"Parable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prodigal son, and humbly say, with heart and mouth, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son; make me as one of Thy hired servants." And what will thy heavenly Father do but what that father did in the parable? Assuredly He will not change His essence, which is love, for the sake of thy misdoings. Is it not His own precious treasure, and a small thing with Him to forgive thee thy trespasses, if thou believe in Him? for His hand is not shortened that it cannot ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... show the people the danger of caring too much for money or the things of this life, so he told them this parable ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 9, March 1, 1914 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... intricacies of a human soul: we shall see no hint in it of the cleansing and filling that is needed in sinful man before he can follow the path of the plant. It shows us some of the Divine principles of the new life rather than a set sequence of experience; above all, the parable gives a lesson that most of us only begin to learn after Pentecost has become a reality to us—the lesson of walking, not after the flesh, ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... them upon a section, consisting of fourteen verses, which they had not seen before, and that, after just ten minutes' examination, one woman, who could not read, repeated the whole distinctly in her own words. Dr Brunton proposed, for a similar experiment, the parable of the 'talents,' with which none was acquainted except one woman, who was consequently not permitted to answer. With its being only read to them, and with a few minutes' catechising, they perceived its various circumstances, and were able to enumerate them in detail. ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... my appeal, for he insisted on my immediate acceptance of a cigar six inches long, and proposed to me a tempting list of varied drinks. The Captain read the letter through twice carefully, and thus took up his parable:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... courage of the holy troop, swearing by an Ave that no living head was domiciled in the breeches. Then they all blushed at their ease, while examining this habitavit, thinking that perhaps the desire of the prelate was that they should discover therein some sage admonition or evangelical parable. Although this sight caused certain ravages in the hearts of those most virtuous maidens, they paid little attention to the flutterings of their reins, but sprinkling a little holy water in the bottom of the abyss, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Lydia slid helplessly into the naive question, "Well, did his father drown?" before the meaning of the little parable struck her. She began to laugh, with her gay, sweet inability to resent a joke made at her own expense. "Don't you think you are a good hand at sermon-making!" she mocked him. "It's all very well to preach, but just you tell me what you would ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... engraved decorations. Of these two, the eleventh displays the shield of France; the thirteenth, which describes Falsirena's incantations and enchantments, is ornamented with the symbol of the Jesuits, IHS. For this the publishers alone were probably responsible. Yet it may stand as a parable of all-pervasive Jesuitry. Even among the roses and raptures of the most voluptuous poem of the century their presence makes itself felt, as though to hint that the Adone is capable of being used according ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... shall tell me about them," interrupted Miss Sherrard. "So you do read your Bible every day. Then I dare say you happen to know the beautiful story, or rather parable, spoken by ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... Lady Kenmure, Lady Boyd, and Marion M'Naught, a woman of remarkable powers of mind. For one thing, she had a fascinating gift of conversation, and, like John Bunyan, it was her habit to speak of spiritual things with wonderful power under the similitude and parable of outward and worldly things. At the time of the famous 'Stewarton sickness' Lady Robertland was of immense service, both to the ministers and to the people. Robert Fleming tells us that the profane rabble of that time gave the nickname of the Stewarton ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... off with the first native that left. And the women! Weren't they horrors? I don't think I'll ever feel pride in my sex again. But above all, I'll never forget the way in which Jack drove from the table that native who hadn't a clean shirt on. It was a picture of Christ's parable of the 'Marriage Feast,'" ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... despotism of martial statues would be far better than a demagogy of these virtues, posed in their well-known attitudes, to confront perplexed posterity with lifted brows and superhuman simpers. A sublime parable, like Ward's statue of the Freedman, is the full expression of one idea that should be commemorated, and would better celebrate the great deeds of our soldiers than bass-reliefs of battles, and statues of captains, and groups of privates, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... justice, judgment and equity; That discretion may be given to the inexperienced, To the youth knowledge and a purpose; That the wise man may hear and increase in learning, And the intelligent man may receive counsel, That he may understand proverb and parable, The words of the wise ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... an uneasy feeling about where this parable was leading us but my mind shied away from the essential point and Erics went relentlessly on. "As the years passed more repairs were made—first a new set of oars, then some more planks, still newer oars, still more planks. Eventually Achilles, an unthinking ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... parable, and leaving the supposed animals to run their indefinite career, let us take a brief glance at some of the curiosities of the science of Puffing and Pushing—for both are so blended, that it is impossible to disentangle one from the other—as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... met his gaze was one in which two parallel straight lines met visibly in the region of somewhere. He remembered learning that such two lines do, in truth, always meet in infinity. He wondered drearily if this were a parable. As he saw his life, all that he desired and all that was right seemed to lie in two tracks, side by side, but for ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... nor tasty feed, but fine fuel for the fire; good for that, anyway. It was a snug corner, but at last the time was ripe when the fire came driving straight for it the fire with the wind behind. 'Which things are a parable,' he said, his ugly sunburnt face twitching curiously, his eyes quite handsome, nay, even splendid with honest scorn. He was shaking his fist towards the prim little dorp that we had left behind over the ridges. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... the earth, the practical conditions for membership therein, and the inclusion of Gentile as well as Jew in the gracious provision. Novel were his words. Whoever had heard his discourse on the Mount or the parable of the lost sheep was rich beyond the modern sons of men. But now, in the closing period of his stay with mortals, he was more frequently foretelling the life to come. Like a footworn traveler drawing near the homeland, he was keenly anticipating ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... of ancient Egypt; but it was not till some time 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 or millennial dogma, often mathematically computing, in ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... it to despair. Jesus tenderly "considers" the case of those He disciplines, "tempering the wind to the shorn lamb." In the picture of the good shepherd bearing home the wandering sheep, He illustrated by parable what He had often and again taught by His own example. No word of needless harshness or upbraiding uttered to the erring wanderer! Ingratitude is too deeply felt to need rebuke! In silent love, "He lays it on His ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... close to the door. To her surprise she saw Tom not far off. He was on his way to his chapel when he noticed Catharine alone, walking towards the church, and he had followed her. Mr. Cardew took for his text the parable of the prodigal son. He began by saying that this parable had been taken to be an exhibition of God's love for man. It seemed rather intended to set forth, not the magnificence of the Divine nature, but of human nature—of that nature which God assumed. The ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... 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
... plane, and Socrates helped 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
... sort of sinner, spoken of in Christ's next parable in this chapter, from which my text is taken, of whom it is not said that God the Father sends out to seek and to save him. That is the prodigal son, who left his father's house, and strayed away of his own wantonness and free will. Christ does not go out after him. He has gone away of his own ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... is carried away with love. If 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 thee as ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... of the chapel until the service had well begun, and then peep through the door to see who was in the pulpit. He was the most eloquent speaker I ever heard. I never shall forget his picture of the father, in the parable of the prodigal son, watching for his child's return, all his thoughts swallowed up in one—WILL HE COME BACK TO-DAY? When he did come—no word of rebuke. The hardest thing in the world is to be completely generous in forgiveness. ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... a catastrophe befell Punch, a double faux pas. An excellent child story had been printed in "Vanity Fair" of October 15th, in which a little girl at a Sunday-school class was asked to define a parable: "Please, miss," replies the child, "a parable's a 'eavenly story with no earthly meaning!" A fortnight later Punch, who had been victimised, had the misfortune, not only to come out with the same joke, but by a typographical slip to spoil it by making the child define a parable as "a heavenly ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... be, for its satire was too direct to be misunderstood, even when it mocked English policy with ironical praise for doing exactly what it failed to do. More was a wit and a philosopher, but at the same time so practical and earnest that Erasmus tells of a burgomaster at Antwerp who fastened upon the parable of Utopia with such goodwill that he learnt it by heart. And in 1517 Erasmus advised a correspondent to send for Utopia, if he had not yet read it, and if he wished to see the true source ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... basic a thing as continuing liaison between small units, the Colonel's listeners never forgot his elementary parable: ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... parable, whereof the writer will now expound the meaning. Jocasta was no other than Miss Esmond, maid of honour to her Majesty. She had told Mr. Esmond this little story of having met a gentleman, somewhere, and forgetting his name, when the gentleman, with no ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... remember, to warn us against attempting too close an analysis of character. He used to say that the consciousness of a man, the intuitive instinct which impelled him, his attack upon experience, was a thing almost independent both of his circumstances and of his reason. He used to take his parable from the weaving of a tapestry, and say that a box full of thread and a loom made up a very small part of the process. It was the inventive instinct of the craftsman, the faculty of ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... artist in words, 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
