Aesop's Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs (2002)
340. THE DONKEY AND THE CRICKET
Perry 184 (Syntipas
1)
A donkey heard the sound of a cricket chirping and he enjoyed the sound
so much that he asked, 'What kind of food gives you that sweet-sounding
voice?' The cricket replied, 'My food is the air and the dew.' The donkey
thought that this diet would also make him sound like a cricket, so he
clamped his mouth shut, letting in only the air and having nothing but
dew for his food. In the end, he died of hunger.
This fable shows that you must not act unnaturally, trying to achieve
some impossible thing.
Source:
Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura
Gibbs.
Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New
cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.
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