"Parable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is chiefly 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 errors, ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... When the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares was spoken, the Blessed and only Wise foresaw the extreme difficulty of rooting out the tares without injuring the wheat, when the work is done by the ignorant or hasty ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seeing him jogging up to a house near the smithy on his pony, which was halting, said to him, "Mr. Brown, ye're in the Scripture line the day—'the legs o' the lame are not equal.'" "So is a parable in the mouth of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... demand upon his powers is partly evident from the outline of the poem as we have given it. It must be owned that it is rather a feeble fancy which unites two vital epochs by the incident of the truant lambkin, and that the plot of the poem does not in any way reveal a great faculty of invention. A parable, moreover, teaches only so far as it is true to life; and in a tale professing to deal with persons of our own day and country, we have a right to expect some fidelity to our contemporaries and neighbors. But we find nothing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... generally between the first consonant and the succeeding vowel; as in endeavouring to pronounce the word parable, the p is voluntarily repeated again and again, but the remainder of the word does not follow, because the association between it and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... blessing that England requires upon the 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 of the English ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... different one) for a similar reason, and had been broken-hearted ever afterwards. In the Third Act it really seemed as though they were coming together at last; for at the beginning of it Mr. Levinski took them both aside and told the audience a parable about a butterfly and a snap-dragon, which was both pretty and helpful, and caused several middle-aged ladies in the first and second rows of the upper circle to say, "What a nice man Mr. Levinski must be at home, dear!"—the purport of the allegory ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... development of passionate romance,—the one being grave sermon writing; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing: so that the one requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive; the one is always a parable with a meaning, the other only ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... satisfaction to the conqueror; he declared the Colonnas absolved; he released the barons and prelates of France from the excommunications pronounced against them; and he himself wrote to the king to say that he would behave towards him as the good shepherd in the parable, who leaves ninety and nine sheep to go after one that is lost. Nogaret and the direct authors of the assault at Anagni were alone excepted from this amnesty. The pope reserved for a future occasion the announcement of their absolution, when he should ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... sad end to what might have been a life of usefulness and honour. I have thought so often of the parable of the talents; only I fear this case is worse. His poor mother! I wonder if I could write to her! Yet I hardly ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... been carried out; the preaching 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 ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... reputation and circumstances.—A man may be held in very high esteem by the world, and yet may be a very miserable creature so far as his character is concerned. The rich man of the parable was well off and probably much thought of, but God called him a fool. Here is a man who is greatly esteemed by the public; he is regarded in every way as admirable. Follow him home, and you find him in his family a mean and sordid soul. There you have the real man. We cannot always ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... That its allegorical form belongs to a past fashion, with which the modern mind has little sympathy, we should no more think of denying than of whitewashing a fresco of Giotto. But we may take it as we may nature, which is also full of double meanings, either as picture or as parable, either for the simple delight of its beauty or as a shadow of the spiritual world. We may take it as we may history, either for its picturesqueness or its moral, either for the variety of its figures, or as a witness to that perpetual presence ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... his enemies had fled, we are told that 'a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon 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 shame, is crying, but crying in vain, 'Say not, A woman slew me!' [Applause.] But ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... aspects; but whatever he saw, through some excessive determination to form, in his constitution, he saw not abstractly, but in pictures, heard it in dialogues, constructed it in events. When he attempted to announce the law most sanely, he was forced to couch it in parable. ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Tom Morse and Win Beresford, the one lean and gaunt and grim, the other pale and hollow-eyed from illness, but scattering smiles of largesse. For her heart was crying, in a paraphrase of the great parable, "He was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... you give, I will not be the centaur to win you, for that is the land where he stables himself; yes, there he ends his course, and that is the herb he finishes by pasturing on. You have no dislike of metaphors and parables? We Jews are a parable people.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... much of a coward to confess my fault to my father; I had already begun to think of him as "an austere man," like him in the parable of the talents. I should have been a much happier child if I bad confessed, for I had to carry about with me for weeks and months a heavy burden of shame. I thought of myself as a thief, and used to dream of being carried off to jail ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... 