"Parable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the veal in the country in honour of Jack's repentance; and the Curate stood outside upon the threshold, looking at the scene with the strangest half-angry, half-comical realisation of the state of mind of the elder brother in the parable. He had himself been rather found fault with, excused, and tolerated, among his relations; but Jack had at once become master of the position, and taken possession of all their sympathies. Mr Wentworth stood gazing ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Andre taking up the parable. "Madame never sent to the bouchere, and the bouchere has no room. And I think"—despair giving him courage—"it was too bad to give us a wild goose chase ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... pastors to share with each other in the opening exercises, but if none are to be present arrange with one of your number accustomed to such exercises, to open the meeting. Have some one ready to lead the singing, let a suitable portion of Scripture be read, Crusade, Psalm 1461(1), Parable of the "Good Samaritan," or other fitting selection, prayer offered, asking the ladies to repeat the Lord's Prayer, with the leader at the close. One of the ladies will then move that Mrs. —— ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... divergent aims and conflicting tendencies, may be compared. Will the great movement which for centuries has been slowly altering the complexion of thought be continued in the near future? or will a reaction set in which may arrest progress and even undo much that has been done? To keep up our parable, what will be the colour of the web which the Fates are now weaving on the humming loom of time? will it be white or red? We cannot tell. A faint glimmering light illumines the backward portion of the web. Clouds and thick darkness hide the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Matthew 13:3).—Christ spoke in parables to convey and send home to the hearts of His hearers the truth, just as Nathan employed the parable of the lamb in the case of David to make him acknowledge his sin. They were adapted to the capacities of His hearers. Each parable had some great ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... shocked some of the old-fashioned type, but the reality it gave to religion was not lost, and the human interest and sincerity of it held every mind. It cannot be given in full, but the opening passages will illustrate Jim's theme and his method. After reading the parable of the ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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
... 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 ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the railway. The unpunctual neighbour. Indians' opinions concerning punctuality. Christianity only a partial cure. Servants and punctuality. Indians' unpunctuality at meals. Parable of the ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... hope that lies in these parable lessons of death and life is meant for those only who are turning to Him for redemption. To those who have not turned, death stands in all its old awful doom, inevitable, irrevocable. There is no gleam of light through ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... 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 designing, that ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... plunged into my grandmother's room and, throwing myself upon the floor, buried my face in her lap; and sobbed myself to sleep with premature grief. But when I awakened, and felt her cool hand upon my hot forehead, and heard the low, sweet song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly told parable from the Bible, with which she tried to soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to steal a glance at her ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... and her fingers drummed idly on the side of the boat. And Vane—because he was a man, and because the girl so close to him was more than passing lovely—said things under his breath. The parable was ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Wagner, without ever ceasing to be the consummate artist or allowing the old-world atmosphere to weaken its hold on our senses, lets himself go like a schoolboy out for a holiday. He begins his splendid song, a parable: Eve was well enough off in the Garden of Eden, but when she took a wrong step the Lord sent a shoemaker to save her. The words are in the very spirit of the Middle Ages: a materialistic, naive, literal handling of spiritual things; but the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... that was June, And cold is August's panting heart of fire; And in the storm-dismantled forest-choir For thine own elegy thy winds attune Their wild and wizard lyre: And poignant grows the charm of thy decay, The pathos of thy beauty, and the sting, Thou parable of greatness vanishing! For me, thy woods of gold and skies of grey ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... remit a claim due to us by one who is free and our equal, that may not invalidate or affect his claim on his neighbour—no matter whether that claim be larger or smaller than the one we remitted. But what did our SAVIOUR intend to teach us by the parable of Matthew xviii. 23-35? There the King and Master and Owner of a slave remits His claim in clemency and pity (and does so, as our LORD elsewhere clearly shows, on express condition of His servant's forgiving as he is forgiven—Matthew vi. 14, 15); can that slave, under ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... are almost verbally identical. In the middle of each (Luke vi. 27-38, Matt. v. 43-48) there is a striking exposition of the ethical spirit of the command given in Leviticus xix. 18. And each ends with a passage containing the declaration that a tree is to be known by its fruit, and the parable of the house built on the sand. But while there are only 29 verses in the "Sermon on the Plain" there are 107 in the "Sermon on the Mount;" the excess in length of the latter being chiefly due to the long interpolations, one of 30 verses before and one of 34 ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... 