"Parable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Thus, the Revisers propose in the parable of the prodigal son,—'And I perish here with hunger!' But why 'here?' Because I answer, whereas in the earliest copies of St. Luke the words stood thus,—[Greek: EGODELIMOAPOLLYMAI], some careless scribe after writing [Greek: EGODE], reduplicated the three last letters ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... odes and songs one thousand and five [here he follows Chronicles] and of parables and similitudes three thousand. For he spoke a parable on every sort of tree, from the hyssop to the cedar, and in like manner about every sort of living creature, whether on the earth or in the air or in the seas. He was not unacquainted with any of ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... in a room with a hundred men, and without a window!! Though the weather was hot no breath of air reached the poor prisoners, but through the cracks in the boards. No wonder that the missionary soon fell ill of a fever. His wife, fearing he would die, determined to act like the widow in the parable, and to weary the unjust judge by her entreaties. She left her quiet cottage, and built a hut of bamboos at the governor's gate, and there she lived with her babe, and the little Burmese girls. The prison was just opposite the governor's gate, so that the anxious wife ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... in religion, and also, they were brought face to face with eternal truths. They saw the way of Salvation in object lesson; the Bread of Life contrasted with the husks of the world; listened to an interpretation of the Parable of the Sower; were reminded that 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap'; in the story of Ruth recognized the wisdom of choosing Christ rather than the world, and also the beauty of unselfish service. Many were brought to consider the work of the ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... a parable must not be taken literally. The gulf is the difference between the angelic and the diabolic temperament. What more impassable gulf could you have? Think of what you have seen on earth. There is no physical gulf between the philosopher's class room and the bull ring; but the bull fighters do not ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... box, the cedar, the fir, the oak, the pine, "beams," and "timber," are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, not one of these words is found in the New, EXCEPT the case of the "beam in the eye," in the parable in ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... military 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... His religion was the religion of the heart. We see it in his discourse with the Disciples as they walked together towards Emmaus, when their hearts burned within them; in his sermon from the Mount, in his parable of the good Samaritan, and in that of the Prodigal Son—in every act and word of his life, a grace, a mildness, a dignity and love, a patience and wisdom worthy of the Son of God. His whole life and being were imbued, steeped in this word, charity; ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... I have introduced this parable to show that however much learned men despise the ignorant, these are a hundredfold more scornful of the learned:—A zahid, or holy man, fell in company with some wandering minstrels. One of them, a charmer of Balkh, said to him: "If thou art displeased ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... easily Cato falls into the trap. He takes up his parable, and preaches his sermon, but he does it with a marvellous enthusiasm, so that we cannot understand that the man who wrote it intended to demolish it all in the next few pages. I will translate his last words of Cato's appeal to the world at large: "I have been carried farther ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... spiritually best the physically worst—like the gods whom the Athenians enclosed in outer cases of satyrs and hideous masks of misshapen men—Alick's face was never lovely. But his soul? If that could have been seen, the old carved parable of the Greeks would have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... passively concerned, I do not see how I can avoid it. Besides, being a public man, I am not wholly averse to publicity; first person, singular, perpendicular, as Thackeray had it, in type looks rather agreeable to the eye. And I rather believe that I have a moral to point out and a parable to expound. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... 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
... retorted the lady, "never apply the parable of the mote and the beam, because they ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... The Austral wilds are round me. The loved who live — ah, God! how few they are! I looked above; and heaven in mercy found me This parable ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... 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 the means ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... obedience? There are many, I know, amongst them who think more generously, and whose morals are not corrupted by that which is called religion; but this is the spirit of the priesthood, in whose scale that scrap of a parable, "Compel them to come in," which they apply as they please, outweighs the whole Decalogue. This will be the spirit of every man who is bigot enough to be under their direction; and so much is sufficient ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... I understand your little parable, I think Mr. Arnault errs egregiously, yet he does not frighten the bird ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Shechem, to assassinate the other sons of his father. But God is just. As Abimelech murdered his brothers upon a stone, so Abimelech himself met his death through a millstone. It was proper, then, that Jotham, in his parable, should compare Abimelech to a thorn-bush, while he characterized his predecessors, Othniel, Deborah, and Gideon, as an olive-tree, or a fig-tree, or a vine. This Jotham, the youngest of the sons of Gideon, was more than a teller of parables. He knew ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Sir Francis had been a prodigal, and, like the prodigal in the parable, he had betaken himself into far countries, not to waste his substance, for he had none, but if possible to glean ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... 