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 of 34 verses after, the middlemost ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Zeruiah, that ye should this day be adversaries unto me? Shall there any man be put to death this day in Israel?" There can be no doubt that the prerogative of mercy would have been vigorously used in his hands, but he did not wish for a conflict on this matter at all; and Grant was taught, in a parable about a teetotal Irishman who forgave being served with liquor unbeknownst to himself, that zeal in capturing Jefferson Davis and his colleagues was ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... to the familiar twenty-fifth of Matthew and read the central portion, the parable of the talents. He read like an interested man, and perhaps it was owing to a slight unconscious intonation here and there that Pitt's two hearers listened as if the words were strangely new to them. They had ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came near, and said unto him, ' Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence, then, hath it tares?' And he saith unto them, an enemy hath done this." You know the rest of the parable. The explanation of it is as follows:—"He who soweth the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and the good seed are the sons of the kingdom, and the tares are the sons of the ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... 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 clover-stems ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... presence and growth within the insect, during its time of preparation among strange surroundings, of the organs required for service in the coming life amid its native air, confirm surely the intuition of the old-time students, who saw in these changes, so familiar and yet so wonderful, a parable and a prophecy of the higher nature ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... 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 ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... if we 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 acceptance of ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... understand from the parable in the Gospel, Luke x., of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, who beat him and left him lying half dead, whom the Samaritan afterward took up, and bound up his wounds, and took care of him, and saw to it that he should be nursed. There you perceive ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... splinter out of his eye, he would answer, Take the beam out of thine own'—(Tarphon). 'Imitate God in his goodness. Be towards thy fellow-creatures as he is towards the whole creation. Clothe the naked; heal the sick; comfort the afflicted; be a brother to the children of thy Father.' The whole parable of the houses built on the rock and on the sand is taken out of the Talmud, and such instances of quotation might be indefinitely multiplied" ("On Inspiration;" by Annie Besant; Scott Series, p. 20). From these founts Jesus drew his morality, and spoke as Jew to Jews, out ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... is a long parable for the purpose of making you remember that there are but few books which it is necessary for every intelligent boy and girl, man and woman, to have read. Of those few, I had as lief give the ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... 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 not" he thought over ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... "There's an Indo-Turanian Sector parable about a snake charmer who thought he was picking up his snake and found that he had hold of an elephant's tail," Vall said. "That might be a good thing to bear in mind, till we find out just what we have ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... primrose parable of many things, and worth remembering. Among other things it is an illustration of the change that was wrought all over England by the preaching ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... find some Hebrew parallel to the Egyptian idea of Creation as the work of a potter with his clay, for that figure appears in most ancient mythologies. The Hebrews indeed used the conception as a metaphor or parable,(3) and it also underlies their earlier picture of man's creation. I have not touched on the grosser Egyptian conceptions concerning the origin of the universe, which we may probably connect with African ideas; ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... June, And cold is August's panting heart of fire; And in the storm-dismantled forest-choir For thine own elegy thy winds attune Their wild and wizard lyre: And poignant grows the charm of thy decay, The pathos of thy beauty, and the sting, Thou parable of greatness vanishing! For me, thy woods of gold and skies of ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... the government of the soul the parliamentary form succeeds the monarchical. Good sense, conscience, desire, reason, the present and the past, the old man and the new, prudence and generosity, take up their parable in turn; the reign of argument begins; chaos replaces order, and darkness light. Simple will represents the autocratic regime, interminable discussion the deliberate regime of the soul. The one is preferable from the theoretical point of view, the other from the practical. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... call, imposing only one condition—that he is not to paint. His appetites may detain him in the palace for a while, but sooner or later he will cry out, 'All these pleasures are nothing to me; what I want is to paint pictures.'" She could see that the parable had convinced him, or nearly. He had said he was afraid she was hopeless. But a moment after, drawing her toward him with quiet, masterful arm, and speaking with that hard voice that could become so soft, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... 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
... childhood we have been familiar with this noble subject of literature. We have entered into the heritage of the ancient Greeks, who thought that Homer was a good teacher for the nursery; we have made acquaintance with Psalm and Prophecy and Parable, with the knightly tales of Malory, with the fairy stories of Grimm or Andersen, with the poetry of Shakespeare, with the novels of Scott or Dickens,—in short, with some of the best books that the world has ever produced. We know, therefore, what literature is, and that it is an ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... I did not walk in it, partly owing to the uncongenial 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 inability of others, who shall be nameless, to throw themselves ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... He may have had, in the back of his mind, as he wrote "The Playboy of the Western World," the thought of chance making a man, of a man finding himself through others believing in him who has no belief in himself but that there is in the play any parable of young Ireland losing its allegiance to a previous ideal of Ireland, I do not for a moment believe. There is, of course, in "The Well of the Saints" the old and oft-uttered truth that men prefer blindness in many things to correct vision ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... is more cruel than orthodox theology, nothing more heartless than a charitable institution. For instance, in England, think for a moment of the manner in which charities are distributed, the way in which the crust is flung at Lazarus. If that parable could be now retold, the dogs would bite him. The same is true in this country. The institution has nothing but contempt for the one it relieves. The people in charge regard the pauper as one who has wrecked himself. They feel very much as a man would feel ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... shadow of the hateless vengeance of God in the expulsion of the dishonest dealers from the temple with which the Lord initiated his mission: that was his first parable to Jerusalem; to Nazareth he comes with the sweetest words of the prophet of hope in his mouth—good tidings of great joy—of healing and sight and liberty; followed by the godlike announcement, that what the prophet had promised he was come to fulfil. ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... of the Christian magistrate. That which he driveth at is, That the Christian magistrate should leave no power of spiritual censures to the elderships. He would have the magistrate to do like the rich man in the parable, who had exceeding many flocks and herds, and yet did take away the little ewe-lamb from the poor man, who had nothing save that. The brother saith, "Of other governments besides magistracy, I find no institution; of them I do, Rom. xiii. 1, 2." I am sorry ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... marvelous picture given in the scripture in the parable of the poor man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and getting wounded and left by the road-side. Three men pass that way. They all see the same thing. The light is reflected from the poor sufferer into the eyes of these ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... altogether too dreadful. You are always getting swept and garnished, straightened up and sent out to be shaved. And home—even your study—becomes a glittering, spick-and-span mechanism. But you know the parable of the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... abundantly; on another who listens, but with less eagerness, the rain falls in less abundance; on a third who listens, but continues to eat, with head bent downward, the rain falls scantily; while on a fourth, who has turned away to crop the grass, scarcely a drop descends. Into this parable in painting the irreverence of a succeeding century cut its now rifled and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... hardy, but yields its life to a fungus, for which there is no remedy except, according to the natives, a lovely lily that grows in the forest. Transplanted, at the roots of the maori, the lily heals its disease and drives away the parasite. The missionaries cited this as a parable of Christianity, which would save from damnation the convert no matter how fungusy he was with sin. In tribal wars the enemy laid a sea-slug at the heart of the maori, and, its foe unseen, the tree perished from the corruption of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... 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, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... human powers, the power of giving liberty to the slave! Governors of states urging upon their Legislatures to make the exercise of the freedom of speech to propagate the right of the slave to freedom felony, without benefit of clergy! Ministers of the gospel, like the priest in the parable of the Good Samaritan, coming and looking at the bleeding victim of the highway robber, and passing on the other side; or, baser still, perverting the pages of the sacred volume to turn into a ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she explained. "This morning she told me a most interesting parable about Death. And she mentioned that it was you who had suggested to her ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... popularly given to the "rich man" in our Lord's parable of the rich man and Lazarus; in Latin, Dives ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... lips were working in the throes of commercial speculation, and he stared, heedless of the jibe. So Johnny Coe took up his sapient parable. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... indulgence, but the part of a good father; a good, and noble, and human thing to do? Ay, a human thing, and therefore a divine thing, part of God's likeness in man. For is it not the likeness of God Himself? Has not God Himself, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, declared that He does so forgive His penitent children, at once and utterly, and that 'There is more joy among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance?' So says the Lord Jesus Christ, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... preach to Protestants about the sin of man-worship! Verily, here we have the parable of the mote and the beam in a twentieth century edition. Catholic teachers would be the last ones, we imagine, whom scrupulous Christians would choose for instructing them regarding the sin of idolatry and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... to-morrow, and to do likewise day after day. To see the tender solicitude of the Oriental shepherd for his sheep adds much to one's appreciation of the beauty and fitness of the teaching of the Master in his parable of ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... London is the only spot upon earth that is never intolerable. And your husband will be a rich man, my dear girl, a really wealthy man; and you must see that he makes a fitting use of his wealth, and does his duty to society. The parable of the Talents, which you were reading to me this afternoon, is a moral lesson ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... was sleeping. Blue and beautiful The sky. Henceforth I saw but murk and blood, Alas! and as it had been in a shroud, My heart lay buried in that parable, ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... Revd. Vicar prided himself on the appropriateness of his sermons; so, this time, as he had yesterday united a distinguished and beautiful widow to her second husband, he selected for his text the parable of the widow's son. True, Mrs. Nightingale had no son, and her daughter wasn't dead, and there is not a hint in the text that the widow of Nain married again, or had any intention of doing so. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... instance, of that truly pedantic philosophy which once argued that ethical and religious truth are not given in the Scripture in a system such as a schoolman might have digested it into; as if the brief iteration and varied illustration of pregnant truth, intermingled with narrative, parable, and example, were not infinitely better adapted to the condition of the human intellect in general! For similar reasons, the old objection, that statements of Christian morality are given without the requisite limitations, and cannot ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... are significant of much beyond themselves. Elisha the prophet is the bearer of a divine cure. Naaman, the great Syrian noble, is stricken with the disease that throughout the Old Testament is treated as a parable of sin and death. He was the commander-in-chief of the army of Damascus, high in favour at Ben-hadad's court; his reputation and renown were on every tongue, but he was a leper. There is a 'but' in every fortune, as there is a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... disciple is shown speaking and acting as we know Zealots spoke and acted. The story of the rich young ruler has been placed early in Jesus' ministry to show that he would not accept every man who wanted to be his disciple. The parable of the Good Samaritan has also been placed in the early period as an example of the informal way in which Jesus taught. That you may know what is from the Bible and what is added to make a complete story, Scripture references for each ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... life is to be filled with kindness and compassion. The Dhammapada and the Sutta-nipata deserve to be read by all who care for the unseen riches of the soul. By their simple earnestness, their quaint use of parable and metaphor, and their mingling of the homeliest things with the highest truths, these books take rank among the most impressive of the religious books of the world. We give only a few jewels from ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... by his ambitious thought. He cannot bear to have come for so little, and to go again so wholly. He cannot bear, above all, in that brief scene, to be still idle, and by way of cure, neglects the little that he has to do. The parable of the talent is the brief epitome of youth. To believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in life. Denunciatory preachers seem not to suspect that they may be taken gravely and in evil part; that young men may come to think of time as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time, in a manner depending upon the difference of the true longitudes of the Sun and Moon. A friend of mine—at least until he misbehaved—insisted on the mean right ascensions: but I served him as Abraham served his guest in Franklin's parable. The true formula is, A and a being the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... why should not the parable of our blessed Lord be acted again? Call in the poor! The Church is ever at variance with the kings, and ever at one with the poor. I marked a group of lazars in the marketplace—half-rag, half-sore—beggars, ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... surely the famous parable of Plato, the greatest of heathen philosophers, who says, that the soul of man is like a chariot, guided by a man's will, but drawn by two horses. The one horse he says is white, beautiful and noble, well-broken ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... nature and are the only descriptions of it which its practicers will recognize. That damage to the abstract self which chiefly impresses the outsider is something of which the sacrificer is hardly aware. How exquisitely astonished are the men in the parable when called to receive reward for their generous gifts! "Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee, or thirsty and gave thee drink? When saw we thee sick or in prison and came unto thee?" They thought they had only been ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time 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 my ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... battle, was connected with his lifelong contention against facile poetry, facile art—art, facile and flimsy; and what constitutes the true artist is not the slowness or quickness of the process, but the absolute success of the result. As with those labourers in the parable, the prize is independent of the mere length of the actual day's work. "You talk," he writes, odd, trying lover, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... a simple parable, what I think this war is doing for us? I know a valley in North Wales, between the mountains and the sea—a beautiful valley, snug, comfortable, sheltered by the mountains from all the bitter blasts. It was very enervating, and ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... diligence and docility, the scorn of sloth. Yet not one sage of the bountiful bunch has ever ventured to denounce the twin vices of industry and obedience. True, there is the story of blind Samson at the mill; perhaps a parable. ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... / 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 that ye ...