... 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 ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... legend is tenderly beautiful and thrilling, it is almost too romantic to please the taste of simple flowers, therefore I will tell you the true story how we acquired our name. That shall be my parable—see ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... arrangement of these groups of miracles and parables. The first miracle is the cure of leprosy, and is a type of sin; while the last one is the withering of the fig tree, which is a symbol of judgment. The first parable is that of the seed of the kingdom, which is a symbol of the beginning or planting of the kingdom; the last is that of the talents and prophesies the final adjudication at the last day. This same ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... gone mad; common sense was only moonshine after all; the elephant and the whale of Bismarckian parable were at it tooth and nail! Shells of all sizes flew hissing through the skies. Before my very eyes, the graves of those old Gods whom Christ had risen from the dead to destroy were shaking to the shock of Messrs. Armstrong's patent ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... 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 ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Salon of 1850 there appeared a picture called "The Sower" and representing a young peasant sowing grain. There was nothing in the subject to connect it particularly with any religious symbolism—not even with the Parable of the Sower who went forth to sow; nor with any series of personifications of the months. This was a simple peasant of the Norman coast, in his red blouse and blue trousers, his legs wrapped in straw, and his weather-beaten hat, full of holes. He marches ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... tale of the Kilmansegg Kin, In golden text on a vellum skin, Though certain people would wink and grin, And declare the whole story a parable— That the Ancestor rich was one Jacob Ghrimes, Who held a long lease, in prosperous times, Of acres, pasture ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... 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, ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... truth thus conveyed shall be intelligible to all men at all times. To object to the form, to scoff at or deride it, is as unintelligent as it would be, for example, to disparage the sublime teaching of the parable of the Prodigal Son on the ground that we have no evidence for the historical truth ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... the notorious cases of William Branch or Flower, and John Tooley.] and the doers thereof were enrolled among the martyrs. Moreover among the genuine martyrs for conscience' sake—by far the majority of those who suffered—not a few were zealots who took up their parable against the judges when under examination in a fashion calculated to enrage persons of a far less choleric disposition than the bishop of London. In short if once the postulate be granted that to teach persistently doctrines regarded by authority ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... something of that sense of the unseen passed into the confused, turbulent spirit of the boy, very susceptible of poetical impressions, and his young lord's countenance connected itself with all the floating notions left in his mind by parable or allegory. He did not speak, as Louis heartily shook his hardy red hand, and bade him good speed, but his bow and pulled forelock at the door had in them more of real ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with this reasoning, said to Francis: "My son, pray to Jesus Christ that He may make known His will to us, that so we may favor your wishes." The servant of God retired to pray, and soon after returned and set forth this parable. ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... reply; but he seemed to guess who I was, and bent down his head between his hands. I saw tears dropping from between his fingers. It was a good sign. I thought of the parable of the prodigal son. "He has been eating the husks: perhaps he will soon say, 'I will arise and go to my Father.'" I prayed that the Holy Spirit would strive mightily with him, and make him feel not only his sad moral and physical condition, ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Founder, is full of 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 ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... all too long, through seas unknown and dark, (With Spenser's parable I close my tale,) By shoal and rock hath steered my venturous bark, And landward now I drive before the gale. And now the blue and distant shore I hail, And nearer now I see the port expand, And now I gladly furl my weary sail, And, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... not true, just to deceive people an' mislead 'em, we call it lyin', but when his imagination invents what's not true merely for the fun o' the thing, an' tells it as a joke, never pretendin' that it's true, he ain't lyin', he's only tellin' a story, or a anecdote, or a parable. Now, Dan, put that in your pipe an' smoke it. Likewise shut your potato-trap, and let me go on wi' my story, which is, (he looked impressively round, while every eye gazed, and ear listened, and mouth ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... delightful as the "Mermaid!" I'm glad Hawthorne kept the heart for years, and then instead of throwing it away ate it—gave it honourable burial, so to speak—which shows that you can have your heart and eat it, too! (I must, by the by, make a parable of