Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it Macaulay down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till theyare fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

-1st Baron
  'Milton', in the Edinburgh Review,  Aug.

With weeping and with laughter Still is the story told, How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old.

-1st Baron
  Lays of  Ancient Rome,'Horatius', stanza 70.

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.

-Mailer, Norman Kingsley
  In Esquire,  Jun.

Man kann sehr wohl in einer Geschichte sein, ohne sie zu verstehen. A person can be fully involved in a story without understanding it.

-Mann,Thomas
  Joseph und seine Bru«  der ('Joseph and his Brothers').

I don't think there's another person in America that wants to tell this story as much as I do.

-North, Oliver
  Invoking the Fifth  Amendment at the House Committee investigating arms sales to Iran,10 Dec.

A story with a moral appended is like the bite of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

-O Henry pseudonym of  William Sydney Porter
  Strictly Business,'The Gold That Glittered'.

Porque todo es irreal en este cuento. Nada sucedio¤   como se indica. Hechos y sitios se deformaron por el empen‹  o de tocar la verdad mediante una ficcio¤  n, una mentira. Todo irreal, nada sucedio¤   como aqu |¤ se refiere. Pero fue un pobre intento de contribuir a que el gran crimen nunca se repita. For everything in this story is unreal. Nothing happened the way it was suggested. Facts and places were distorted by that persistent desire to touch the truth by means of fiction, a lie. All of it is unreal; nothing happened the way it istold here.It was a poorattempt to help ensure that the great crime is never repeated.

-Pacheco,Jose¤   Emilio
  Morira¤  s lejos (translated asYouWill Die in a Distant Land, 1991).

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig- tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet†I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

-Plath, Sylvia
  The BellJar, ch.7.

   Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

-Ruskin,John
  Seven Lamps of Architecture,'The Lamp of Memory', sect.7.

No story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from oldöit is the new combinations that make them new.

-Rushdie, (Ahmed) Salman
  Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

As Michael read the Gaelic scroll It seemed the story of the soul; And those who wrought, lest there should fail From earth the legend of the Gael, Seemed warriors of Eternal Mind Still holding in a world gone blind, From which belief and hope had gone, The lovely magic of its dawn.

-Russell, GeorgeWilliam pseudonym  Ó
  The Interpreters,'Michael'.

The events of life have never fallen into the form of the short story or the form of the poem, or into any other form.Yourown consciousnessisthe only formyouneed.

-Saroyan,William
  The DaringYoung Man on the FlyingTrapeze,'A Cold Day'.

This is the story of the unconquerable fortressöthe American home.

-Selznick, David O(liver)
  SinceYouWent Away, opening line.

All you had to do was tell people what they wanted to hear and they would believe you no matter how implausible your story might be.

-Sharpe,Tom (Thomas Ridley)
  Wilt, ch.18.

Whena scandalousstory isbelieved againstone, thereis certainly no comfort like the conscience of having deserved it.

-Sheridan, Richard Brinsley
  Joseph Surface.The School for Scandal, act 4, sc.3.

L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes, c'est un e¤  pisode dans celle des hommes. Love is the story of a woman's life, but onlyan episode in the life of a man.

-Stae«  l, Germaine Necker, Baronne de
  De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations.

'öd!'said my mother,'what is all this storyabout?'ö'A Cock and a Bull,'said Yorick.

-Sterne, Laurence
^67  Tristram Shandy, bk.9, ch.33.

There is always something of the writer in the work but I don't think Melville had to be swallowed by a whale to write a great novel. If I had lived the lives of all the characters of the songs I've written, that would truly be an extraordinary story.

-Stipe, Michael
In the DailyTelegraph, 20 Oct.

Those are old patterns, faded and bleached in the glare of the pressing present moments in the story.

-Stuart, Francis
'Jacob: An Episode from aTheme Based upon the Biblical Story of Jacob, Laban andTwo Daughters'.

I'll say, a strangemanisa marvel, with hismighty talk; but what's a squabble in your back-yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that there's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed. 834

-Synge,John Millington
  Pegeen Mike.The Playboy of theWesternWorld, act 3.