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 never heard them sound just so. Yet the reading ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... to the delineation of character. No other form of composition, no discourse, or essay, or series of independent sketches, however successful, could succeed in bringing out character equal to the novel. Herein is at once the justification of the power of fiction. "He spake a parable," with an "end" in view which could not be so expeditiously attained by any ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... noble, ever-youthful, and all-powerful five-franc piece! But money, my beauty, insists on interest, and is always engaged in seeking it! 'God of the Jews, thou art supreme!' says Racine. The perennial parable of the golden calf, you see!—In the days of Moses there was stock-jobbing ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... elaborate the parable; it is sufficient to indicate that in my reading of Mr Wells, I have seen him as regarding all life from a reasonable distance. By good fortune he avoided the influences of his early training, which was too ineffectual to leave any permanent mark ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... DRURIOLANUS LE GRAND, or was it the joint effort of GRAND et PETTITT, so as to satisfy all comers Great and Small? The Prodigal Son has already served as the title of an Opera directly founded on the Scriptural parable of the Prodigal, and has recently been used as the title of the now famous ballet d'action. There was also a Pere Prodigue—which the English schoolboy thought was French for an uncommonly big Marie Louise specimen; so there is justification and authority for bringing this new member of The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... 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 ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... new in crusade against drink. No kudos to be gained; no acclaim of the multitude to ring in the pleased ear; no cheering clash of party conflict. GRANDOLPH gives a deprecating twirl to his modest moustache, and takes up his homely parable. Possibly he does this with the larger content, since he had his go at the Land Purchase Bill before Debate on Second Reading opened. His letters, published on eve of Easter recess, hurtled pleasantly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... preserves, and there began a diverting struggle for priority of performance, from which nobody profited and the opera suffered. Amid threats of crimination Aronson precipitated what he called a dress rehearsal of the work at the Casino in the afternoon of October 1, 1891. Like the king in the parable, he sent out into the highways, and bade all he could find in to the feast. Especially did his servants labor on the Rialto, and the affair had all the appearance of a professional matine. Nothing was quite in readiness, but Mr. Hammerstein had announced his first ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... clever adaptation of the parable of the Samaritan, conceived and executed in the spirit of a ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... 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 ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... world you have seen a sight more beautiful than a group of hospital savants bending with endless scrupulousness over a little pauper child, concentering upon its frailty the whole human skill and wisdom of ages, so have not I. Here have you the full realisation of a parable diviner than that of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Beautiful then; with at least surface beauty, like the serpent lachesis mutus; but, like many beautiful things, deadly too, inhuman. And, on the whole, an answer will have to be found. As for me, it is a doubt which has ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... perhaps, a greater curse than the thief, for he simulates a virtue to which the latter makes no pretension. The book-plate of a certain French collector bore this text from the parable of the Ten Virgins: 'Go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.' 'Sir,' said a man of wit to an acquaintance who lamented the difficulty which he found in persuading his friends to return the volumes that he had lent them, 'Sir, your acquaintances find, I suppose, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... of the flood legends on all parts of the globe, alone remains to be dealt with. Whether these are some archaic versions of the story of the lost Atlantis and its submergence, or whether they are echoes of a great cosmic parable once taught and held in reverence in some common centre whence they have reverberated throughout the world, does not immediately concern us. Sufficient for our purpose is it to show the universal acceptation ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... corresponding theological problems are to us. The immanence of things in the Ideas, or the partial separation of them, and the self-motion of the supreme Idea, are probably the forms in which he would have interpreted his own parable. ...
