"Parable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sayings and doings of childhood,—handfuls of such wild-flowers as bespread the green turf of nursery-life everywhere, but miraculous blossoms in the eyes of these good women, whom Saint Agnes had unwittingly deprived of any power of making comparisons or ever having Christ's sweetest parable of the heavenly kingdom enacted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... excepting the Bible, about which the educated majority have come over to the opinion of the common people. The peculiar glory of Bunyan is that those who hated his doctrines have acknowledged his genius by printing and using a Catholic version of his parable, The Pilgrim's Progress, with the Virgin's head ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... characteristics. The Tale consists simply in the narration of a story either founded on facts, or created solely by the imagination, and not necessarily associated with the teaching of any moral lesson. The Parable is the designed use of language purposely intended to convey a hidden and secret meaning other than that contained in the words themselves; and which may or may not bear a special reference to the hearer, or reader. The Fable partly agrees with, and partly differs from both of these. It will ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... 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
... now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I had been happy, and my father, as in our blessed Saviour's parable, had even killed the fatted calf for me; for hearing the ship I went away in was cast away in Yarmouth Roads, it was a great while before he had any assurances that ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... worshippers at the shrines of Sheikh Farid indicated that the places themselves had been previously held sacred, and had been annexed by the Muhammadan priests; and the legend of the giant, who might represent the demonolatry of the aboriginal faith, being slain by the saint might be a parable, so to say, expressing this process. But in view of the way in which the Mehtars worship Musalman saints, it seems quite likely that the Mahars might do so for the same reason, that is, because Islam partly frees them from the utter degradation imposed by Hinduism. Both views may have some truth. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... means," and for plunging so determinedly into what cannot be considered their own business; but let those blame them who will, the good they accomplish may well be made a set-off for any evil they unwittingly cause; and the parable of the man who "fell among thieves," and the heartless wretches who "passed by on the other side," should make us a little slow in blaming the "good Samaritans" who work so enthusiastically ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... a word in Balaam's mouth, and said, Return unto Balak, and thus thou shalt speak. And he returned unto him, and, lo, he stood by his burnt offering, he, and all the princes of Moab. And he took up his parable, and said: ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but because of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected it. A parable. ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of those who are truly great are the contrite in spirit. At first sight it might be supposed that there must ever be a vast distinction between the innocent and the penitent. It was so that the elder son in the parable thought when he saw his brother restored to his father's favour. He was surprised and hurt. He had served his father these many years—his brother had wasted his substance in riotous living. But in this passage God makes no distinction. He places the humble consistent follower and the broken-hearted ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Solomon, that stumbling-block of criticism and pill of faith, a recent writer regards as a parable in the form of a drama, in which the bride is considered as representing true religion, the royal lover as the Jewish people, and the younger sister as the Gospel dispensation. But it is evidently conceived in a very different spirit from the Book of Job or the Psalms of David, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... as her echo, I Take up her parable, and prophesy: Here, as from spring to spring the swallows pass, Perennial daisies shall adorn the grass; Here the shrill skylark build her annual nest, And sing in heaven, while you serenely rest; On trembling dewdrops ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... the garden and take off our hats; the starshine lights upon our heads, and where mine is a little bald, I daresay you can see it glisten in the darkness. The mountain and the mouse. That is like to be all we shall ever have to do with Arcturus or Aldebaran. Can you apply a parable?" he added, laying his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jews, to whom His messages to the world were directly spoken, were in almost the last stages of that sort of thing. So Jesus, with the fine faithfulness of love blending with the keenest tact, spoke in language veiled by parable to overcome the intense prejudice against plainly spoken truth. They were so set against what He had to tell that the only way to get anything into them at all was so to veil its form as to befool them into thinking it truer. Toward the close, ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... its charter for it came from something else. There is a joke about a Benedictine monk who used the common grace of Benedictus benedicat, whereupon the unlettered Franciscan triumphantly retorted Franciscus Franciscat. It is something of a parable of mediaeval history; for if there were a verb Franciscare it would be an approximate description of what St. Francis afterwards did. But that more individual mysticism was only approaching its birth, and Benedictus benedicat ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... mentioned in Scripture. 3. Were the Apostles mistaken in expecting a speedy Coming of Christ? 4. Examination of the Account of Christ's Coming given by Jesus in Matthew (chapters 24-26). 5. Coming of Christ in Human History at different Times. 6. Relation of the Parable of the Virgins, and of the Talents, to Christ's Coming. 7. Relation of the Account of the Judgment by the Messiah, in Matt. ch. 25, to his Coming. 8. How Christ is, and how he is not, to judge ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... the Pantschatantra. A king asked his pet monkey to watch over him while he slept. A bee settled on the king's head; the monkey could not drive it away, so he took the king's sword and killed the bee—and the king, too. A similar parable is put into the mouth of Buddha. A bald carpenter was attacked by a mosquito. He called his son to drive it away; the son took the axe, aimed a blow at the insect, but split his father's head in two, in killing the mosquito. In the Anvar-i-Suhaili, the Persian ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... from its place upon the table, and turning the leaves read aloud from the teachings of the world's greatest Master. It was the parable of the talents. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Mr. Moore means in his parable to indicate Mr. Whistler, the latter is willing to accept Mr. Moore's circuitous and coarse attempt to convey a gross insult—and, upon the whole, will perhaps think the better of him for an intention to ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... to bring it about, I believe), but ceteris paribus, the words of St. Paul are the words of Hystaspas and Xenophon. They for a corruptible crown, and we for an incorruptible—and one might find a still happier parable! ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... out, the Reverend Gilbert Peden took his Bible and read the parable of the prodigal son. He closed the great book, which ever lay open before him, and said, as one who both accuses and ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... for much of what composes those moraines was once solid rock in a fixed position on the heights, or glittering ice which reflected the sun's dazzling rays on surrounding high life, though it lies low in the earth now. To a lady of your intelligence, madam, I need not expound my parable. There are many avalanches, great and small, in English society as well as among the Swiss mountains; and, whether by gradual subsidence or a tremendous rush, we must all find our places in the ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the work of God accomplished; and so they are dissipated by the influences of the world; and those who have experienced them are perhaps made worse instead of better. It is a very significant thing that is said of the pastor in our Lord's parable—that he sought the lost sheep "until he found it." We seek: we even seek labouriously and painfully: but we frequently ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... the following 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 ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... Nurture supplies the liberating stimuli necessary for the full expression of the inheritance. A man's character as well as his physique is a function of "nature" and of "nurture." In the language of the old parable of the talents, what is given must be traded with. A boy may be truly enough a chip of the old block, but how far he shows himself such depends on "nurture." The conditions of nurture determine whether the expression of the inheritance is to be full or partial. It ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... I have wasted a parable, that is all. Good-night; I hope to sleep and be ready for a good day's work to-morrow. You shall dream of digging up gold ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... staggering and grave consideration. Every beast, as he says, clings bitterly to a whole skin. If everything is lost, and even honour, life still remains; nay, and it becomes, like the ewe lamb in Nathan's parable, as dear as all the rest. "Do you fancy," he asks, in a lively ballad, "that I had not enough philosophy under my hood to cry out: 'I appeal'? If I had made any bones about the matter, I should have been planted upright in the fields, the St, Denis Road" - Montfaucon ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if you like, on the political conditions represented there, and the temptation presented in absolute monarchies to unscrupulous ambition; you may say, like Dr. Slop, these things could not have happened under a constitutional government; or, again, you may take up your parable against superstition—you may dilate on the frightful consequences of a belief in witches, and reflect on the superior advantages of an age of schools and newspapers. If the bare facts of the story had come down to us from a chronicler, and an ordinary writer of the nineteenth ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... talented men, and in the market of brains are worth perhaps as much as they get. But how can they bring themselves to pose as the representatives of a creed, which, as they themselves expound it, is based upon humility, poverty, and self-denial? Not one of them who would not quote with approval the parable of the Wedding Guest. But try putting one of them out of their due precedence at the next Court reception. It happened some little time ago with a Cardinal, and England rang with his protests. How blind not to see how they would spring at one leap into the real first ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... drink it, and how they all go mad, draw their knives, grasp each other by the nose, and think they are cutting off bunches of grapes at every blow, and how foolish they all look when they awake from the spell and see how the Devil has been mocking them? It always seems to me a parable of the great Secession. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... comes!" said the young man, still looking off to the glowing west, "the time when He will put away out of His kingdom all things that offend Him. You may read about it, if you will, in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, in the parable of ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... more naked, narrative articulation; after the succinct, the dignified, and the poetic; and as a means to this, after a general lightening of this baggage of detail. After Scott we beheld the starveling story— once, in the hands of Voltaire, as abstract as a parable —begin to be pampered upon facts. The introduction of these details developed a particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. A man of the unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... airily. "It is a parable. It is a parable of you and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end by breaking up the habitable world. We leave you saying that nobody ought to join the Church against his will. When we meet you again you are saying that no one ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... companionship that it involved, especially that of my aunt Mary, who took up so much room herself in the narrow path that she effectually kept me out of it. From my earliest youth, also, I took extreme interest in the parable of the Prodigal, and as soon as it became possible I exemplified it myself. I may even say that I acted the part in a manner that did credit to a beginner; but the wind-up was ruined by the lamentable ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... actually walking in an exactly contrary direction. "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 ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... and parable, won many followers. She pointed out that the doctrine of the Humanist in abolishing world competition hit at the fundamental principle that made for initiative and made man utilise thought ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... world and all our woe? Was not that Pandora a woman, who liberated, from the box wherein they were confined, the swarm of winged evils that still afflict us? I will not remind you of St. John Chrysostom's golden parable about a temple and the thing it is constructed over. But I will come straight to the point, and ask whether this is truth the poet sings, when he informs us roundly that 'every woman ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... a greater curse than the thief, for he simulates a virtue to which the latter makes no pretension. The book-plate of a certain French collector bore this text from the parable of the Ten Virgins: 'Go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.' 'Sir,' said a man of wit to an acquaintance who lamented the difficulty which he found in persuading his friends to return the volumes that he had lent ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... robbed you; here is all I can do to show my repentance. All this time I have been but waiting for my wages, to repay what I had taken from you." And, oddly enough, she was always mixing herself up with the man in the parable, who had received from his master a pound to trade with and make more; from her dreams she would wake in terror at the sound of that master's voice, ordering the pound to be taken from her and given ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... of the effects of this distinguishing grace. There are several kinds of faith spoken of in the Bible. In one case, men are said to "believe for a while." This faith is shown us in the parable taught by our blessed Saviour, in the characters represented by the seed sown upon the rock, "which for a while believe, and in time of temptation ...
— A Narrative of The Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man. - Written by Himself, At The Age of Fifty-Four • Noah Davis
... want to understand what real bullying is, should call to mind that parable about the servant who, having quailed and cringed and implored before his lord until he was forgiven his huge debt, forthwith pounced on a poor fellow-servant who happened to owe him a few shillings, and, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... one minute his impulse was to take her in his arms and forget the ingratitude and desertion and deceit, like the father in the parable whose heart went out to the poor prodigal while he was yet a long way off; but the next moment the cold, bitter, resentful feelings quenched the gentler impulse, and he drew away his arm from her detaining ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... the Holy Spirit, and the great lesson of the parable is that the Holy Ghost is adequate for all our wants, if we only know ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... sentiment. So we must not blame the divinity-student, if he was overcome by those yearnings of human sympathy which predominate so much more in the sermons of the Master than in the writings of his successors, and which have made the parable of the Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it has been the stumbling-block of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... See the parable of the unjust Steward, in which the popular sense of [Greek: phronaesis] is strongly brought out; [Greek: ephaenesen ho kurios ton oikonomon taes adikias oti phronimos epoiaesen hoti ohi viohi tou aionos toutou phronimoteroi, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... in accordance with the ancient customs practised by the Jews in their Temple, to which practice Jesus Christ so strikingly calls attention in His Parable of the Publican, who cried, "God be merciful to me a sinner." The Psalms of David abound with just such cries for deliverance, and with declarations that God heard and answered all those who so cried to Him in the anguish of ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... through it all, until the moment when the French agreed to retire, the two most placable and even sociable figures were the two grim tropical travellers and soldiers who faced each other on the burning sands of Fashoda. As we see them facing each other, we have again the vague sense of a sign or a parable which runs through this story. For they were to meet again long afterwards as allies, when both were leading their countrymen against the great enemy in the ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... revolves. One purifies the soul, the other sanctifies it. He greatly admired the saying of St. Bernard that all the spiritual good which we possess is derived from the frequent use of the Sacraments. He would say that those who neglect the Sacraments are not unlike the people in the Parable, who would not accept the invitation to the Marriage Feast, and who thus incurred the wrath of the Lord who had prepared it. Some plead as their excuse that they "are not good enough"; but how are they to become good if they keep aloof from the source of all goodness? ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... however, in the harbour (except the sick Roman) came on board to both our services, and the women (all) expressed a great desire to have their children admitted into the Church. The Gospel for the Sunday gave me occasion to preach to them and myself on the "Parable of the Lost Sheep;" to myself, to make me ashamed of thinking much of serving or ministering to these two or three in the wilderness; and to them, to make them, and each of them, I trust, more grateful to the good Shepherd ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... we shall take up our parable and say: Do you wish to have the greatest and most vehement pleasures for your companions in addition to the true ones? 'Why, Socrates,' they will say, 'how can we? seeing that they are the source of ten thousand hindrances to ...
— Philebus • Plato
... 'Excellent is this parable that thou hast recited! Indeed, thou art acquainted with truth! Having listened to thy nectarlike speech, I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... am whiter than thou," is simply a new and indefensible form of Pharisaism. The church exists to proclaim certain truths, among which the brotherhood of man stands pre-eminent. It is difficult to see with what consistency a Christian minister can preach on the parable of the Good Samaritan if his church refuses to recognize a Christian brother in one of another race because he belongs to another race. There is no reason for an attempt to corral all men of all ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... will insure you a supernatural ease and delight in performing these duties, forgetting that, while we are in this world we have to fight, to run steadily forward, not to sit still and expect all to be smooth for us. We must show diligence unto the end—we must watch as well as pray. You remember the parable of the withered hand?" ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... certainly came under the catalogue of "wandering thoughts," from which the old minister always prayed at the opening of the service that they might be delivered. So it is to be feared that the sermon had not even the chance of the wayside seed in the parable of sinking into the children's hearts. The words of her aunt's old minister had as yet proved little more than an outside sound to Grace, though she was in the habit of listening more observantly than her brother. But there came a day ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... beasts could speak now, as Mother Maud said they could then, some of them would, I daresay, tell a tale almost as wise as this! Save for the diminishing of old Mother Maud's tale, a shorter sermon would have served. But yet, as childish as the parable is, in this it serveth for our purpose: that the night's fear of a somewhat scrupulous conscience, though it be painful and troublous to him who hath it, as this poor ass had here, is yet less harm than a conscience that is over-large. And less harm is it than a conscience ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... be the reason, think you, why Christ should so easily take a denial of the great ones, that were the grandeur of the world, and struggle so hard for hedge-creepers and highwaymen (as that parable, Luke xiv., seems to import he doth), but to show forth the riches of the glory of his grace to his praise? This I say, is ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... a place apart in English poetry. Death's Jest-Book is perhaps the most morbid poem in our literature. There is not a page without its sad, grotesque, gay, or abhorrent imagery of the tomb. A slave cannot say that a lady is asleep without turning it into a parable of death: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Augustine, and most of the early Fathers, who invoked in favor of the guilty ones the higher law of "charity and Christian gentleness." Their doctrine certainly accorded perfectly with our Saviour's teaching, in the parable of the cockle and the good grain. As Wazo, Bishop of Liege said: "May not those who are to-day cockle become wheat to-morrow?"[1] But in decreeing the death of these sinners, the Inquisitors at once did away with the possibility of their conversion. Certainly this ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... me patiently to the end, "the man is honest enough; and there must have been some such mystic message sent round. These people are believers in symbolism and parable. It is bad news, Gil, and I am afraid too true. The rebellion is widespread; but what of that? We must put it down. England is not going to have her great conquests wrenched from her hands ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... a Protestant, of good estate. In 1740 he received into his house a Protestant clergyman, to whom he gave supper and lodging. In a country where priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan" this was a crime. For this crime Espenasse was tried, convicted and sentenced to the galleys for life. When he had been imprisoned for twenty-three years his case came to the knowledge of Voltaire, and he was, through the efforts ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... identical. In the middle of each (Luke vi. 27-38, Matt. v. 43-48) there is a striking exposition of the ethical spirit of the command given in Leviticus xix. 18. And each ends with a passage containing the declaration that a tree is to be known by its fruit, and the parable of the house built on the sand. But while there are only 29 verses in the "Sermon on the Plain," there are 107 in the "Sermon on the Mount"; the excess in length of the latter being chiefly due to the long interpolations, one of 30 verses before, and one ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... handsome head back against the white-washed wall of the little entry where he stood, but said nothing. Matt Peke then took up the parable. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... parables spake He the word unto them, as they were able to hear it; and without a parable spake He not unto them; but privately to His own disciples He ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... memorial assures us, that he went to his devotions with his hands and feet tied; either to signify, that he was desirous to do nothing, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, or to give himself the same usage which was given to the man in the parable of the gospel; "who dared to appear in the wedding-room, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... was, not so long afterwards, more completely than others to make his own. And when somewhat later he painted the exquisite, still Peruginesque, Apollo and Marsyas, semi-medieval habits again asserted themselves with delightfully blent effects. It might almost pass for a parable—that little picture in the Louvre—of the contention between classic art and the romantic, superseded in the person of Marsyas, a homely, quaintly poetical young monk, surely! Only, Apollo himself also is clearly of the same brotherhood; has a touch, in truth, of ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... his parable, lying on his face and speaking slowly and scarce above his breath, not like a man who has anything to say, but like one talking ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... afternoon as she pressed close to the window, to catch the fading light on the page of her Bible, it chanced to be the chapter in St. Luke, which contained the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican; and while she read, a great compunction smote her; a remorseful sense of having scorned as utterly unclean and debased, her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... poor Sambo; anyhow, when Janet looked up, she saw the tears rolling down the child's face. At the same time, from the expression of his countenance, she judged that his understanding had grasped nothing. She turned therefore to the parable of the prodigal son, and read it. Even that had not a few words and phrases unknown to Gibbie, but he did not fail to catch the drift of the perfect story. For had not Gibbie himself had a father, to whose bosom he went home every night? ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... conflicting tendencies, may be compared. Will the great movement which for centuries has been slowly altering the complexion of thought be continued in the near future? or will a reaction set in which may arrest progress and even undo much that has been done? To keep up our parable, what will be the colour of the web which the Fates are now weaving on the humming loom of time? will it be white or red? We cannot tell. A faint glimmering light illumines the backward portion of the web. Clouds and thick darkness hide ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of them to tears; an address from a woman Salvation Army Officer, who pleaded with the people in the name of their mothers, and a brief but excellent sermon from Commissioner Sturgess, based upon the parable of the Marriage of the King's Son as recorded in the 22nd chapter of St. Matthew, and of the guests who were collected from the highways and byways to attend the feast whence the rich and ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... the words as in a parable. He was thinking of a greater change. He was rejoicing over the boy ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... or colour, or sound is always haunted by the inexpressible—by spiritual impotence to overcome the laws of imprisonment in the flesh. He clutches at symbol and suggestion, at parable and fable, conscious of the truth that the unreal ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... disciples beware of the leaven of the 117:30 Pharisees and of the Sadducees, which he de- fined as human doctrines. His parable of the "leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures 118:1 of meal, till the whole was leavened," impels the infer- ence that the spiritual leaven signifies the Science of Christ 118:3 and its spiritual interpretation, - an inference ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the 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 in judgment ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... won't-you-please-like-me sort of way with her, and Mary Beck felt it more than ever as she returned to her rocking-chair and jogged on again, but she could not bend from her high sense of disapproval immediately. "What do you think the unjust steward parable means, then?" she asked, not exactly returning to the fray, but with an injured manner. "It is in the Sunday-school lesson to-morrow, and I can't understand it a bit,—I ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. They are true because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution of truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... enucleation. I will expound this meaning of mine through the medium of a parable. In Babylon of old, there dwelt a king whose name was Belshazzar, who, having fallen into habits of voluptuousness and luxury, was so enslaved by them as to feast and make merry whilst a certain Darius, King of the Medes, was marching in arms against his ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... I should greatly like here to take up my parable against those who base their calculations for the numbers and kinds of naval vessels upon the idea of "a navy for defence only"; but ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... to me to underlie this magnificent parable of creation is the truth that this great God has created the universe and that he cares for his people. Gods before had been objects of terror. Gods before had lived lives such as the people themselves would not have respected among their companions. ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... ill, thinking it hard, that she should have made choice of that reproachful parable. I stared sideways out at the stream and the ships, but lost no word, as, with a voice that broke now and then, she read the parable to its close. After this should have come prayer, silent or spoken; but, to my surprise, she ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... truth, believed them when he came to old age to be actually true and was ever ready to stake his salvation upon them. Whereupon he shut the window and left van der Myle to make such application of the parable as he thought proper, vouchsafing no further answer to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... suggestive would the fact be, if only it were new to us!) this same light-winged Aphrodite, flitting from blossom to blossom in the mountain breeze, was but a few days ago an ugly, crawling thing, close cousin to the borer. Since then it has fallen asleep and been changed,—a parable, past all doubt, though as yet we lack eyes ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... "The parable of the ten talents, Mattie. Not how much we've got, but how much interest we've earned on our powers. However, we had that out long ago, my dear. Yes, I know. I promised not to talk and think this way. But if I'd been like this boy! He'll seize the thing before him. No ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... 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 ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... really an extraordinary address. Just at the commencement it had caused an uneasy feeling, when Martens began to speak about the great riches of the deceased. There was some apprehension lest he should make some ill-timed application of the parable of the camel and the needle's eye; but the speaker had just managed to say the right thing. There is nothing which gives the poor so much pleasure, as to hear how little power really belongs to earthly wealth, and how little there is to ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... reason—and we should recollect that sugar is now highly regarded as a food. It is a producer of energy in easily available form, and, thinking on some such novels as "Uncle Tom," "Die Waffen nieder" and shall we say "The jungle"? we realize that this thing is a parable, which the despiser of fiction may well read as ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... "our Lord and Saviour shows us the way. He has opened the door for those who have erred, and shown us that our Heavenly Father is always ready to forgive and receive those who repent and turn to him. Don't you remember the parable of the Prodigal Son and the words of Jesus to the men who were crucified with him? They ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... of the discourse was particular enough: It was about a prophet's story or parable of an ewe-lamb taken by a rich man from a poor one, who dearly loved it, and whose only comfort it was: designed to strike remorse into David, on his adultery with Uriah's wife Bathsheba, and his murder of the husband. These women, Jack, have been the occasion of all manner of mischief from the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... 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 worst off. ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... Elinor was beside him. He rose to his feet, hastily, confused. It was no little thing that he had told; it was a thing that he had never meant to tell. It had come to his lips, as a parable; because of the way he felt toward the child that was not his; because to her it would never have meant anything; and because of the things inside that had struggled for outlet so long. He wondered if she had heard, and hearing, had ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... life and power the Holy Scriptures have, when well read? Have you ever heard of the wonderful effects produced by Elizabeth Fry among the hardened criminals of Newgate, by simply reading to them the parable of the Prodigal Son? Princes and peers of the realm, it is said, counted it a privilege to stand in those dismal corridors, among felons and murderers, merely to share with them the privilege of witnessing the marvellous pathos which genius, taste, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... "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 ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chapters that dealt playfully, from the Tory point of view, with public affairs leading up to the Peace of Utrecht. The Peace urged and made by the Tories was in these light papers recommended to the public. The last touches in the parable refer to the beginning of the year 1713, when the Duke of Ormond separated his troops from those of the Allies and went to receive Dunkirk as the stipulated condition of cessation of arms. After the withdrawal of the British troops, Prince Eugene ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... spirit had inherited no trace of their harshness and gloom. The windows of his soul opened to the sunlight of a joyous faith. His optimism and genial humor inspired gladness and good sense in others. With an old story he prepared their minds to receive new ideas, and with a parable he opened their hearts to generous feelings. All men loved him because he loved them. They knew that his heart was in their happiness, and that his humanity embraced their sorrows. In him the weak found a friend, the unprotected, a champion. Though a herald and proclaimer of ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... this man speaks of it, his speaking signifies something; the powers and bands of love are upon him, and he shows to all that he knows what he is speaking of. But the very mentioning of love is, in the mouth of the profane, like a parable in the mouth of fools. Wherefore, Christian, improve this love of God as thou shouldst, and that will improve ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... know, not that which I have not seen. And as mine eyes have never filled with blood from Golgotha, so I do not conjure with tools I have not learned to handle. But I will tell you what I have seen. The Mass: whereof my piece is, as it were, the transfiguration or a parable. For it grew out of a Mass I once heard, stately-ordered, solemnly and punctiliously served in a great church. Mayhap, I dreamed of it; we shall not quarrel over terms. It was a strange Mass, shorn of much ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... The parable of Lazarus and the rich man we may well bring home to ourselves. The North is that rich man. How he is clothed in purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously! Yonder, yonder, at a little distance, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... breath of air reached the poor prisoners, but through the cracks in the boards. No wonder that the missionary soon fell ill of a fever. His wife, fearing he would die, determined to act like the widow in the parable, and to weary the unjust judge by her entreaties. She left her quiet cottage, and built a hut of bamboos at the governor's gate, and there she lived with her babe, and the little Burmese girls. The prison was just opposite the governor's gate, so that the anxious ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... 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; ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... inattention, irreverence, and unholy reflections of his hearers as the operations of the Devil, it is wonderful that his eyes were not opened to discern the import of our Saviour's interpretation of the Parable of the Tares, in which he declares, that he understands by the Devil whatever obstructs the growth of virtue and piety in the soul, the causes that efface good impressions and give a wrong inclination to the thoughts and affections, such as "the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... 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 ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... Henry," says my old lord, with a little frown, a thing rare with him. "You have been the elder brother of the parable in the good sense; you must be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... preserves untarnished by corruption, and ungnawed by decay, but because He Himself is the 'inheritance,' and on Him time hath no power. On His wealth all His creatures may hang for ever; and it shall be as it was in the sweet parable of the miracle of old, the fragments that remain will be more than when the meal began. 'The riches of the glory ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... faith is no more than a shadow of the unattainable truth may for a moment give us pause. An iconoclast, even such an iconoclast as Voltaire, is ordinarily a man of unqualified faith in the conclusions of the intellect. If our best conceptions of things divine be but a kind of parable, why quarrel with the parables accepted by other minds than our own? The answer is twofold. First Browning was not a sceptic with respect to the truths attained through love, and he held that mankind had already attained through love truths ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... a field for my activities had been weak from the first; the Mayordomo's words on his return had extinguished it altogether; and after hearing that ostrich parable I had only remained from motives of pride. I now determined to go back towards Montevideo, not, however, over the route I had come by, but making a wide circuit into the interior of the country, where I would explore ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... my child, when our earthly idols do fall and crush us, else we might go on to perdition in our fatal idolatry. Yes, my child, it is well that your idol has fallen, even though you lie buried and bleeding under its ruins; for our fraternity, like the good Samaritan of the parable, will raise you up and dress your wounds, and set you on your feet again, and lead you in the right path—the path of ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... denunciation in the form of a parable. Dame Catherine was thereby accusing the churchmen and burgesses of Tours of working against Charles of Valois, their lord. The woman must have been held to have influence with the King, his kinsmen and his Council; for the inhabitants ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... that you do not know how beautiful and superior to all other moralities is Jewish morality. Do you know the parable ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... therefore, if this doctrine be true, my life must be a failure. You may possibly have but one talent while your neighbor has ten, but you are just as responsible for the cultivation and enlargement of your endowment as your neighbor for his. Had the parable been reversed, and had he who was endowed with five talents hidden them in the earth while he who had one doubled his lord's money, the condemnation and the acceptance would likewise have been reversed. Unless a man be so far idiotic that he is not an accountable being, ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... until somebody declines to let you have your own way—an' then, right off, you fly in a rage an' git abusive. I'm gittin' weary o' bein' ordered off your dirty little scow an' then bein' invited back agin. One o' these bright days, when you start pulling for the fiftieth time the modern parable o' the Prodigal Son an' the Fatted Calf, I'm goin' to walk out o' the cast for keeps. Now, if I was you an' valued the services of a good navigatin' officer an' a good engineer, I'd just take a little run along the waterfront an' cool off. Somethin' tells me that ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... 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
... of display of scarlet double-hibiscus blooms. And abruptly all that he was suffering, all that he had just observed, from the night- blooming hedge and the two-by-two love-murmuring humans to the pair like thieves in each other's arms, crystallized into a parable of life enunciated by the day-blooming hibiscus upon which he gazed, now at the end of its day. Bursting into its bloom after the dawn, snow-white, warming to pink under the hours of sun, and quickening to scarlet with the dark from which its beauty and its being would never ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... that has been said and done against this doctrine of universal benevolence and grace, its progress confounds its enemies, encourages its friends, and calls to mind the parable of the mustard seed. Suppose for a century to come it should continue its advances according to what it has gained for the twenty-five years above mentioned, is it not evident that the knowledge of God would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea? But would ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... believe the prodigal was afterwards a better as well as a wiser man than the one who stayed at home, and I am not quite sure that Lance's history is so nearly like that of the son in the parable as we have believed it to be. A residence in the sty is apt to leave a stain which I have not found on him, though I have ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... Parable stood far from the Pharisee, who had no good word for him, even in his prayer, and he took a great deal of blame to heart, and prayed to God for mercy on him for his shortcomings. No doubt the Publican was well aware in what estimation he was ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... such fancies as these?[C] Or is all this, even if genuine, only symbolical,—sounds without objective counterpart? Then what becomes of the positive character of this narrative, as a lesson, as a warning to us? The whole degenerates into an acted parable. It fades into the idle pageantry of a dream. Thus we lose ourselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... sober and truthful, in the midst of its apparent extravagance, than the gravest cogitations of ordinary men. It is surely no incredible thing, that He who, in the dispensations of the human period, spake by type and symbol, and who, when He walked the earth in the flesh, taught in parable and allegory, should have also spoken in the geologic ages by prophetic figures embodied in the form and structure of animals. Nay, what the poet imagined, though in a somewhat extreme form, the philosophers seem to be on the very eve of confirming. The foreknown "archetypal idea" of Owen,—"the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... began in Jerusalem, that is where the Gospel stream started; from there it flowed into Judea and Samaria, and then Gentiles heard the Gospel and were saved. Our Lord indicated this world-wide sowing during this age in the first parable of Matthew xiii, when He spoke of the sower going out into the field, telling us that the field is the world. Israel in the preceding age was spoken of as a vineyard with a fence about, but in this age there is no more vineyard, no more special ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... sat from the days of King John. The text of that morning's sermon happened to be the Lord's saying, "Many first shall be last, and the last first," which asserts His absolute sovereignty in choosing and in rewarding His missionaries, and introduces the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. As Carey wrote in the fulness of his fame, that the evangelical doctrines continued to be the choice of his heart, so he never wavered in his preference for the Baptist division of the Christian host. But from the first he enjoyed the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... function; they are to awaken the mind and to direct it to the inward Word. The most startling miracle, the most momentous event in the sphere of temporal sequences, the most appealing account of historical occurrences can do nothing more than give in parable-fashion hints and suggestions of the real nature of that God who is eternally present within human spirits, and who is working endlessly to conform all lives to His perfect type and pattern. In the infant period of the race, both among the Hebrews ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... it in some unmistakable manner—as by saving the other from robbers at great personal risk—the victim may still be unable to repress an abstract psychological wonder about when his companion first began to feel like that. Now this is not in the least an exaggerated parable of the position of England towards Ireland, not only in '98, but far back from the treason that broke the Treaty of Limerick and far onwards through the Great Famine and after. The conduct of the English towards ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... felt her cool hand upon my hot forehead, and heard the low sweet song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly told parable from the Bible, with which she tried to soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to steal a glance ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... after her first experience of a mountain climb with a vacation camp at the top. "Now we are on Kylasa, enjoying our 'mountain top experience.' This morning Miss —— gave a beautiful and inspiring talk on visions. She showed us that the climbing up Kylasa could be a parable of our journey through this world. In places where it was steep and where we were tired, the curiosity we had to see the full vision on the top kept us courageous to go forward and not sit long in any place. She compared this with ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren |
