One afternoon, a fox was walking through the forest and spotted a bunch of grapes hanging from a lofty branch.
“Just the thing to quench my thirst,” he thought.
Taking a couple of steps back, the fox jumped and just missed the hanging grapes. He tried again and again but still failed to reach them.
Finally, giving up, the fox turned his nose up and said, “They’re probably sour anyway,” and walked away.
It’s easy to despise what you can’t have.
This is one of the popular among Aesop’s fables, a collection of tales from the Greek story-teller, Aesop. Aesop was a slave in ancient Greece. He was a keen observer of both animals and people. Most of the characters in his stories are animals, some of which take on human characteristic and are personified in ways of speech and emotions. However, the majority of his characters retain their animalistic qualities; tortoise are slow, hares are quick, tigers eat bird, etc. Aesop uses these qualities and natural tendencies of animals to focus on human traits and wisdom. Each fable has an accompanying moral to be learned from the tale.