— Statesman • Plato
... 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 ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... silk, and worked, with many coloured worsteds on a white ground, in the elaborate Persian pattern so popular among industrious ladies of leisure in the reign of good Queen Anne. It may be questioned whether the parable, wrought out with such patience of innumerable stitches, was closely comprehensible or sympathetic to the said ladies; since a particularly wide interval, both of philosophy and practice, would seem ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... articulation; after the succinct, the dignified, and the poetic; and as a means to this, after a general lightening of this baggage of detail. After Scott we beheld the starveling story— once, in the hands of Voltaire, as abstract as a parable —begin to be pampered upon facts. The introduction of these details developed a particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. A ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you had a lovely time, Mr Murchison?" said Mrs Williams, gently tilting to and fro in a rocking-chair, with her pretty feet in their American shoes well in evidence. It is a fact, or perhaps a parable, that should be interesting to political economists, the adaptability of Canadian feet to American shoes; but fortunately it is not our present business. Though I must add that the "rocker" was also American; and the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a large print Bible with a great many pictures in it; and when next year the tinker's van again visited the village, Susan was delighted to be able to exhibit her progress, and slowly and reverently she read the parable of the ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... generosity and compassion, as in the story told of him by Charles Johnson in his "Chrysal" of the poet succouring a poor starving girl of the town, whom he met in the midnight streets,—an incident reminding one of the similar stories told of Dr Johnson, and Burke, and realising the parable of the good Samaritan. Yet his conduct on the whole ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... emperor! which the King of heaven has prepared for those impious men, who affect to worship the Father, but refuse to acknowledge the equal majesty of his divine Son." Theodosius immediately embraced the bishop of Iconium, and never forgot the important lesson, which he had received from this dramatic parable. [23] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... speaking. Elinor was beside him. He rose to his feet, hastily, confused. It was no little thing that he had told; it was a thing that he had never meant to tell. It had come to his lips, as a parable; because of the way he felt toward the child that was not his; because to her it would never have meant anything; and because of the things inside that had struggled for outlet so long. He wondered if she had heard, and hearing, had ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... "Spider and Fly:"] "This parable, apologue, or allegory (for it is one and all three), is not perhaps so 'dull, tedious, and trifling,' as Warton contends; and if it be without much 'fancy,' it has both meaning and moral. In 'the conclusion,' Heywood informs us that he ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... it ill, thinking it hard, that she should have made choice of that reproachful parable. I stared sideways out at the stream and the ships, but lost no word, as, with a voice that broke now and then, she read the parable to its close. After this should have come prayer, silent or spoken; but, to my surprise, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... have gone with a rush this year," he drawled. "The Talfer comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the Etsch and make it green; a parable of the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... France will not unseldom liken his fortunes to those of Saul the son of Kish, who, setting forth in search of his father's asses, found a kingdom; or, to use a homelier parable, will compare his case to that of the donkey between two equally-tempting ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... he had refused to marry some good woman (a 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
... 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,'" she ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... 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
... chapter is one of the added touches. The Gospel is finished with the finish of the twentieth chapter. Then John is led by the Spirit, to add something more. That added chapter becomes to us like an acted parable, the parable of the added touch. There is always the added touch, the extra touch of power, of love, of answer to prayer. Our Lord has a way of giving more. The prayer itself is answered, and then some added touch is given for full measure. So it is in all His dealings, when He is allowed ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... expounder— A Mother teaching to her Chit Some good book, and explaining it. He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, His learning lays no mighty stress on, But seems to hear not what he hears; Thrusting his fingers in his ears, Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one, In honest parable of Bunyan. His working Sister, more sedate, Listens; but in a kind of state, The painter meant for steadiness; But has a tinge of sullenness; And, at first sight, she seems to brook As ill her needle, as he his book. This is the Picture. For the Frame— 'Tis not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Joshua, Judges with Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah with Lamentations, Ezekiel and the twelve minor prophets. It was not completed prior to 300 B.C., because the book of Jonah was not written before. This work may be called a historical parable composed for a didactic purpose, giving a milder, larger view of Jehovah's favor than the orthodox one, that excluded the Gentiles. Ruth, containing an idyllic story with an unfinished genealogy attached, meant to glorify the house of David, and presenting a kindred spirit ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... stillness fell upon Hugh's spirit, as he recalled these words; out of which stillness, I presume, grew the little parable which follows; though Hugh, after he had learned far more about the things therein hinted at, could never understand how it was, that he could have put so much more into it, than he seemed to have understood at that period of ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... who took up their parable against the worship of material wealth and comfort, he will always have a foremost place. The thunder of Carlyle, the fiery eloquence of Ruskin, the delicate irony of Matthew Arnold, will find a responsive echo in the heart of one reader or another; will expose the false standards ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... seemed indeed a thing of Bedlam to our smiling but much- puzzled guest; and all our cheeks were red. But M. Renan cut the knot. Since he could not understand, and we could not explain, what the constitution of Oxford University was, he suavely took up his parable as to what it should be. He drew the ideal University, as it were, in the clouds; clothing his notion, as he went on, in so much fun and so much charm, that his English hosts more than forgot their own defeat in his success. The little scene has always remained ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... assented. "My life is a sort of parable of the fatted son and the prodigal calf. They tell me there is greater joy in heaven over the repentance of a sinner than—than—Plague on it! How ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... 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
... old place, and from them 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 ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... instances.' 'You,' says Adeimantus, ironically, in the sixth book, 'are so unaccustomed to speak in images.' And this use of examples or images, though truly Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into the form of an allegory or parable, which embodies in the concrete what has been already described, or is about to be described, in the abstract. Thus the figure of the cave in Book VII is a recapitulation of the divisions of knowledge ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Henry," says my old lord, with a little frown, a thing rare with him. "You have been the elder brother of the parable in the good sense; you must be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... is independent of 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. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... is a Parable of Kings. Such is the power of control that is granted to each new soul. Each child is bequeathed at birth a sceptre ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... anatomising scalpel tents Its three-inch of thy skin, and brags—'All's bare,' The eyeless worm, that boring works the soil, Making it capable for the crops of God; Against its own dull will Ministers poppies to our troublous thought, A Balaam come to prophecy,—parables, Nor of its parable itself is ware, Grossly unwotting; all things has expounded Reflux and influx, counts the sepulchre The seminary of being, and extinction The Ceres of existence: it discovers Life in putridity, vigour in decay; Dissolution even, and disintegration, Which in our dull thoughts ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... power of the Muses, then, and its proper influence over you workmen, I shall eventually have much to insist upon with you; and in doing so I shall take that beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son (which I have already referred to), and explain, as far as I know, the significance of it, and then I will take the three means of festivity, or wholesome human joy, therein stated,—fine ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... say—"What about all the money that's wasted every year on education?" What can be more brutal and senseless than trying to "educate" a poor little, hungry, ill-clad child? Such so-called "instruction" is like the seed in the parable of the Sower, which fell on stony ground and withered away because it had no depth of earth; and even in those cases where it does take root and grow, it becomes like the seed that fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Affliction spoke, a vision of Hope and Joy had its birth in Adam's mind, even from the old man's taunting words; for then he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and himself had acted; and the mystery of Life and Death was ...
