All That Glitters is Not Gold - Moral Story for FA BA Classes

All That Glitters Is Not Gold is an oft-quoted proverb. It means appearances are deceptive. Gold shines brightly in the light but so does brass. What looks like gold may be of little worth. What appears to be useful may turn out to be harmful. We should not be deceived by the appearance of things or people. The story of a foolish stag is a good reminder of this universal Once upon a time, there lived a stout stag in a deep dense forest.

Like all other stags, he had smart body and slim leg. His heavy head was crowned with seemly twisted and attractive antlers of good size. The strongly pointed offshoots of his antlers lent his outstanding grace and elegance. His supple, soft, smooth skin; his fine, fair, fluffy, figure; his active, energetic, agile actions made him haughty, arrogant and somewhat foolish. He considered himself to be a paragon of beauty and briskness. One day, he felt awfully thirsty. He went to a stream to quench his thirst. While drinking water, the smooth flowing stream reflected his fine figure in its crystal clear water. The striking symmetry of his elegant image stupefies the sag himself. He was stunned and surprised to his fascinating antlers. He was captivated by their matchless beauty and grace. He said to himself,

"How beautiful my horns are! They make me majestic."

Then eventually he caught sight of his slim, skinny and slender legs. He was deeply depressed and dejected. He began to bemoan his bad luck for having so lank, lean legs and clumsy, cloven hoofs. He cursed them for their ugliness and heaved a doleful sigh. He nagged and grumbled about his being flawed and faulty.

"It is a pity to have so captivating antlers with so ugly, lean and loathsome legs. I feel ashamed of himself. Allah is not doing justice with me."

he said to himself. Thus, he became ungrateful creature. It was like finding fault with the Divine Craft. As a poet says:

"The beauty of his antlers praised,
But at his legs in horror gazed:
They looked like spindles as they shrank,
Out his sight beneath the bank."

When he was absorbed in these thoughts, he heard the growling sound of blood-thirsty hounds from a distance. A quick fast fright deadened his legs and dulled his spirit. In the distance he saw a pack of hounds rushing towards him with a flying speed. A hunter was also following them. The innate instinct to save his life startled him from his numbness and he darted like an arrow. As far as the land was even and open, his ugly lean legs and weak feet of which he was too much disappointed and disgusted carried him far away at a safe distance from the hunter and the hounds. He was racing like a fast blowing gale. Soon he got away from the chasing hounds. Then his bad luck brought him to a patch of forest overgrown with thick thorny bushes. He had no choice except to cross the dense forest.

While passing through the closely jammed bushes, his attractive antlers of which he was so proud got entangled in them. He made every effort to get rid of them, but all to no avail. His strenuous struggle ended in smoke. His lean legs, which he hated so much, had proved of huge help to him. They brought him away from the hounds. But his majestic horns of which he was so proud had brought him on the doorstep of downright destruction. Just at that critical juncture of life and death, the poor foolish stag realized his folly but it was too late then. He reproached himself thus,

"Woe is to me! How I was deceived! The feet which would havve saved me I despised and I gloried in these antlers which have caused me ruin. How wrong am I talking things bt their surface value."

But before he could gable some more words of curse for his antlers, the howling hounds followed his scent and overtook him. They with a cry of triumph fell upon him. His throat was choked by the long and sharp teeth of the hounds. In no time, he was torn into a number of big and small fragments. The deception of his eyes and wrong judgment had caused his death. We learn a lesson from this story that every creation of God is a beautiful piece of art. It has some purpose. Even, sometimes, the ugliest things prove very useful and the beautiful ones turn out to be deceptive and abominable.

Possible Morals:

1. All that glitters is not gold.
2. Pride hath a fall.
3. Appearances are often deceptive.
4. Handsome is that handsome does.
5. Do not ind fault with the divine
6. Go deep down things and never and never hand. take them by their face value.