"Parable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much in Baxter's poems that I would gladly quote, but must leave with regret. Here is a curious, skilful, and, in a homely way, poetic ballad, embodying a good parable. I give only a few of ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... precision what Mr Merdle's business was, except that it was to coin money, these were the terms in which everybody defined it on all ceremonious occasions, and which it was the last new polite reading of the parable of the camel and the needle's eye to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... search carefully and prayerfully we shall find the doctrine of entire sanctification in many of the parables of our Saviour. Take, for instance, the parable of the sower. Here we are expressly told that the seed is the word of God, and, of course, the sowers are all ministers and Christian workers who are trying in any right way, to diffuse a knowledge and ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... and, under the green holly, remember how much softer friendship was failing, and how much of other loving, folly. And yet—you are not to confuse the thistle with the cedar that is in Lebanon; nor to forget—if the spinous nature of it become too cruel to provoke and offend—the parable of Joash to Amaziah, and its fulfilment: "There passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... and wives have experienced this truth in their bereavement; their love not decaying, but passing into resurrection. The Hindus have a fine parable of Kamadeva, the eastern Cupid. He shot Siva, who, turning on him in rage, reduced the mischievous archer to ashes. All the gods wept over his ashes. Then he arose in spiritual form, free from every physical trait or quality. Literature, both eastern ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... to-day, and others even mightier in evil. A Messalina and a Poppae do not survive individually, for such as these are not human in the strictest sense, in that they lack what is called a soul which is a property common to humanity. The parable of the woman of Corinth who seduced Menippus, a disciple of Apollonius, is misunderstood. We have come to regard all mortal bodies as the tenements of immortal souls. This is true of men but is not always true of women. Such women are not ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... sixteenth chapter of St. Luke for confirmation of my belief;—at the parable of the "certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day"; and who, in torment, after death, called to Abraham to send Lazarus from Heaven to visit the Tortured One's ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... of the second canon, containing Joshua, Judges with Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah with Lamentations, Ezekiel and the twelve minor prophets. It was not completed prior to 300 B.C., because the book of Jonah was not written before. This work may be called a historical parable composed for a didactic purpose, giving a milder, larger view of Jehovah's favor than the orthodox one, that excluded the Gentiles. Ruth, containing an idyllic story with an unfinished genealogy attached, meant to glorify the house of David, and ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... this expedient as a mere illustration of the sequence in the presentation of signs by deaf-mutes, the following is quoted from an essay by Rev. J.R. Keep, in American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, vol. xvi, p. 223, as the order in which the parable of the Prodigal Son is translated ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... the subjects represented in the windows of the cathedral, it appears that the north windows of the north-east transept depicted the Parable of the Sower. The ancient glass, however, has been displaced, and a good deal of it has been moved to the windows of the north choir aisle, between the transept and the Chapel of the Martyrdom, which are of great beauty, and should be examined carefully. In the transept ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... edition of the Bible printed at Oxford, in which the page containing the "Parable of the Vineyard" in Luke xx. was headed "Parable ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... every shilling which I need; yet I also know, that He delights in being earnestly entreated, and that He takes pleasure in. the continuance in prayer, and in the importuning Him, which so clearly is to be seen from the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. Luke xviii. 1-8. For these reasons I gave myself again particularly to prayer last evening, that the Lord would send further means, being also especially led to do so, in addition to the above reasons, because there had come ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... apparent separation is due to our own misconception of the true nature of the inherent relation between the Universal and the Individual. This is the lesson which the Great Teacher has so luminously out before us in the parable of the ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... hearers did not grasp the full force of the misapplication of the parable. Mr. Price could not refrain from laughing. The others joined with him when the humor of the reply dawned upon them. Pointing scornfully at the fat Sheriff, they shouted gleefully, while Slim blushed through ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... spiritually best the physically worst—like the gods whom the Athenians enclosed in outer cases of satyrs and hideous masks of misshapen men—Alick's face was never lovely. But his soul? If that could have been seen, the old carved parable of the Greeks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... balance the two sections of movements in binary form are more satisfactory than the two sections (two, so far as outward division is concerned) of modern sonatas. The grain of mustard-seed in the parable grew into a tree, and so, likewise, have the few bars of modulation of early days grown into an important section. However difficult to determine the exact moment at which a movement in sonata-form really ceased to be binary, there seems no doubt that that ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... easily Cato falls into the trap. He takes up his parable, and preaches his sermon, but he does it with a marvellous enthusiasm, so that we cannot understand that the man who wrote it intended to demolish it all in the next few pages. I will translate his last words of Cato's ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... of art is a mission of sentiment and love, that the novel of to-day should take the place of the parable and the fable of early times, and that the artist has a larger and more poetic task than that of suggesting certain prudential and conciliatory measures for the purpose of diminishing the fright