— The coforte of louers - The Comfort of Lovers • Stephen Hawes
... all applause: after many expenses, he is fit for preferment, where shall he have it? he is as far to seek it as he was (after twenty years' standing) at the first day of his coming to the University. For what course shall he take, being now capable and ready? The most parable and easy, and about which many are employed, is to teach a school, turn lecturer or curate, and for that he shall have falconer's wages, ten pound per annum, and his diet, or some small stipend, so long as he can please his patron or the parish; if they approve him not (for usually they do but a ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of soul and body, spirit and matter (cf. Irenaeus i. 24 s. 5: animae autem eorum solam esse salutem, corpus enim natura corruptibile existit). The fundamental dualism of Basilides is confirmed also by one or two other passages. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Basilides saw the proof of naturam sine radice et sine loco rebus supervenientem (Acta Archelai). According to Clemens, Strom. iv. 12 s. 83, &c., Basilides taught that even those who have not sinned in act, even Jesus himself, possess a sinful nature. It ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... uprightness, justice, and rectitude, To impart discretion to the inexperienced, To the young knowledge and insight; That the wise man may hear and add to his learning, And the man of intelligence gain education, To understand a proverb and a parable, The words of sages ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... this parable of Christ which St. Chrysostom had quoted before him, interprets it in a more liberal fashion than the Bishop of Constantinople. For he not only condemns the death penalty, but all ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... schedule of outrages, insults, plunderings and oppressions. This is what is politely called partisan history. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a literary indictment of the South by featuring its supposed brutalities. And the attitude of the South is mirrored in a pretty parable concerning a Southern girl who came North on a visit, and seeing in print the words "damned Yankee," innocently remarked that she always thought they were one word. A description of the enemy, made by a person or a people, must be ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... cometh: go forth to meet Him." St Matthew the evangelist wrote these words, and Christ said them to His disciples and to all men, in the Parable of the Ten Virgins. The Bridegroom is our Lord Jesus Christ, and human nature is the bride, whom God has made in His own image and likeness. He placed her at first in the most exalted, the most beautiful, the richest and most fertile place on earth—in paradise. He subjected to her ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... analyze and explain. Sylvie did not stop to do it, neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking, were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them. That October afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true, some time. Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that evening, at her own door (he had to go back ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... similes are of great value, in so far as they explain an unknown relation by a known one. Even the more detailed simile which grows into a parable or an allegory, is nothing more than the exhibition of some relation in its simplest, most visible and palpable form. The growth of ideas rests, at bottom, upon similes; because ideas arise by a process of combining the similarities and neglecting the differences between ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Whitcomb Riley See'n Things Eugene Field The Duel Eugene Field Holy Thursday William Blake A Story for a Child Bayard Taylor The Spider and the Fly Mary Howitt The Captain's Daughter James Thomas Fields The Nightingale and the Glow-Worm William Cowper Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable George Macdonald The Courtship, Merry Marriage, and Picnic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren Unknown The Babes in the Wood Unknown God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop Robert Southey The Pied Piper ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... being seated save Colomba, who remained standing close to the kitchen door, the prefect took up his parable, and after a few common-places as to local prejudices, he recalled the fact that the most inveterate enmities generally have their root in some mere misunderstanding. Next, turning to the mayor, he told him that Signor della ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... ever written and is the only book, 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 in the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... that the Scriptures abound with moral principles, and call into exercise moral feelings inconsistent with slavery. It is this: "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me." The design of the Saviour, in the parable from which these words are taken, in Matt. xxv, is, to impress strongly upon the human mind, that character, deficient in correct moral feeling, will prove fatal to human ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... of bookishness. It gave substance to his humor. It humanized his wisdom and enabled him to express it in a familiar and dramatic form. It placed at his disposal, that is, the great classic vehicle of popular expression, which is the parable and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... walking one Sabbath we came across several booths where the natives who were making the Government road were living. She began chatting with them, and then told them the Parable of the Lost Sheep. She told everything in a graphic way, and with a perfect knowledge of the vernacular, and they followed her with reverence and intense interest all through. To most of them, if not to all, that would be the first time they had heard ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... its heavy yoke Upon the old white-bearded folk Who strive to please the King. God's mercy is upon the young, God's wisdom in the baby tongue That fears not anything. The Parable of ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... in parable, was never bitten by a gander in his life," persisted the Major. "Nor did he enlist and fall—if he fell—through any magnanimous motive. He just left Troy on finding himself betrayed by a neighbour—a dirty, little, mean-spirited, pompous ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is therefore a parable of the impotent yearnings of the Middle Ages—its passionate aspiration, its conscience-stricken desire, its fettered curiosity amid the tramping limits of imperfect knowledge and irrational dogmatism. The indestructible ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... selfishness, if used in a bad sense, should not mean simply regard for ourselves, but only disregard for our neighbours. We ought not, in other words, to be unjust because we ourselves happen to be the objects of injustice. The parable of the good Samaritan is generally regarded as a perfect embodiment of a great moral truth. Translated from poetry into an abstract logical form, it amounts to saying that we should do good to the man who most needs our services, whatever be the accidents which alienate ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of those questions. I ask you to learn how to "conquer nature by obeying her," as the great Lord Bacon said two hundred and fifty years ago. For so only will you in your theories and your movements, draw "bills which nature will honour"—to use Mr. Carlyle's famous parable—because they are according to her unchanging laws, and not have them returned on your hands, as too many theorists' are, with "no ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... their own soul. The idea is fanciful, but nevertheless is a figure of a truth which I want to make you acknowledge, viz. that the life of contentment is better than the life of indulgence. Are you disposed to admit that? 'Far otherwise.' Then hear another parable. The life of self-contentment and self-indulgence may be represented respectively by two men, who are filling jars with streams of wine, honey, milk,—the jars of the one are sound, and the jars of the other leaky; the first fils his jars, and has no ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... In the parable of the sower and its explanation the Savior said the seed which fell among thorns are they which hear the word and go forth and are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to perfection. Luke 8:14. Christian ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... with the serious air of a very learned man, "is a most interesting subject. It is a historical subject—it is a biblical subject. As an article of food it is mentioned oftener in the Bible than any other. It is used in parable and to point a moral. 'Ye must not live on ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Sunday evening service, over a hundred Yankton warriors and chiefs were present. I preached from the parable of the prodigal son. At the end of this passage, 'Though the elder brother be still jealous of the kindness and mercy shown to you, and thinks your people only fit to go down to the grave with the beasts that perish, yet God is good and just; and though long lost ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... Dale, there's lots of us that are ready to take up our share of the duties the Creator designed for us. We are standing waiting like the people in the parable that nobody had hired. The trouble is you won't let us, you men won't. We've got to wait for you to give us our rights. All our willingness doesn't amount to anything ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... declared that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth." Socialism teaches that a man must never rest content as long as another man possesses that which he has not. Christ did not believe in equality of payment when He told the parable of the ten talents and the unprofitable servant. Socialism would reduce all labour to the pace of the slowest. Above all, Christ was not a Socialist when He bade the young man who had great possessions sell all that he had and give it to the poor. What ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... The parable of Dives and Lazarus was a great favourite at Christ-tide, as, presumably, it served to stir up men to deeds of charity towards their poorer brethren; but the following carol, parts of which are very curious, has nothing like the antiquity of ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... accents, that the Doctor felt as if he were before some dread tribunal, and remained silent. 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 stung ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... after the doctrines of 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
... sacrificed all the veal in the country in honour of Jack's repentance; and the Curate stood outside upon the threshold, looking at the scene with the strangest half-angry, half-comical realisation of the state of mind of the elder brother in the parable. He had himself been rather found fault with, excused, and tolerated, among his relations; but Jack had at once become master of the position, and taken possession of all their sympathies. Mr Wentworth stood gazing at them, half-amused, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... what I shall say concerning the parable of the tower, and after this be no longer importunate with me about ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... answered. "God himself shows that we ought to receive those who have done wrong when they repent and desire to return to the right way. He himself in His mercy is always thus ready to receive repentant sinners who desire to be reconciled to Him. I'll read to you the parable of the prodigal son, and you will then understand how God the Father, as He in His goodness allows us to call Him, receives all His children who come back to Him, acknowledging their sins and transgressions. ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... gift of parable, lady, as it should be with one who interprets the oracles of a goddess. But you have not told me of what I, your servant, am ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... loose a lot of contradictions when he started the human race. When I saw the way Whythe was watching Elizabeth, and remembered how she had looked at him when he passed her a few minutes before, I knew two specimens of a common variety were before me, and I made up a parable as I watched them watch each other. The two specimens had been in love and been engaged. They had a fuss. The engagement was broken. She was mad, and he was mad, and each thought the other would make the first ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... is but the outside shell and the fancy framework in which the substance of the poem is enclosed. Its substance is the poet's philosophy of life. It shadows forth, in type and parable, his ideal of the perfection of the human character, with its special features, its trials, its achievements. There were two accepted forms in poetry in which this had been done by poets. One was under the image of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... and interesting device of emphasis in stage-direction was introduced by Mr. Forbes-Robertson in his production of The Passing of the Third Floor Back. This dramatic parable by Mr. Jerome K. Jerome deals with the moral regeneration of eleven people, who are living in a Bloomsbury boarding-house, through the personal influence of a Passer-by, who is the Spirit of Love incarnate; and this effect is accomplished ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... to be used: our inclinations were intended to impel us in certain directions, and God's will and glory were meant to be our guide and aim. So the Scripture teaches, we think, in the parable of the talents, and in the words, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;" and, "Whether, therefore, ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... objects shall receive our benefactions, there are also general principles to guide us. The first is that presented by our Saviour, when, after urging the great law of benevolence, he was asked, "And who is my neighbor?" His reply, in the parable of "the Good Samaritan," teaches us that any human being whose wants are brought to our knowledge is our neighbor. The wounded man in that parable was not only a stranger, but he belonged to a foreign nation, peculiarly hated; and he had no claim, except ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... better parable," she said. "It's like the State as you see it—magnificent, inspiring, a thing of pomp and dignity. But we women, who have to drive and keep going a house like that—we know what it all rests upon. It rests upon a few tired kitchen-maids and boot-boys and scullery-girls, hurrying, panting ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... replied. "What I'm tellin' you is t' truth, or if it isn't' truth it's a parable, and I reckon a parable's Bible truth. It were gettin' on towards back-end, and I'd bin diggin' potatoes while I were in a fair sweat wi' t' heat. So I reckoned I'd just sit down for a bit on t' bench I'd made an' rest misen. Efter a while I gat agate once ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... It would seem unlawful to kill men who have sinned. For our Lord in the parable (Matt. 13) forbade the uprooting of the cockle which denotes wicked men according to a gloss. Now whatever is forbidden by God is a sin. Therefore it is a sin to kill ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Twitchel, taking up her parable again, in such a plaintive tone that all knew something pathetic was coming, "what mistakes some folks will make, a-fetchin' up girls. Now there's your Mary, Miss Scudder,—why, there a'n't nothin' she can't do; but law, I was down to Miss Skinner's, last week, a-watchin' with her, and re'lly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... woman about the parable of the master who forgave his servant a very great debt, and how that servant immediately went out and caught his fellow-servant by the throat because he was his debtor. The old woman listened to the end, and the ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... broken off," and "thou (the Gentile) standest by faith." Jesus says; "if ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove." Here, in parable, faith is represented as removing mountains of sin. He further says—"Thy faith hath made thee whole";—not thy works. Paul exclaims, "Faith works by love, purifies the heart and overcomes the world." John says, "and this is the victory that overcometh ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... enterprise and gigantic combinations of skill and capital. For, though nobody knew with the least 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
... see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated to him, described by the narrator as A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... a trader. All, 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 ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... 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 us; they trouble the souls of men, which are our habitation, ...
— Philebus • Plato |