this for Pat, who is eating hers, though she certainly has not got it. She has given it to some one else, though I fancy she thinks she has merely mislaid it.) In apropos of hearts, they make dories in Swampscott; and ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... place you begin by setting up Christ as an ideal of perfect manhood, and then you proceed to demolish him as a possible example, by maintaining that he was not a man, but a God, and therefore a being whom it is beyond the power of man to imitate! Oh, you terrible, terrible clergy! You preach the parable of the buried talents, and side by side with that you have always insisted that women should put theirs away; and you have soothed their sensitive consciences with the dreadful cant of obedience—not obedience to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... much as we, who have borne the heat and burden of the day." Master says, "It is perfectly right." Brother—"It cannot be right—it is very unreasonable." Master—"Hear what the law says on the subject." He then reads the following parable—Matt. XX. 1-16. "For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... of Loo?" asked the ploughman. "Yes," was the reply. "He knows the ford," was the enigmatic answer of the man as he turned to his work; but whether this reply was suggested by the general belief that Confucius was omniscient, or by wry of a parable to signify that Confucius possessed the knowledge by which the river of disorder, which was barring the progress of liberty and freedom, might be crossed, we are only left to conjecture. Nor from the second recluse could Tsze-loo ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... of Austen's boyhood, even beating the carpet with her own hands, Hilary Vane went about his business with no apparent lack of diligence. But he was meditating. He had many times listened to the Reverend Mr. Weightman read the parable from the pulpit, but he had never reflected how it would be to be the father of a real prodigal. What was to be done about the calf? Was there to be a calf, or was there not? To tell the truth, Hilary wanted a calf, and yet to have one (in spite of Holy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... we compare parables, the passage in the Fourth Gospel most resembling a parable, viz., the similitude of the Vine and the branches, is made up of detached sentences more "terse" and "concise" than those of ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... check; a return upon itself; a laboured circling; last a healthful maturity, upright, triumphing. He spoke with his eyes on the ground. Raising them at the end, he was astonished to see that his companion had flushed deeply; and only then it occurred to him that this parable might be applied by the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... invasion of Afghanistan. At home the question of Free Trade was coming rapidly to the front, and the Anti-corn Law League, which was founded in Manchester in 1838, was already beginning to prove itself a power in the land. As far back as 1826, Hume had taken up his parable in Parliament against the Corn Laws as a blight on the trade of the country; and two years after the Reform Bill was passed he had returned to the attack, only to find, however, that the nation was still wedded to Protection. Afterwards, year after year, Mr. Villiers drew attention ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I had been happy, and my father, an emblem of 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 assurance ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Feeble- mind, saw a laughable, if it had not been such a lamentable, spectacle. For it saw this poor creature hanging as limp as wet linen on the back of one of the Interpreter's sweating servants. Your little boy will explain the parable to you. Shall I do this? or, shall I rather do that? asks Feeble-mind at every stop. Would it be right? or, would it be wrong? Shall I read that book? Shall I go to that ball? Shall I marry that man? Tell me what to do. Give me your hand. Take me up upon your back, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... the beggar, "that they'll be, like mony folk's gude gifts, that often seem maist gracious in adversityor maybe it's a parable, to teach us no to slight them that are in the darkness of sin and the decay of tribulation, since God sends odours to refresh the mirkest hour, and flowers and pleasant bushes to clothe the ruined buildings. And ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... sirs, bound to yon town am I; No bridge anear, I sit and sit Until these waters have run dry, So that afoot I get to it." "A living parable behold, My friend!" quoth I. "Upon the brim You, too, will gaze until you're old, But never boldly ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... words as in a parable. He was thinking of a greater change. He was rejoicing over the boy of ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... stock of histories setting forth the beauty and charm, and also the terror and wickedness, of that wonderful land. Some echoes of this legend had doubtless drifted down to Scotland, and possibly still more may have been wafted over from France. Ascham had taken up his parable in the Schoolmaster, describing the devilish sins and corruptions of Italy, and now the good people of Edinburgh were to be given the sight of a man coming thence, one who was fabled to have gathered together more knowledge, both of this world ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Catholic), who had been left by 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 good Shepherd who came himself on the same errand on which He sends his ministers ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... as he sat by the sea of Galilee, he told the people the parable of the Sower. The sower cast some seed by the wayside, that is, along the edge of the field or road-side. Some seed fell upon stony ground, some among thorns, ...
— Light On the Child's Path • William Allen Bixler
... a parable which I read the other day in the writings of the holy Fathers. There were once two monks, dwelling in hermits' cells near to each other, each of whom had one choice tree given him to cultivate. When this had ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... congregation, with a view to his becoming an assistant pastor, but before it took place, he again appeared before the public as an author. The second production of his pen is a solemn and most searching work, founded upon the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, under the title of A Few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a Damned Soul; by that poor and contemptible Servant of Jesus Christ, John Bunyan, 1658. His humility led him to seek the patronage of his pastor; and Mr. Gifford, under the initials ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... therefore what I shall say concerning the parable of the tower, and after this be no longer importunate ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... familiar mage, Elsbury W. Reynolds! But the fame that is built merely on publishers' press sheets does not dig very deep in the iron soil of time. We are all only raft-builders, as Lord Dunsany tells us in his little parable; even the raft that Homer made for Helen must break up some day. Who in these States knows the works of Nat Gould? Twelve million of his dashing paddock novels have been sold in England, but he is as unknown here as is Preacher Wright in England. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... parable it all is, as old as the earth, and as fresh, each new year, as if a messenger-angel had come straight from heaven, in his home-spun of young green, to tell us that all ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... revealed to this world of ours, he wrote, "The smaller of these moons is the veritable Brick Moon." That, in the moment of triumph for the greatest astronomical discovery of a generation, Dr. Hall should have time or thought to give to my little parable,—this ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... example, on the fact that it is a duty to be happy and healthy; and that 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 ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... have not time to go into very minute detail, I pass at once to two very important points in the New Testament. The first occurs in Christ's parable of the unjust steward. There the steward is commended for making an arrangement by which he secured his permanent interest by adroitly subtracting from what was due his Lord by his debtors. He had acted unjustly in the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... a mental note that reasoning was an unworkable technique with this compound. Henry, a past master at it, had already tried threats and abuse. That hadn't worked. I next tried one of the oldest forms in the teaching of man, a parable. ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... was surrendered to the matrons of the village to receive a lashing for her misconduct. Then Tanielu, the pastor, prayed that God's wrath might be averted from so wicked a village, and made a beautiful parable about the Garden of Eden and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... New Testament we find the same idea applied to a shorter distance in the "sabbath-day's journey," which was about two miles. But the Jews in New Testament times adopted, not the Babylonian day of twelve hours, but the Egyptian of twenty-four. So we find, in the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, mention made of hiring early in the morning, and at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours; and since those hired latest worked for but one hour, it is evident that there were twelve hours in the daylight. Our Lord ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... pair of sweetly serious eyes to him, "it is only a simple illustration—a little parable pointing to spiritual development and perfection, and the pure and flawless lily is but the type of that which mortal 'eye hath not seen.' The homely bulb corresponds to the mortal man, wrapped up in the density and husks of materiality; ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... could command the southern approaches to the bridge, my colleague arriving sometimes by way of Birdcage Walk and sometimes by way of the Horse Guards Parade. Not seeing any signs of him in the direction of the bridge, I turned back. A little way past the chair where the lady was sitting I met Mr. Parable. I know Mr. Parable quite well by sight. He was wearing the usual grey suit and soft felt hat with which the pictures in the newspapers have made us all familiar. I judged that Mr. Parable had come from the Houses of Parliament, and the next ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... the centre of the story, for Milly Parable and my son, Rupert, though they bulk large in the tale, be less than me, it's difficult to set it out. And the affair itself growed into such a proper tangle at the finish that my pen may fail afore the end; but I'll stick so near ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... his face to its humorous expression. "I doubt if sexual proclivities," he said drily, "come within the scope of the parable." ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... is the Contemplation of the lowly Steps our Almighty Leader took in conducting us to his heavenly Mansions! In plain and apt Parable, [2] Similitude, and Allegory, our great Master enforced the Doctrine of our Salvation; but they of his Acquaintance, instead of receiving what they could not oppose, were offended at the Presumption of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... his laboratory, the general,—we all do it; and yet we are only the instruments which the Almighty uses; to Him alone the honor is due. We have nothing of ourselves of which we should be proud." Yes, this is what the poet wrote down. He wrote it in the form of a parable, and called it "The ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... eventide of a singularly sad and stormy life, and of a reign that was inaugurated by a most sanguinary civil war, reminds one, in spite of the hereditary title of "Apostolic Majesty" conferred upon his forbears by the Papacy, of nothing so much as of the publican of the parable going up to the temple to pray, so deep and unaffected is the humility with which he approaches the altar or kneels at the priedieu in the chapel of his palace, or beside the tombs of those most near and dear ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... 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, deaf to the very entreaties which he himself ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... one 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 and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... up my parable and told him how Eppelein had stamped the sum on his mind, and that he for certain was in the right, both as to the sum and as to the Venice sequins, forasmuch as that Herdegen, to the end that he might know it rightly, had told him that they should be ducats such as he had three in a red ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fell on the great wood through which he had rambled in August, now one blaze of colour, rich green and light yellow, with patches of fiery red and dark purple. God seemed to have given him a sermon, and he wrote that evening, like one inspired, on the same parable of nature Jesus loved, with its subtle interpretation of our sorrows, joys, trust, and hope. People told me that it was a "rael bonnie sermon," and that Netherton had forgotten his after-sermon snuff, although it was his turn to ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow? If you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places, where there was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... in his grave clothes into the new world; the Jewish spirit come up into the day from out the basement and cellar rooms of the synagogue where it had been seated for a thousand years drugging itself with rabbinical lore, refining almost maniacally upon the intention of some obscure phrase or parable, negating the lure of the world and of experience with a mass of rites and observances and ceremonials, losing itself in the gray desert stretches of theory, or wasting itself in the impossible dream of Zion restored ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Here is work for the women who have "all the rights they want." When one of these comfortably situated women was told of the need of the ballot for working women, she held up her finger, showing the wedding ring on it, and said, "I have all the rights I want." The next time that I read the parable of the man who fell among thieves and was succored by the good Samaritan, methought I could see that woman with the wedding ring on her finger, passing by on ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... him; then replied, "Why not the truth in a jest as well as a parable? The great Fulvia went fishing the other day; she caught more than all the company besides. They said it was because the barb of her hook was ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... itself is well disguised, but it's a parable. It's botany on the surface, but it gets over enough chain-reaction theory to be good physics, if you read it right. You see botany is what you ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... and majesty of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye maketh, 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 any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. He said that he who should not leave every thing, houses and children and lands, and follow him, could not be his disciple. He told the parable of the rich man who did nothing bad, like our own rich men, but who only arrayed himself in costly garments, and ate and drank daintily, and who lost his soul thereby; and of poor Lazarus, who ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... come the black men. But to this day the white men come to the bank, on the other side of the river, and call to the black men, saying, "Come, it is better over here." I fear there is little doubt that this story is a modified version of some parable preached to the Cabindas at the time the Capuchins had such influence among them, before they were driven out of the lower Congo regions more than a hundred years ago, for political reasons ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... as well as of thought, and changeful Proteus