— The Lily's Quest (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... vernacular of the district, of which this is a very imperfect rendering, and accompanied with Abe's expressive gestures, was exceedingly effective, and not easily forgotten. Nor did he omit the beautiful moral of the parable, showing the necessity of prayer, importunate prayer, prayer at all times. "Keep knocking!" Abe would say, "God is only trying you a bit in not answering first knock; it's His way of proving whether you really mean it or not. Knock laader, pray on and on, He hears, He is ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... sure, Madame, that you do not know how beautiful and superior to all other moralities is Jewish morality. Do you know the parable of the ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... be repaid by love, 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
... anecdote, romance, novel, fable, legend, myth, parable, apologue, chronicle, record, history, narrative, narration, yarn, rehearsal, recital, tradition, jeremiad; falsehood, canard; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... hardly distinguish 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 ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... is found in the Pantschatantra. A king asked his pet monkey to watch over him while he slept. A bee settled on the king's head; the monkey could not drive it away, so he took the king's sword and killed the bee—and the king, too. A similar parable is put into the mouth of Buddha. A bald carpenter was attacked by a mosquito. He called his son to drive it away; the son took the axe, aimed a blow at the insect, but split his father's head in two, in killing the mosquito. ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... that gratification of the one entails renunciation of the other. Old Buridan's celebrated problem of the ass, placed equally distant from two equally attractive bundles of hay, and whether he would starve to death from the exact balance of the two opposing tendencies, is a sort of parable to fit this case. Probably the poor ass did not starve—unless he richly deserved his name—but he may conceivably have ended the very uncomfortable state of vacillation by running away altogether, as a human being, who is really ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... tree I sat In lost despair; and thither to me came A pilgrim; and he glanced into mine eyes With sight that read the sickness of my soul, And sat beside me, and in measured words Like far-off song told me this parable: ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... exact spiritual parallel for this incident or parable of the screw-pencil in innumerable ideas, at which well-nigh everybody in the hurrying stream of life has glanced, yet no one has ever examined, until someone with a poetic spirit of curiosity, or inspired by quaint superstition, pauses, ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... he morosely informed me in his vernacular that he contemplated public life with feelings of indifference, and was perfectly prepared to abandon his ambitions. I took up my parable, the same old parable that wise seniors have preached to the deluded young from time immemorial. I have seldom held forth so platitudinously even in the House of Commons. I spoke as impressively as a bishop. In the midst of my harangue he came and sat by the library table and rested his chin on ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... The Parable differs from the Allegory in that the acts ascribed are appropriate to the agents to which they are attributed. In the Allegory, acts may be ascribed to real objects which are not natural to those ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... The unpunctual neighbour. Indians' opinions concerning punctuality. Christianity only a partial cure. Servants and punctuality. Indians' unpunctuality at meals. Parable of the Marriage Feast. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... 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
... them, without giving undue offense, their Christian duty to the colored people. He preached a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan, telling how the Jews and Samaritans hated each other, and how Jesus taught in that parable that even the most despised of earth's races are our neighbors. He also told the story of Peter's vision at the house of Simon, and how God taught him not to call any ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... a parable that incarnates, as is their wont, the Word in the recital. King Nimrod, say they, one day summoned his three sons into his presence. He ordered to be set before them three urns under seal. One of the urns was of gold, another of amber, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... painful that one of the rare liftings of the Great Veil between us and the "ways" of the Majesty of God should disclose a scene of such petty features—a sort of wrangling and experimentalizing, that it would be pleasanter to be able to believe was a parable brought home to our vulgar understandings rather than a real vision of ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... 