caused by his pictures. His aim should ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... pit of manure and sipping till it could sip no more. Doom that fly to the life which the spider leads, and it would drown itself in your milk jug on the spot, unable to bear up under such a weight of care and toil. In this parable the fly is Mukkun and the spider is Shylock, and my sympathies are not wholly given to the former. I quite admit that Shylock worries him cruelly, and if he had not given hostages to fortune, he would abscond ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... reality; I would not upon any account trade upon my opinions, and what I especially dread is to appear in my own eyes to be passing bad money. Jesus has influenced me more in this respect than people may think, for He loved to show up and deride hypocrisy, and in His parable of the Prodigal Son He places morality upon its true footing—kindness of heart—while seeming to upset ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... complete harmony with the mythical and allegorical manner of expression used by others. For instance there is in ancient Hindu literature a parable attributed ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... sculptor of one attitude, but a hewer of men and women. Consider the Balzac. It is not Balzac the writer of novels, but Balzac the prophet, the seer, the great natural force—like Rodin himself. That is why these kindred spirits converse across the years, as do the Alpine peaks in that striking parable of Turgenieff's. No doubt in bronze the Balzac will arouse less wrath from the unimaginative; in plaster it produces the effect of some ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... say about them? You remember the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. Jesus said that this poor sinning publican, who smote upon his breast, and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner," was the one that God looked upon with favor, not the ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... lifelessly. "Well, they got along pretty well outside," he continued. "Some of the children didn't turn out just what you might have expected; but raising children is mighty uncertain business. Yes, they got along." He ended his parable with a sort of weary sigh, as if oppressed by experience. Grace looked at his slovenly figure, his smoky complexion, and the shaggy outline made by his untrimmed hair and beard, and she wondered how Louise could marry him; but she liked him, and she was willing to accept ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... life. But it is not enough to make a clear broad road out of the heart of this dense and matted jungle forest; its inhabitants are in many cases so degraded, so hopeless, so utterly desperate that we shall have to do something more than make roads. As we read in the parable, it is often not enough that the feast be prepared, and the guests be bidden; we must needs go into the highways and byways and compel them to come in. So it is not enough to provide our City Colony and our Farm Colony, and then rest on our oars as if we had done our work. That kind ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... interpretation (which I do not say Wordsworth intended) that the 'birth' spoken of is the birth or evolution of the distinctively self-conscious Man from the Animals and the animal-natured, unself-conscious human beings of a preceding age, then the parable unfolds itself perfectly naturally and convincingly. THAT birth certainly was sleep and a forgetting; the grace and intuition and instinctive perfection of the animals was lost. But the forgetfulness was not entire; the memory lingered long of an age ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... these words afterwards and to make of them a parable, but it seemed that Wogan barely heard them now. "Come!" he said, and taking her arm he set off ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... broken loose from the decencies of society—more, perhaps, in my early days than there are now. But our principles at least were sound; and not only was there thus a restorative and conservative spirit among us, but, what was of not less importance, there was a broad gulf, like that in the parable, between the two grand classes, the good and the evil—a gulf which, when it secured the better class from contamination, interposed no barrier to the reformation and return of even the most vile and profligate, if repentant. But this gulf has disappeared, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... all things, both in Nature and in Art were but transitory reflexions of the real and eternal. 'Alles vergaengliche ist nur ein Gleichnis'—all things transitory are but a parable, an allegory of truth and reality—such are some of the last words of his great Poem; and thus too he regarded his own poetry. 'I have,' he said, 'always regarded all that I have produced as merely symbolic, and I did not much care whether what I made ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... the account. It footed up pretty fairly. There was nothing more at Jerusalem to be seen, except the traditional houses of Dives and Lazarus of the parable, the Tombs of the Kings, and those of the Judges; the spot where they stoned one of the disciples to death, and beheaded another; the room and the table made celebrated by the Last Supper; the fig-tree that Jesus withered; a number of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... price. Framed in the arching of two clover-stems Where-through I gaze from off my hill, afar, The spacious fields from me to Heaven take on Tremors of change and new significance To th' eye, as to the ear a simple tale Begins to hint a parable's sense beneath. The prospect widens, cuts all bounds of blue Where horizontal limits bend, and spreads Into a curious-hill'd and curious-valley'd Vast, Endless before, behind, around; which seems Th' incalculable Up-and-Down of Time Made plain before mine eyes. ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... crowning of the victim, and arraying in royal attire, the scourging and the mockery, the binding or nailing to a tree, the tears of Mary, and the resurrection and the empty coffin!