will become a true image of the Poet. The work will manifest a symbolic tendency; it will have an aroma of the wisdom of the East, taught in forms of the parable, the apologue, with hints of allegory. The world, thrown outside of that transparent Greek life, becomes a Fairy Tale, which is here taken up and incorporated into a great poem. We shall be compelled to look thoroughly into these strange ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... is a parable. Likewise, in the new India we are studying, product of new modern influences direct and indirect, two kinds of religious changes impress us. There is, first, the gradual change coming over the whole thought of the people, ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... Matarazzo and in Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was yellow, another that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation for the legend may really have existed need not here be questioned. Let us rather use the mythus as a parable of the ecstatic devotion which prompted the men of that age to discover a form of unimaginable beauty in the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... ministers devoted to him, it was impossible to arrest his evil designs save by depriving him of life; that the public weal having made him resolve to take that step, he informed me of it in order that I might aid him with my advice and personally assist in its execution. Beaupuis next 'took up his parable,' and warmly represented the evils which the too great authority of Richelieu had caused France, and concluded by saying that we must prevent the like inconvenience before his successor had rendered matters remediless." ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... is hardly likely, as Buddha did not require the help of a teacher to find truth, and his followers would not have invented the person of Balauhar-Barlaam; on the other hand, the introduction of the Evangelical Parable of The Sower, which exists in the original of all the versions of our Book, shows that this original was a Christian adaptation of the Legend of Buddha. Mr. Jacobs seeks vainly to lessen the force of this proof in showing that this Parable has ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... occupied four days in explaining to you the parable of Lazarus, bringing out the treasure that we found in a body covered with sores; a treasure, not of gold and silver and precious stones, but of wisdom and fortitude, of patience and endurance. For as in regard to visible treasures, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... on toward midnight, the hour upon which all expectation was concentrated. For did not the Parable of the Ten Virgins speak of the coming of the ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... souls followed such sheep into the wilderness, and brought them home in His arms, or on His shoulder, and then called on the angels of heaven to rejoice because they were found. Find out what that parable means, Mary. He whose name is 'Love' ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... 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 Life of William Carey • George Smith
... shedding a few drops of ichor, celestial or otherwise, he is no whit the worse. So, if any of these opponents be left, I will not waste time in vain repetition of the demonstrative evidence of the practical value of science; but knowing that a parable will sometimes penetrate where syllogisms fail to effect an entrance, I will offer ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Meeting Greater Love Apologia pro Poemate Meo The Show Mental Cases Parable of the Old Men and the Young Arms and the Boy Anthem for Doomed Youth The Send-off Insensibility Dulce et Decorum est The Sentry The Dead-Beat Exposure Spring Offensive The Chances S. I. W. Futility Smile, Smile, Smile Conscious A Terre Wild ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... and the fable are closely akin to allegory. A parable is a brief narrative of real or imaginary incidents for the purpose of inculcating some moral or religious truth. It has been described as "an earthly story with a heavenly meaning." A considerable part of Christ's teaching was in parables, ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... some 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
... attire, the scourging and the mockery, the binding or nailing to a tree, the tears of Mary, and the resurrection and the empty coffin!—or how not at all strange when we consider in what numerous forms and among how many peoples, this same parable and ritual had as a matter of fact been celebrated, and how it had ultimately come down to bring its message of redemption into a somewhat obscure Syrian city, in the special shape with which ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... des Pingouins" he returns, in a parable, to his epoch. For this book is the history of France "from the earliest time to the present day," seen in the mirror of the writer's ironical temperament. It is very good. It is inimitable. It is sheer genius. One cannot reasonably ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... foolishness with God,(61) the weak things of earth are the strong things of Heaven, the outcast of the world are the chosen of the Father Almighty. And hence our Saviour under the figure of the master in the parable who prepared a great supper, says of all those who will not hear Him, who neglect His divine inspirations and despise the call of His ministers, that they shall never taste of His feast. But who, then, shall sit ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... prov'd, it has some weight, will admit; since even the variation of weight in so small a quantity of Air, as is but equal in bulk to an Orange, is manifestly discoverable upon such Balances, as are none of the nicest. 3. This Statical Baroscope will oftentimes be more parable, than the other: For many will finde it more easie, to procure a good pair of Gold-scales, and a Buble or two, than a long Cane seal'd, a quantity of Quick-silver, and all the other requisits of the Mercurial Baroscope; especially if we comprise the trouble and skill, that is requisite ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... of a Life that Might Have Been Otherwise Sad Lack of Zeal Safe In the Ark Sambo and the Infidel Judge Satan's Match Saved "Saved" Saved and Saving Snapping the Chains Song Stories Sowing the Tares Spurgeon and the Little Orphan Spurgeon's Parable Stubborn Little Sammy ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... seriously complains, that he is represented by Dryden as an Irishman, "when he knows that I never saw Ireland till I was three-and-twenty years old, and was there but for four months." He had understood Dryden's parable literally; so true it is, that a knavish speech sleeps ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... a "very great husbandry.'' Isaac, too, conjoined tillage with pastoral husbandry, and that with success, for "he sowed in the land Gerar, and reaped an hundred-fold''—a return which, it would appear, in some favoured regions, occasionally rewarded the labour of the husbandman. In the parable of the sower, Jesus Christ mentions an increase of thirty, sixty ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... took the two youngest on each side of her. Dolores found a table ready for her with the books. A passage in the New Testament was given out and read verse by verse, to the end of the subject, which was the Parable of the Tares, and then Lady Merrifield gave a short lesson on it, asking questions, and causing references to be found, according to a book of notes, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prelude to many more. Grisell wanted to hear it over again, and then who was the Archbishop martyr, and who were the Virgins in memory of whom the lamps were carried. Both these, and many another history, parable, or legend were told her by Sister Avice, training her soul, throughout the long recovery, which was still very slow, but was becoming more confirmed every day. Grisell could use her eye, turn her head, and the wounds closed healthily under the sister's treatment without showing ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... begin with a sort of parable. Many years ago when I was on the staff of a great public school, we engaged a ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... singing so ordinary a melody, lest it should set me down as unmusical for ever. But soon my concern was with the unfortunate young man, for he was, I felt sure, quite ignorant of the habits of such congregations as ours, and would certainly offend our best people. For after that we read the parable of the Prodigal Son and sang, "The Sands of Time are Sinking." Then I forgot even this curious lapse from our Sunday custom, so clearly did the tale now begun by the preacher bring again before my eyes those inhuman ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... means of an omnibus to a hat shop and bought him another hat and put it on his head, and made a present of the old one to the shop assistant, and marched him out of the shop. "There!" she said, "you see how impossible it is." This is a parable. And I will not insult ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... again as the symbol of all speech and all life. Om thus becomes the name not only of all our mental and physical powers, but is especially that of the living principle of the pran or spirit. This is explained by the parable in the second chapter, while in the third chapter that spirit within us is identified with the spirit ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... discourse, To receive training in wise conduct, In 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
... do. I don't. I want to live in Paris or Vienna with Nora, and enjoy myself I don't want to paint pot-boilers. I say like the man in the parable, 'Give me the portion that belongeth to me,' and I'll go my way, promising, however, not to spend it in riotous living. Won't ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... on Sunday nights, drew a chair to the table, rang for candles, and with Allister by his side and me seated opposite to him, began to find a place from which to read to us. To my yet stronger conviction, he began and read through without a word of remark the parable of the Prodigal Son. When he came to the father's delight at having him back, the robe, and the shoes, and the ring, I could not repress my tears. "If I could only go back," I thought, "and set it all right! but then I've ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald |
