she saw her Mother. "Mother,I..."
Jesse held up a hand to stop her. "It's all right,LisBeth. I'm glad everything turned out.I've been praying for you both."
"M ~ Stephanie Grace Whitson

Where have all the feelings gone?
Why is the deadliest sin - to love as I loved you?
Now unblessed, homesick in time,
soon to be freed from care, from human pain.
My tale is the most bitter truth:
Time pays us but with earth & dust, and a dark, silent grave.
Remember, my child: Without innocence the cross is only iron,
hope is only an illusion & Ocean Soul's nothing but a name…

The Child bless thee & keep thee forever ~ Tuomas Holopainen Of "Nightwish"

Love was more than just a fleeting desire, or a brief glimpse into a fairy tale, or a flash of playful flirtation in her beautiful hazel eyes. It was more than infatuation with a person's best qualities, or reluctant acceptance of their less appealing traits. Real love meant loving the whole person, in every form, in every state, in every way. It was what transformed the ordinary monotony of everyday life into extraordinary moments of warmth and compassion and joy. ~ Jacqueline E. Smith

Once upon a time, he might've chased her and tumbled her in the sheets with the promise of more in the future. ~ Katherine McIntyre

Love is not a businessman who wants to see a return on his investments. And imagination needs only a few nails on which to hang its veil. Whether they are of gold, tin, or covered with rust makes no difference to it. Wherever it gets caught, it is caught. Thornbush or rosebush, as soon as the veil of moonlight and mother-of-pearl has fallen on it, either becomes a fairy tale out of A Thousand and One Nights ~ Erich Maria Remarque

Flames moved towards him
and dropped within
-
singed and marred
his tender skin ...
(the frightful plight tale) ~ Muse

Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can't believe they really did. Somebody has said that 'hate is only love that has missed its way.' I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other ... just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you ... and I think death would show it to them. I'm glad I found out in life. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Contrary to what many may think, immortality is not a fairy tale invented to compensate for an unhappy life. Rather, it is the perception shared by nearly all sentient beings that our conscious lives are not bounded by this time and space. We are not merely lumps of animate matter. We are living spirits - we all feel this innately. And in our deepest hearts, we know that we can only find ultimate fulfilment in union with the supreme spiritual reality - a reality that appears, even during this earthly life, to take us beyond the narrow limits of time. ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

You
see, I came into this world just like I'm assuming
you did - full of excitement and
promise. I wanted to do so much good work,
help so many people, and give as much as I
could to those who needed me. But then I
learned a very harsh lesson - the world
doesn't always give back. I am not a tragic case of the world; I am
the world - cruel, unfair, and not a fairy tale.
People are not born heroes or villains;
they're created by the people around them.
And one day when your bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed view of life gets its first taste of
reality, when bitterness and anger first run
through your veins, you'll discover that you
are just like me - and it'll scare you to death. ~ Chris Colfer

Benny Imura was appalled to learn that the Apocalypse came with homework.
"Why do we have to study this stuff?" he demanded. "We already know what happened. People started turning into zoms, the zoms ate just about everyone, everyone who dies becomes a zom, so the moral of this tale is: Try not to die. ~ Jonathan Maberry

But most important, she had broken through that invisible wall of terror that surrounded her, and lived to tell the tale. ~ Robin Schwarz

The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told. ~ Walter Mosley

Every success stories will have an inspiring tale of failures. ~ Vishnu Kanchan

I'm Detective Piper of the Fairyland Metro Police, and I've been called in to investigate the incident of the missing frog prince ... ~ A.F. Stewart

Each piece of trash that floated here seems to have brought a story with it across the sea, because anything that's been thrown away has its own tale. ~ Wu Ming-Yi

The fairy tale that really scared me was Bluebeard. That's the one where he just kills one after another of these woman, these wives, that he lures up to the castle. I just think about fairy tales as stories women told their children to warn them? To keep them safe, to make sure they married up, all the things that would have safeguarded them in the olden days. ~ Meryl Streep

In this fairy tale, I'm not the hero who scales the drawbridge. I'm the wolf who darkens the door." He was so close now that he was nearly pressed against her. "And when I do valiantly scale bridges to save the princess, it's only because I intend to burn those bridges down. ~ Kait Ballenger