—or how not at all strange when we consider in what numerous forms and among how many peoples, this same parable and ritual had as a matter of fact been celebrated, and how it had ultimately come down to bring its message of redemption into a somewhat obscure Syrian city, in the special shape with which we ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the parable and proved to him if he only held true to the gospels of the Immoderate Left the earth would soon be covered with 'jolly little' pig-sties, built in the intervals of ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... remain to be named, and two of the most perfect in the book. The little parable poem of The Boy and the Angel is one of the most simply beautiful, yet deeply earnest, of Browning's lyrical poems. It is a parable in which "the allegorical intent seems to be shed by the story, like a natural perfume from a flower;" and it preaches a sermon ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the pleasures and vanities of the world, dressing like a poor person, wearing herself out in the zeal of her charity, turning the half of his palace into a hospital, he did not complain, but rather rejoiced that she was one of those "whom fools have for a time in derision, and for a parable of reproach; whose life is esteemed madness, and their end without honour; but who are numbered amongst the children of God, and whose lot is amongst the saints." He had his reward; he had it when his sight failed him and his breath grew short, when he felt that ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... "Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die?" A man may have little feeling or much feeling; but if he does not turn away from sin, God will not have mercy on him. Repentance has also been described as "a change of mind." For instance, there is the parable told by Christ: "A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not" (Matt. xxi. 28, 29). After he had said "I will not" he thought over it, and changed his mind. Perhaps he may have said to himself, "I did not ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... Captain Judgment was making this oration to the town of Mansoul, it was observed by some that Diabolus trembled; but he proceeded in his parable and said, 'O thou woful town of Mansoul, wilt thou not yet set open thy gate to receive us, the deputies of thy King, and those that would rejoice to see thee live? Can thine heart endure, or can thy hands be strong, in the day that he shall deal ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... field, he admonishes his disciples about gay clothing, Matth. vi. 28. In allusion to the present season of fruits, he admonishes his disciples about knowing men by their fruits, Matth. vii. 16. In the time of the Passover, when trees put forth leaves, he bids his disciples learn a parable from the fig tree: when its branch is yet tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh, &c. Matth. xxiv. 32. Luke xxi. 29. The same day, alluding both to the season of the year and to his passion, which was to be two days after, ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... few drops of ichor, celestial or otherwise, he is no whit the worse. So, if any of these opponents be left, I will not waste time in vain repetition of the demonstrative evidence of the practical value of science; but knowing that a parable will sometimes penetrate where syllogisms fail to effect an entrance, I will offer ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... the commentary by Wordsworth on Godwin's parable by which he illustrates the simplicity of action in what we call the soul. 'When a ball upon a billiard-board is struck,' etc. etc. 'Exactly similar to this . . . are the actions of the human mind' (i. 306-7). Lacy, one ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... Abimelech's head, and all to break his skull,' and that he cried hastily to the young man, his armor-bearer, and said unto him, 'Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him.' It is a parable of our present position. Mrs. Stowe has thrown a piece of millstone, sharp and strong, at the skull of the giant abomination of her country; he is reeling in his death pangs, and, in the fury of his despair and ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... begone, take counsel, and away, For hard by here is one that guards a ford— The second brother in their fool's parable— Will pay thee all thy wages, and to boot. Care not for shame: thou art ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... hilarious applause at his entrance had somewhat subsided, the three took up their parable, but it was not the parable of the play. They used dialogue not in the original. It had a significance which the audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to turn "The Sunburst Trail" at this point into a comedy-farce. When this new dialogue began, O'Ryan could scarcely trust ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she is brought to Adam becomes his helpmate and inseparable companion. The Biblical tale stands, of course, on a much higher level, and is introduced, as are other traditions and tales of primitive times, in the style of a parable to convey certain religious teachings. For all that, suggestions of earlier conceptions crop out in the picture of Adam surrounded by animals to which he assigns names. Such a phrase as "there was no helpmate corresponding to him" becomes intelligible on the supposition ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... his usual pleasant, good-tempered, oft-times flippant manner: "Mademoiselle Crystal—if you will allow me to speak of such an insignificant person as I am—I am at present in the position of the mouse with regard to your father and yourself—the lions of my parable. You might so easily have devoured me, you see," he added with a quaint touch of humour. "Well! the time may come when you may have need of a friend, just as I had need of one when I came here—a stranger in a strange land. Events will move ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... dry-goods merchant is also a Sunday-school superintendent. Not long since he devoted the last few moments of the weekly session to an impressive elucidation of the parable of the Prodigal Son, and afterward asked with due solemnity if any one of the "little gleaners" present desired to ask a question. ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... recently quoted from Dr. Hake’s account of that Christmas gathering of the Rossettis at Bognor in 1875—a gathering which he has made historic—that to-day I should be writing an obituary notice of the “parable-poet” himself. It is true that, having fractured a leg in a lamentable accident which befell him, he had for the last few years been imprisoned in one room and compelled during most of the time to lie in a horizontal position. But notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... emphatically denominated "Ahab's prophets," notwithstanding they professed to be the Lord's prophets. This wicked King of Israel had those wicked, false prophets in his service. The address of Micaiah to the two kings in verses 19-23 is a mere parable showing what, in the providence of God, would shortly take place, and the divine permission for the agents, spoken of, to act. Micaiah did not tell the mad and impious Ahab that his prophets were all liars; but he represents the whole ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... August, now one blaze of colour, rich green and light yellow, with patches of fiery red and dark purple. God seemed to have given him a sermon, and he wrote that evening, like one inspired, on the same parable of nature Jesus loved, with its subtle interpretation of our sorrows, joys, trust, and hope. People told me that it was a "rael bonnie sermon," and that Netherton had forgotten his after-sermon snuff, although it was his turn to pass the box ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... again took up the matter, passing a decree to the effect that inasmuch as heresy had not been cured by the censorship this should be made much stricter, and appointing a commission in order, as, regardless of the parable,[1] it was phrased, to separate the tares from the wheat. The persons appointed for this delicate work comprised four archbishops, nine bishops, two generals of orders and some "minor theologians." ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... labour of the English. Though the Gods of India are sacred, the devils of India, filthy and lawless, must be driven out. When India put the mark of the beast upon Fleete the powers of darkness had of necessity to be brought to heel, and this story may be read as a parable. The mark of the beast, wherever it may appear, is the Imperial concern ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... the Shadow of Affliction spoke, a vision of Hope and Joy had its birth in Adam's mind, even from the old man's taunting words; for then he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and himself had acted; and the mystery of Life and Death was ...
— The Lily's Quest (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so many poor attempts at brotherhood, organized in the name of Christianity, especially in our part of the globe, where "they have made the welkin ring with the sorrowful tale of the unfortunate condition of the weak, but, like the rich man in the parable, they liked their Lazarus afar off," and considered their fraternal pretensions satisfied if they sent their dogs to lick his wounds. No, the Brotherhood movement is no such parody. It is practical Christianity which knows no distinction of colour or boundaries between nations. Our nine months' ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... only a stray human friend. We see many things as children which we cannot see as grown-up men and women, for, as Longfellow said, "the thoughts of youth are long long thoughts." Nay, I feel convinced that He who spoke the parable of the vine had seen the same vision when He said: "I am the vine, ye are the branches. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me." And ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... too, is at her tasks—trimming her lamp—you know, the parable of the wise virgins," continued Father Wynn hastily, fearing that the convert might take the illustration literally. "There, there—good-by. Keep in the right path." And with a parting shove he dismissed Charley and entered his ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... He was a member of the Rev. Mr. Stoker's church, and the words he had just listened to were those of a sinful old heathen who had never heard a sermon in his life; but they stung him, for all that, as the parable of the prophet ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... government, supplying work to the idle inmates of the workhouse, and insisting, by force if need be, on it being done, was his panacea. It had been Abbot Samson's way in his strong government of the Monastery of St. Edmunds, and he resolved, half in parable, half in plain sermon, to recommend it to ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... the tale of the Kilmansegg Kin, In golden text on a vellum skin, Though certain people would wink and grin, And declare the whole story a parable— That the Ancestor rich was one Jacob Ghrimes, Who held a long lease, in prosperous times, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... up to a certain point, in moral matters the majority are right; and thus Christ's gospel, in a great many respects, goes along with public opinion, and the voice of society is the voice of truth. But this, to use the expression of our Lord's parable, this is but half the height of that tower whose top should reach unto heaven. Christianity ascends a great deal higher; and therefore so many who begin to build are never able to finish. Christ's ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... to read your parable? Are you the debtor bound hand and foot, and is your brother ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... instance, is pretty and easy to cut, but try to support yourself with it on the edge of a precipice and see where you are. Then of a truth you will long for ironbark, or even homely oak. I might carry my parable further, some allusions to the proper material of which to fashion the helmet of Salvation suggest themselves to me for example, but ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... were, steal into the mind, and turn it from its proper object, whenever it relaxes its vigilance in watching against them. Felt a little strength, just at the close, to remind Friends of the necessity of a steady perseverance, by a recapitulation of the parable of the unjust judge, showing how men ought always to pray, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... yielding to their inclinations when they are adverse to their true interests. He has a ready humor, which shows itself in smart sayings and repartees, that take occasionally the favorite Oriental turn of parable or apologue. He is mild in his treatment of the prisoners that fall into his hands, and ready to forgive even the heinous crime of rebellion. He has none of the pride of the ordinary eastern despot, but converses on terms of equality with those about him. We cannot be surprised that the Persians, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... destiny entrusted to him, imagine that his vocation consists merely in getting together a large lump of gold, and then being off with it, to enjoy it, as he fancies, in some other place: as if that which is but a small part of his business in life, were all in all to him; as if indeed, the parable of the talents were to be taken literally, and that a man should think that he has done his part when he has made much gold and silver out of little? If these men saw their position rightly, what would be their objects, what their pleasures? Their ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... significance, a bringing near to the eye of what exists in reality only for the mind and heart. A symbol, however, is an arbitrary fiction, and stands to the idea as a metaphor does to the thing itself. In literature the parable of the mustard seed to which the kingdom of heaven was likened, exemplifies symbolical or metaphorical method; but the tale of the court of Arthur's knights, ideal method; between them, and sharing something of both, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... than