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 ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is this parable that thou hast recited! Indeed, thou art acquainted with truth! Having listened to thy nectarlike speech, I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... manipulation of it she showed, once for all, how the most ordinary set of circumstances, and even the most ordinary characters in a certain sense, can be made to supply the material of prose fiction to an absolutely illimitable extent. Her philosopher's stone (to take up the old parable again) does not lose its powers even when all the metal in the house is exhausted—if indeed the metal, or anything else, in the House of Humanity were exhaustible. The chairs and tables, the beds and the basins—everything—can ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... occasion referred to, must not be taken to have presented himself to the Saviour in propria persona with his attributes of horns, tail, and cloven hoof, and made an outright proposition of extra-territorial sovereignty. It was a parable. He who had assumed a lofty moral attitude was tempted by worldly inducements to adopt a lower attitude,—that, in a word, common among men. It was a whispering to Christ of what among nations, is known as "Manifest Destiny;" in that case, however, as possibly in ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... of manure and sipping till it could sip no more. Doom that fly to the life which the spider leads, and it would drown itself in your milk jug on the spot, unable to bear up under such a weight of care and toil. In this parable the fly is Mukkun and the spider is Shylock, and my sympathies are not wholly given to the former. I quite admit that Shylock worries him cruelly, and if he had not given hostages to fortune, he would abscond with a light heart to some distant station where he might forget ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... a very quaint and original way of rendering the parable of our Lord on the importunate neighbour (Luke ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... incompleteness that is to be found among the products of our schools may be traced, in a large measure, to our irrational and fictitious procedure in the matter of grading. We must keep records, of course, but it will be recalled that in the parable of the talents men were commended or condemned according to the use they made of the talents they had and were not graded according to a fixed standard. Seeing that seventy-five per cent will win him promotion, the boy devotes only so much of himself to the enterprise as will enable him to attain ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... two advantages over the happy, in this life, greater felicity in dying, and in heaven all that superiority of pleasure which arises from contrasted enjoyment. And this superiority, my friends, is no small advantage, and seems to be one of the pleasures of the poor man in the parable; for though he was already in heaven, and felt all the raptures it could give, yet it was mentioned as an addition to his happiness, that he had once been wretched and now was comforted, that he had known what it was to be miserable, and now felt what it was ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... Brethren—called. My new name is Jasper. I chose that name because I needed polishing. Do you see? Well, the Lord is doing his work, polishing me, and I shall shine by and by. 'They that turn many to righteousness shall shine like the stars of heaven.' They call me the Parable." ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... and Assyria.(120) Just then or immediately later the Scythians, after threatening the Medes, were sweeping over Western Asia as far as the frontier of Egypt, and in his Scythian songs Jeremiah(121) shows an intimate knowledge of their habits. In his Parable of the Potter (for which unfortunately there is no date) he declares God's power to mould or re-mould any nation.(122) And Baruch, writing of Jeremiah's earlier ministry, says that he spoke concerning ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... of the uncandid and cruel turn I had done my father brought me almost to the verge of suicide. On Sunday morning I entered a church in Toronto, and tears flowed down my face as I heard the minister read the parable of the Prodigal Son. It seemed to me as a voice from home, and I determined to go to my father. Without hesitating, or stopping an hour, I took all the money I had to pay my way, and in about six days afterward, sitting beside the driver on the stage-coach, looked from a hill upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Protestant, of good estate. In 1740 he received into his house a Protestant clergyman, to whom he gave supper and lodging. In a country where priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan" this was a crime. For this crime Espenasse was tried, convicted and sentenced to the galleys for life. When he had been imprisoned for twenty-three years his case came to the knowledge of Voltaire, and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... 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
... difference in the thought of God and in the joy of life would have followed had the hearers of Jesus given the parable of the Prodigal Son its full significance! They would then have found in the happy, loving father and his full forgiveness of the son who "came to himself" a type of the Heavenly Father. The shadow of the olden fear still persists, chilling ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... 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
... of man's life, which is endless to the brave and busy, is scorned 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 of a moment, and with the pride ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... height, but a small elderly Turk, who piped weakly and plied his calling listlessly. The Camps, Smug, the gentlemanly agent, all had disappeared from off Midway. I was not surprised at this, neither was I disappointed; and having said as much, I took up the parable of my latest adventure upon Midway, telling of my encounter with the guard and the little brunette, and letting my fun-loving friend enjoy another ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... wandered about the room and remained fixed on the ceiling, where Samson, lying at Delilah's feet, was about to have his eyes put out by the Philistines. The picture at that moment seemed to me like a symbol, an eternal parable of passion and lust, of the love of man for woman. "Each one of us in the end is a Samson," I thought, "and ultimately for better or worse is betrayed by the woman he loves, whether he wears an ordinary ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... Solomon, that stumbling-block of criticism and pill of faith, a recent writer regards as a parable in the form of a drama, in which the bride is considered as representing true religion, the royal lover as the Jewish people, and the younger sister as the Gospel dispensation. But it is evidently conceived in a very different ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... be named, and two of the most perfect in the book. The little parable poem of The Boy and the Angel is one of the most simply beautiful, yet deeply earnest, of Browning's lyrical poems. It is a parable in which "the allegorical intent seems to be shed by the story, like a natural perfume from ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... indeed hearts of oak; I mean, not so hard, but health, and strength, and liv'd naturally, and with things easily parable ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... He entered upon office in May, 1704, and one of his first acts was to convey to Defoe the message, "Pray, ask that gentleman what I can do for him." Defoe replied by likening himself to the blind man in the parable, and paraphrasing his prayer, "Lord, that I may receive my sight!" He would not seem to have obtained his liberty immediately, but, through Harley's influence, he was set free towards the end of July or the ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... gold of the streets was molten in an earthly furnace. No more, when Edith saith she will run and fetch a thing, should I think to accuse her of falsehood if I saw that she walked, and ran not. 'Tis never well to fetch a parable down on all fours. You and I use allegory always in ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... much of its contents had been sifted in the discussions of the schools. In part earlier and in part later than the Mishnah was the Midrash ('inquiry,' 'interpretation'), not a Code, but a two-fold exposition of Scripture; homiletic with copious use of parable, and legalistic with an eye to the regulation of conduct. Then came the Talmud in two recensions, the Palestinian and the Babylonian, the latter completed about 500 A.D. For some centuries afterwards the Geonim (heads ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... the divine kingdom in 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
... Fleda, "everybody has something to do with it the Bible says so; ministers must do it in their way, and other people in other ways; everybody has his own work. Don't you remember the parable of the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... unbidden into the most reverent souls: there are unholy thoughts, which torture with their hateful presence the fancy that would fain be pure. Against all these some real mental work is a most helpful ally. That "unclean spirit" of the parable, who brought back with him seven others more wicked than himself, only did so because he found the chamber "swept and garnished," and its owner sitting with folded hands. Had he found it all alive with the "busy hum" of active work, there ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... this half-philosophical literature will most easily be understood by a few examples. But, before these are given, it will be necessary to emphasize the colloquial and scrappy nature of the teaching. Legend, parable, ritualistic absurdities, belief in gods, denial of gods, belief in heaven, denial of heaven, are all mingled, and for a purpose. For some men are able, and some are unable, to receive the true light of knowledge. But man's fate depends on his knowledge. The wise man becomes hereafter what his knowledge ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... tells what's 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 opened in breathless attention), the Adventure of Robinson ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... for centuries has been slowly altering the complexion of thought be continued in the near future? or will a reaction set in which may arrest progress and even undo much that has been done? To keep up our parable, what will be the colour of the web which the Fates are now weaving on the humming loom of time? will it be white or red? We cannot tell. A faint glimmering light illumines the backward portion of the web. Clouds and thick ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... been running its parlour and dining cars, its telegraphs and electric lights and hotels, a winding thread of life and civilisation, through the lonely and savage splendours of snow-peak and rock, transforming day by day the destinies of Canada—the parable became a truth, proved upon ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... same exhibition of opposite circumstances and qualities, and the same principle of condemnation for sins of omission exclusively of those of commission, are observable in the two other symbolic representations contained in the same chapter—the parable of the ten virgins, and the parable of the talents. In short, the general purport of the chapter is to indicate, that in the sight of the righteous Judge sins of omission, not less than sins of commission, demand condemnation and punishment; the ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... discourse rolled Smooth down the channel of the night, We spoke of Time: thereat, one told A parable of ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... 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 |