As fear approaches in the night,
Flee from the field and hide from sight.
The power stirs, the anger wakes,
The rage upon the darkness breaks,
A fearful lesson, learned full well,
A tale that they alone can tell. ~ Emily Rodda

The tale that's told for no other reason but companionship, which is another (and my favorite) definition of literature, the tale that's told for companionship and to teach something religious, of religious reverence, about real life, in this real world which literature should (and here does) reflect. ~ Jack Kerouac

So this guy walks into a dragon's lair
and he says
why the long tale?
HAR HAR BUDDY
says the dragon
FUCK YOU. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

The history of life is a story of massive removal followed by differentiation within a few surviving stocks, not the conventional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Approaching Em's cottage, especially at night, always enchanted him. It was like walking into those fairy tales he'd read by flashlight under his bedcovers, full of rose-covered cottages and small stone bridges, glowing hearths and content couples hand in hand. His relieved father had thought he was reading Playboy but instead he was doing something infinitely more pleasurable and dangerous. He was dreaming of the day he'd create this fairy-tale world for himself, and he'd succeeded, at least in part. He had himself become a fairy. And as he looked at Em's cottage, its buttery light beaconing, he knew he'd walked right into the book he'd used to comfort himself when the world seemed cold and hard and unfair. Now he smiled and walked toward the house, carrying his Christmas Eve offering. ~ Louise Penny

...the prose tradition had died two centuries before and the recreation of a full canon of all-purpose Scots was beyond even Scott's skill, nor did he attempt it, except, perhaps in the magnificent Wandering Willie's Tale. He took the only course open to him, of writing his narrative in English and using Scots only for those who, given their social class, would still be speaking it: daft Davie Gellatley in Waverley, the gypsies and Dandie Dinmont in Guy Mannering, the Headriggs in Old Mortality, Edie Ochiltree and the fisher-folk of Musselcrag in The Antiquary, Andrew Fairservice in Rob Roy, the Deanses in The Heart of Midlothian, Meg Dods in St. Ronan's Well, and so on.

The procedure gave reality to the Scots characters whose ways and ethos it was Scott's main purpose to portray, and the author in his best English, which lumbered along rather badly at times, did little more than lay out the setting for the action and act as impressario for the characters as they played their roles...

...Scott's felicity in conveying character and action through their Scots speech inspired his imitators for the next hundred years - Susan Ferrier, Hogg, Macdonald, Stevenson, Barrie, Crockett, Alexander, George Douglas, and John Buchan. The tradition of narrative in standard English and dialogue in various degrees of dialect has been the usual procedure since. ~ David Murison

He was pale skinned,with eyes like honey and hair that held the promise of fire.Had Rycca been a man,she would have looked just like him.
Happy,happy day that she was not.
"What brings you to Hawkforte,friend?" Dragon asked as he took the seat opposite his new aquaintance.
"I seek work of my sister,the Lady Rycca of Wolscroft.I have had troubling word of her in Normandy and wish to be assured of her safety."
Trouble involving Rycca? How astonishing. Dragon hid a grin and said, "You would be called-?"
"Thurlow.And you are-?"
This time,Dragon's smile would not be denied. "Ah,well,as to that,therein hangs a tale. ~ Josie Litton

There's not a wind but whispers of thy name; And not a flow'r that grows beneath the moon, But in its hues and fragrance tells a tale Of thee, my love. ~ Bryan Procter

You don't get it. They gave me beauty and song, and then I was left in the woods to grow up for sixteen years before being handed over to you. I don't know anything about ruling. I don't even really know what taxes are. I was in the woods in the real world. In the dreamworld, I hid like a mouse and then organized balls and parties. ~ Liz Braswell

That's like a fairy-tale princess in a patrol car, huh? But hey, even, Disney princesses are toughening up these days. We're all capable of many things, right? ~ Heather Graham

I'll tell you a secret.
Old storytellers never die.
They disappear into their own story. ~ Vera Nazarian

The story it told was unremarkable: a tale of love found and lost- the oldest story in the world. The only story. ~ Anita Diamant

There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale. ~ Charles De Lint

Few Westerners understand the post-Soviet soul like Lawrence Sheets. Whether it is his hair-raising stories of the region's myriad armed conflicts or the black humor with which he captures the moral and physical impoverishment of a collapsing empire, Sheets brilliantly condenses twenty tumultuous years into an eminently readable tale. ~ Matthew Brzezinski