divine, could have carried the message or rendered the service He did to mankind. How, for instance, could He have learned from His own experience or from His environment the startling proposition that He embodied in His interpretation of The Parable of the Sower? "The care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the truth," and yet in that short sentence He gave an epitome of all human history. Reforms come up from the oppressed, not down from the oppressors—a fact which Christ ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... Christianity had been cast into mythical moulds by the oriental fancy, that it was introduced in its completed form to modern thought. Although expressly repudiated by Jesus of Nazareth himself, and applied in maxim and parable as a universal symbol of intelligence to the religious growth of the individual and race, his followers reverted to the coarser and literal meaning, and ever since teach to a greater or less extent the chiliastic ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... hard to explain the mental weariness produced by a straight level road. The hope and interest inspired by undulations or curves are lost. The distance ever gives a farther reach of the weary way to the view, as if by a parable it would impress on the traveller the knowledge that the future was to be barren ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... a parable designated the parable of the pounds, in which he pictured himself as a certain nobleman going into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return; and he shows that this nobleman does return. "He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... had to be appeased before the special diseases which they inflicted could be cured. It is worthy of remark that the Bramble forms the subject of the oldest known apologue. When Jonathan upbraided the men of Shechem for their base ingratitude to his father's house, he related to them the parable of the trees choosing a king, by whom the Bramble was finally elected, after the olive, the fig tree, and the vine had excused ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... to its humorous expression. "I doubt if sexual proclivities," he said drily, "come within the scope of the parable." ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... communities there stalked a well-known and dreaded spectre, the so-called "congestive chill," what is now known in technical language as the pernicious malarial paroxysm. These were like the three warnings of death in the old parable. You would probably survive the first and might never have another; but if you had your second, it was considered equivalent to a notice to quit the country promptly and without counting the cost. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... bound to yon town am I; No bridge anear, I sit and sit Until these waters have run dry, So that afoot I get to it." "A living parable behold, My friend!" quoth I. "Upon the brim You, too, will gaze until you're old, But never boldly ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... from some unpublished notes on the pictures by Rossetti exhibited at Burlington House two years ago: '"Bethlehem Gate" is the name of a lovely little pictured parable. On the left we see the massacre of innocents, representing the world, in whose cruel habitations the same outrage is ever being enacted, since all sin is in truth the sin of blood-guiltiness, bringing life into jeopardy. On the right the ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, and carrying her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man as charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ's parable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so-called poor that Shelley showed his generosity. His purse was always open to his friends. Peacock received from him an annual allowance of 100 pounds. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... glorious parable, behold How, bow'd to mortal bonds, of old Life's dreary path divine Alcides trode: The hydra and the lion were his prey, And to restore the friend he loved to day, He went undaunted to the black-brow'd God; And all the torments and the labours sore Wroth Juno sent—meek ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... know what you are saying. You are saying, "Well, I don't see how anybody could be as big a fool as that!" And yet, do you know that people are just as foolish to-day? Jesus told that parable to help us, too. The kingdom of heaven is just as close to you and to me; the greatest King of all—that's Jesus—is inviting boys and men to come in to the feast of usefulness and happiness and ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... his success, he believed himself strong enough to break the tie of vassalage which bound him to Israel, and sent a challenge to Jehoash in Samaria. The latter, surprised at his audacity, replied in a parable, "The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife." But "there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trode down the thistle. Thou ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... befell Punch, a double faux pas. An excellent child story had been printed in "Vanity Fair" of October 15th, in which a little girl at a Sunday-school class was asked to define a parable: "Please, miss," replies the child, "a parable's a 'eavenly story with no earthly meaning!" A fortnight later Punch, who had been victimised, had the misfortune, not only to come out with the same joke, but by a typographical slip ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... accounted, to defer securing our property and goods, which we know to be in danger. What folly, therefore, what madness must it be, to put off with careless indifference, the concernments of eternity; and to prefer the trifles of this transitory life to heaven, and the favour of God! Let the parable of the rich man, who pleased himself with the thought of having much good laid up for many years, be a warning to you![Luke xii. 16-28.] That very night his soul was required of him. Such persons may now deem themselves wise; but ere ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... books, "Valentine" and "Indiana": in "Spiridion" it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who are not afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found most delightful. The author's intention, I presume, is to describe, in a parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic church; and, indeed, of the whole Christian scheme: she places her hero in a monastery in Italy, where, among the characters about him, and the events which occur, the particular tenets of Madame Dudevant's doctrine are not inaptly laid down. Innocent, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the sardonic king it afforded nothing more and nothing less than amusement. "You must know, dear Devils and ever-beautiful Blowens, that three days ago, when I was lying in the kennel, which is my humour, and staring at the sky, which is my recreation—I speak, honest citizen, but in parable or allegory, a dear device with the schoolmen—I saw between me and Heaven the face of a lady, the loveliest ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... veins of the young American, glad in the sense of freedom and hope. As Tennyson threw into his retelling of Arthurian romance a moral sense, so Lowell, also a moralist in his poetic apprehension, made a parable of his tale, and, in the broadest interpretation of democracy, sang of the leveling of all ranks in a common divine humanity. There is a subterranean passage connecting the Biglow Papers with Sir Launfal; it is the holy zeal which attacks slavery issuing in this ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Let me speak a parable. Humanity—ourselves—are as people dwelling ever bound and fettered in a twilit cave, with our backs to the light. Behind us is a parapet, and beyond the parapet a fire; all that we see is the shadows thrown on the wall that faces us by figures passing along ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... in some album-verses which have found their way into print, and he naturally complains that what he wrote of Dante should be foisted upon himself. Indeed, he has quite as much the characteristics of the "spontaneous" as of the "brooding" poet of his parable. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Shechem, to assassinate the other sons of his father. But God is just. As Abimelech murdered his brothers upon a stone, so Abimelech himself met his death through a millstone. It was proper, then, that Jotham, in his parable, should compare Abimelech to a thorn-bush, while he characterized his predecessors, Othniel, Deborah, and Gideon, as an olive-tree, or a fig-tree, or a vine. This Jotham, the youngest of the sons ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... The noises and sights and talk, the whirl and volatility of life around us, are too strong for us. A society which is forever gossiping in a sort of perpetual "drum" loses the very faculty of caring for anything but "early copies" and the last tale out. Thus, like the tares in the noble parable of the Sower, a perpetual chatter about books chokes the seed which is sown in the greatest ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Walker was there to-night. We asked that Jimmeny girl from the pub. to join, and she delivered a great parable at us, looking round all the time to see if the boot-licking tone of it was pleasing the men. She said that women ought to bring up their children to ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Red Men is a kind of parable representing a part of the purport of the following treatise. The Indians, making a hasty inference from a trivial phenomenon, arrived unawares at a probably correct conclusion, long unknown to civilised science. They connected the Aurora Borealis with electricity, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... grinned at the delicious human interest, the subtle irony to pierce complacent humbugs, that lurked behind these Oriental situations. He made the most of his chance for a quaint parable, applicable to the courts, the church and science of Europe. As the story runs on, midst many and sudden adventures, the Babylonian reads causes from events in guileless fashion, enthusiastic as Sherlock Holmes, and no less efficient—and all the while, behind this ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Spirit can bring water from the rock, and grace from a hard heart. I mean mine, not the butcher's. He has behaved to me as I don't see how any but a Christian could, and that although his principles are scarcely those of one who had given up all for the truth. He is like the son in the parable who said, I go not, but went; while I, much I fear me, am like the other who said, I go, sir, but went not. Alas! I have always found it hard to be grateful; there is something in it unpalatable to the old Adam; but from ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... and Parable, Are false, but may be rendered also true, By those who sow them in a land that's arable: 'Tis wonderful what Fable will not do! 'Tis said it makes Reality more bearable: But what's Reality? Who has its clue? Philosophy? No; she too much rejects. Religion? Yes; but which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... fourteen verses, which they had not seen before, and that, after just ten minutes' examination, one woman, who could not read, repeated the whole distinctly in her own words. Dr Brunton proposed, for a similar experiment, the parable of the 'talents,' with which none was acquainted except one woman, who was consequently not permitted to answer. With its being only read to them, and with a few minutes' catechising, they perceived its various circumstances, and were able to enumerate them in detail. This exercise demonstrated ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... springs Of light. Beneath a pipal tree I sat In lost despair; and thither to me came A pilgrim; and he glanced into mine eyes With sight that read the sickness of my soul, And sat beside me, and in measured words Like far-off song told me this parable: ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... Mrs. Gamp? You'll not find it easy to get through the hundreds of misprints in her conversation, but I want your opinion at once. I think you know already something of mine. I mean to make a mark with her." The same letter enclosed me a clever and pointed little parable in verse which he had written for an annual edited ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... She took up her parable again and spoke very gently, very sensibly. The moonlight peacefulness was in her heart. It softened the tone of her voice and ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... glance at his companion. "Your parable, my friend, is scarce polite," said he. "If you and I are to travel in peace you must keep a ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... give you a likeness, or a parable, which I think will help you to understand what is the matter with you all. For you all have something the matter with you; and most of you know this to be the case; though you may not know what is the matter. And those of you that feel nothing amiss are far the ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... worthy citizens of Pittenweem felt themselves no way called on to interfere in behalf of the obnoxious revenue officer; so, satisfying themselves with this very superficial account of the matter, like the Levite in the parable, they passed on the opposite side of the way. An alarm was at length given, military were called in, the depredators were pursued, the booty recovered, and Wilson and Robertson tried and condemned to death, chiefly on the evidence ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mislead 'em, we call it lyin', but when his imagination invents what's not true merely for the fun o' the thing, an' tells it as a joke, never pretendin' that it's true, he ain't lyin', he's only tellin' a story, or a anecdote, or a parable. Now, Dan, put that in your pipe an' smoke it. Likewise shut your potato-trap, and let me go on wi' my story, which is, (he looked impressively round, while every eye gazed, and ear listened, and mouth opened in breathless attention), the Adventure ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... / now vnder parable Do ye se her here / whiche is cause of your grefe Yf ye so dyde / that sholde I be able As in this cause / te be to your relefe Ryght lothe I were to se your myschefe For ye knowe well / what case that I am yn Peryllous it wolde be / or ...
— The coforte of louers - The Comfort of Lovers • Stephen Hawes
... well once a year, if not oftener, to remind men by parable of the old, simple truths; to teach them that forgiveness, and charity, and the endeavor for life better and purer than each has lived, are the principles upon which alone the world holds together and gets forward. It was well for the comfortable and the refined to be put in mind of the savagery ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in Chapel. Hesitating at undertaking such a difficult task, she asked the warden what he would think she should talk about. "Anything you like," he said, "except this: don't speak on the prodigal son, for the last fourteen ministers and speakers have read that parable and talked about it." "Indeed, no," answered the young woman, "that parable is not for them. They should be taught what is justice to the elder brother and preached to from the text, 'Work out your own salvation.'" It is really a bit difficult ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Tauta The Duc de l'Omlette The Oblong Box Loss of Breath The Man That Was Used Up The Business Man The Landscape Garden Maelzel's Chess-Player The Power of Words The Colloquy of Monas and Una The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion Shadow.—A Parable ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... parable; it is sufficient to indicate that in my reading of Mr Wells, I have seen him as regarding all life from a reasonable distance. By good fortune he avoided the influences of his early training, which was too ineffectual to leave any permanent ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... vouchsafed unto her and she discovered her intent to her father, who forbade her therefrom, fearing her slaughter. However, she repeated her speech to him a second and a third time, but he consented not. Then he cited unto her a parable, that should deter her, and she cited him a parable in answer to his, and the talk was prolonged between them and the adducing of instances, till her father saw that he availed not to turn her from her purpose and she said to him, 'Needs must I ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... Tintoretto as the colors of dawn are to those of sunrise, but the glory is in them. The radiant pencil of Paul Veronese was early lost by his birthplace and given to Venice, in illustration of the parable, but even without her most glorious son native art makes a fair show in the picture-gallery and churches. The picture which struck me most was a fresco by Brusasorci in San Stefano, whither I had been drawn by the report ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... him; but the danger into which he would throw himself thereby, prevented them from advising him to it, he answered, "If you and others will hear me next Sabbath, I will preach in Leith, let God provide for me as best pleaseth him;" which he did upon the parable of the sower, Matth. xiii. After sermon, his friends advised him to leave Leith, because the regent and cardinal were soon to be in Edinburgh, and that his situation would be dangerous on that account; he complied with this advice, and resided with the lairds of Brunston, Longniddry and Ormiston, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Flaxman-like outline of one of his well-known hearers. And then John Bunyan takes up that so expressive profile, and puts flesh and blood into it, till it becomes the well-known Pliable of The Pilgrim's Progress. We call the text a parable, but our Lord's parables are all portraits—portraits and groups of portraits, rather than ordinary parables. Our Lord knew this man quite well who had no root in himself. Our Lord had crowds of such men always running after Him, and He threw off ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... must be made to yield to the ways of God. For what is wisdom with men is foolishness with God,(61) the weak things of earth are the strong things of Heaven, the outcast of the world are the chosen of the Father Almighty. And hence our Saviour under the figure of the master in the parable who prepared a great supper, says of all those who will not hear Him, who neglect His divine inspirations and despise the call of His ministers, that they shall never taste of His feast. But who, then, shall sit down at His ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... a large print Bible with a great many pictures in it; and when next year the tinker's van again visited the village, Susan was delighted to be able to exhibit her progress, and slowly and reverently she read the parable of ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... This parable is in the best savage style; but I wish the Walach had not introduced the classic name of Mysians, the experiment of the magnet or loadstone, and the passage of an old comic poet, (Nicetas in Alex. Comneno, l. i. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... de' Lanzi the moonlight fell among the statues, and in that fairy light I seemed to see in those ghostly still figures of marble and bronze some strange fantastic parable, the inscrutable prophecy of the scornful past. Gian Bologna's Sabine woman, was she not Florence struggling in the grip of the modern vandal; Cellini's Perseus with Medusa's head, has it not in truth turned the city ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... which steamships are built, because other nations are so doing and are prosecuting for their manifest advantage this vastly more important business upon the ocean, which we are forbidden to engage in, because we cannot build ships. The homely illustration at the close of the parable on the concluding page, is certainly applicable. We are not allowed to whittle, because we ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... my friend! who own a Church, And would not leave your mother in the lurch! But when a Liberal asks me what I think— 45 Scared by the blood and soot of Cobbett's ink, And Jeffrey's glairy phlegm and Connor's foam, In search of some safe parable I roam— An emblem ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... whether this preface had not better have remained unwritten; whether the parable had not better be left without an interpretation. But it is written and it shall stand. And so this simple story goes from my hands, I trust to do some little good, by hinting to clerical readers ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... metonymy[Gram], synecdoche[Semant]; autonomasia|!, irony, figurativeness &c. adj.; image, imagery; metalepsis[obs3], type, anagoge[obs3], simile, personification, prosopopoeia[obs3], allegory, apologue[obs3], parable, fable; allusion, adumbration; application. exaggeration , hyperbole &c. 549. association, association of ideas (analogy) 514a V. employ -metaphor &c. n.; personify, allegorize, adumbrate, shadow forth, apply, allude to. Adj. metaphorical, figurative, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Church. Where now the Church being established, and the white Horse whereof I spake before, hauing made his conqueste, the Lawe and Prophets are thought sufficient to serue vs, or make vs inexcusable, (M28) as Christ saith in his parable of Lazarus and the ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... third sort of sinner, spoken of in Christ's next parable in this chapter, from which my text is taken, of whom it is not said that God the Father sends out to seek and to save him. That is the prodigal son, who left his father's house, and strayed away of his own wantonness and free will. ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of course, is a parable. Likewise, in the new India we are studying, product of new modern influences direct and indirect, two kinds of religious changes impress us. There is, first, the gradual change coming over the whole thought ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... prelude to many more. Grisell wanted to hear it over again, and then who was the Archbishop martyr, and who were the Virgins in memory of whom the lamps were carried. Both these, and many another history, parable, or legend were told her by Sister Avice, training her soul, throughout the long recovery, which was still very slow, but was becoming more confirmed every day. Grisell could use her eye, turn her head, and the wounds closed healthily under the sister's treatment without showing symptoms of breaking ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remembered for the magnificent edition of the Bible which he printed in 1716-1717, in two volumes imperial folio, and which from an error in the headline of the 20th chapter of St. Luke, where the parable of the Vineyard was rendered as the 'parable of the Vinegar,' has ever since been known as the 'Vinegar Bible.' This slip was only one of many faults in the edition, which earned for it the title of 'A Baskett-full of printer's errors.' But apart from these ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... innovation, which led, not, of course, to his separation from Rome, but to Rome's separation from him! So the pebble, if determined to put a good face on it, might wonder what had become of the rock, and recite the parable of the return of the prodigal to the Atlas Range"; and so forth. The fact is that every unprejudiced man, who has so much as a mere bowing acquaintance with the facts of history, knows perfectly well that before ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... sections of a Roman arch and a sculptured Roman column, part of the spoil of the city of Uriconium. Among its relics is a reading-desk, carved, it is supposed, by Albert Durer, with panels representing passages in the parable of ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... new. There are few gifts more precious than this at a time when our familiarity with the greatest and most sacred of all narratives is a chief hindrance to our ready appreciation of its living power. I believe that no one will read Mr Glover's chapters, and especially his description of the parable-teaching given by our Lord, without a sense of having been introduced to a whole series of fresh and fruitful thoughts. He has expanded for us, with the force, the clearness, and the power of vivid illustration which we have learned to expect from him, the meaning of a sentence in the earlier ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... and return to the house; and we both found it a difficult matter to get in where we had got out easily enough; which Mr. Truelocke, I doubt not, would have moralized in his pleasant way into a sort of holy parable. But I have not that gift, and I suppose 'twas the hope in Althea's breast and the fear in mine which had raised our powers for a moment and made a hard ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... bannered line Scaled it light-hearted. Never favourite lamb In ribands decked shone brighter than that hour The fair flank of Knock Cae. Heath-scented airs Lightened the clambering toil. At times the Saint Stayed on their course the crowds, and towards the Truth Drew them by parable, or record old, Oftener by question sage. Not all believed: Of such was Derball. Man of wealth and wit, Nor wise, nor warlike, toward the Saint he strode With bubble-seething brain, and head high ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... sure, Madame, that you do not know how beautiful and superior to all other moralities is Jewish morality. Do you know the parable of the ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... no blind hazard, but the child of high faith and untiring labour. Of that labour the Somme battlefields we were now to see will always remain in my mind—in spite of ruin, in spite of desolation—as a kind of parable in action, never to ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... leaped to his feet. "My parable," he cried. "Don Quixote and the damsel in distress. Where's my hat? Where's the time-table? Get a cab! Simpson, you idiot, why didn't you make me read this before, confound you! I mean God bless you. Your salary's ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... occupied four days in explaining to you the parable of Lazarus, bringing out the treasure that we found in a body covered with sores; a treasure, not of gold and silver and precious stones, but of wisdom and fortitude, of patience and endurance. For as in regard to visible treasures, while ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... same exhibition of opposite circumstances and qualities, and the same principle of condemnation for sins of omission exclusively of those of commission, are observable in the two other symbolic representations contained in the same chapter—the parable of the ten virgins, and the parable of the talents. In short, the general purport of the chapter is to indicate, that in the sight of the righteous Judge sins of omission, not less than sins of commission, ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis |