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 ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... the Jews, to whom His messages to the world were directly spoken, were in almost the last stages of that sort of thing. So Jesus, with the fine faithfulness of love blending with the keenest tact, spoke in language veiled by parable to overcome the intense prejudice against plainly spoken truth. They were so set against what He had to tell that the only way to get anything into them at all was so to veil its form as to befool them ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... to win back the living type of beauty and of charm. Perhaps, ere the sun grows cold, men will no more believe in the Crusades, as an historical fact, than we do in the siege of Troy. In a sense, a very obvious sense, the myth of Helen is a parable of Hellenic history. They sought beauty, and they found it; they bore it home, and, with beauty, their bane. Wherever Helen went "she brought calamity," in this a type of all the famous and peerless ladies of old days, of Cleopatra and of Mary Stuart. Romance ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... be a legend, but not an idle one. Perhaps he related it himself as a parable, and by the fiction explained the process of thought that decided his career. In the prime of his manhood, about 1042, when he was thirty-seven years old, and in the zenith of his scholarly fame, he professed. The Convent of Bee had been lately founded, under Herluin, the first abbot; there Lanfranc ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... afternoon as she pressed close to the window, to catch the fading light on the page of her Bible, it chanced to be the chapter in St. Luke, which contained the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican; and while she read, a great compunction smote her; a remorseful sense of having scorned as utterly unclean and debased, her suffering ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... pray and pray for the Christ life to come in to them, without result, is that the self life is not denied. You ask, "How can I get rid of this self life?" You know the parable: the strong man kept his house until one stronger than he came in and cast him out. Then the place was garnished and swept, but empty, and he came back with seven other spirits worse than himself. It is only Christ Himself ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... important thing; and the spirit has no biographer. Though he had written much better work earlier, he first gained fame by his Treasure Island (1883), an absorbing story of pirates and of a hunt for buried gold. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) is a profound ethical parable, in which, however, Stevenson leaves the psychology and the minute analysis of character to his readers, and makes the story the chief thing in his novel. Kidnapped (1886), The Master of Ballantrae ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... 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, ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... of 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 their natures, nor did he omit to study them, but he described ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... for a camel to go through the eye 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 had done nothing good, but who was saved merely because ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... he was no nearer to the meaning of life than he had been before. Why the world was there and what men had come into existence for at all was as inexplicable as ever. Surely there must be some reason. He thought of Cronshaw's parable of the Persian carpet. He offered it as a solution of the riddle, and mysteriously he stated that it was no answer at all unless you found ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... 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
... which everybody shrank away, or if my mind was unhinged and I was tempted with horrible temptations like I have read about, I would go to Cecilia. She would not turn from me; she would run to meet me as the father in the parable did, not because I was her friend but because I was in trouble. All who are in trouble are Cecilia's friends, and she feels to them just as other people feel towards their own children. And I could ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... the strange anomalies which so often surprise and perplex the student of human character. As a misdirected toe-nail, injured by pressure, sometimes turns round, and, re-entering the flesh, vexes it into a sore, it would seem as if that noble inventive faculty to which we owe the parable and the epic poem, were liable, when constrained by self-love, to similar misdirections; and certainly, when turned inwards upon its possessor, the moral character festers ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Graecian seas, is characteristic of certain folk-tales, especially those of Gascony. That it is spoken by Paracelsus as a parable of the state of mind he has reached, in which he clings to his first fault with haughty and foolish resolution, scarcely lessens the romantic element in it. That is so strong that we forget that it is meant ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... 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." Such conclusion embodied as nearly as possible the views and language of Importants ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... 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
... rich and happy,—no duchess richer or happier. The two contentedly delved and toiled, and the little Naomi was their princess. The wise men of the East at the feet of an infant, offering gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, is just a parable of what goes on in every house where there is a young child. All the hard and the harsh, and the common and the disagreeable, is for the parents,—all the bright ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and thee? Thy conversion, possibly, is the fruits of thy parents' groans and prayers for thy soul; and they cannot choose but rejoice; do thou rejoice with them. It is true, in the salvation of a natural son, which is mentioned in the parable: 'This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry' (Luke 15:24). Let therefore the consideration of this, that thy parents have grace, as well as thee, engage thy heart so much the more to honour, reverence, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of parable, lady, as it should be with one who interprets the oracles of a goddess. But you have not told me of what I, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... evil. A Messalina and a Poppae do not survive individually, for such as these are not human in the strictest sense, in that they lack what is called a soul which is a property common to humanity. The parable of the woman of Corinth who seduced Menippus, a disciple of Apollonius, is misunderstood. We have come to regard all mortal bodies as the tenements of immortal souls. This is true of men but is not always true of women. Such women are not strictly mortal: they are feminine animals ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... in the hearing of a music beyond our mastery, we were not blind to the parable conveyed in every sound and sight; in those delicious days and nights a great truth cleared itself forever in our minds. We know henceforth how all dream-worlds, all beautiful hopes and visions and ideals, are fashioned. ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... their harshness and gloom. The windows of his soul opened to the sunlight of a joyous faith. His optimism and genial humor inspired gladness and good sense in others. With an old story he prepared their minds to receive new ideas, and with a parable he opened their hearts to generous feelings. All men loved him because he loved them. They knew that his heart was in their happiness, and that his humanity embraced their sorrows. In him the weak found a friend, the unprotected, a champion. Though a herald and proclaimer of peace, ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... 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 was not dramatic at all; it was ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... of Liege, quoting this parable of Christ which St. Chrysostom had quoted before him, interprets it in a more liberal fashion than the Bishop of Constantinople. For he not only condemns the death penalty, but all recourse to ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... Christ is mentioned in Scripture. 3. Were the Apostles mistaken in expecting a speedy Coming of Christ? 4. Examination of the Account of Christ's Coming given by Jesus in Matthew (chapters 24-26). 5. Coming of Christ in Human History at different Times. 6. Relation of the Parable of the Virgins, and of the Talents, to Christ's Coming. 7. Relation of the Account of the Judgment by the Messiah, in Matt. ch. 25, to his Coming. 8. How Christ is, and how he is not, to judge the World. 9. When Christ's ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Eighteenth Chapter: That Park Predicament Nineteenth Chapter: In the House of Grey One Twentieth Chapter: A Chemistry of Scandal Twenty-first Chapter: The Singing Distances Twenty-second Chapter: Beth Signs the Picture Twenty-third Chapter: The Last Ride Together Twenty-fourth Chapter: A Parable of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... rage an' git abusive. I'm gittin' weary o' bein' ordered off your dirty little scow an' then bein' invited back agin. One o' these bright days, when you start pulling for the fiftieth time the modern parable o' the Prodigal Son an' the Fatted Calf, I'm goin' to walk out o' the cast for keeps. Now, if I was you an' valued the services of a good navigatin' officer an' a good engineer, I'd just take a little run along the waterfront an' cool off. Somethin' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Democrats, and 94 Republicans —and hinting that perhaps he placed "his superior claim to credit, on the ground that he performed a good act which was never expected of him," or "upon the ground of the parable of the lost sheep," of which it had been said, "that there was more rejoicing over the one sheep that was lost and had been found, than over the ninety and nine in the fold —" he added: "The application is made by the Saviour in this parable, thus: 'Verily, I say unto ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... my friend! who own a Church, And would not leave your mother in the lurch! But when a Liberal asks me what I think— 45 Scared by the blood and soot of Cobbett's ink, And Jeffrey's glairy phlegm and Connor's foam, In search of some safe parable I roam— An emblem ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... appeared to see the point of this political parable, for they laughed uproariously. The others laughed, too. Then they slapped their knees, looked at Mr. Lincoln's face, which was perfectly sober, and laughed again, a little fainter. Then the Judge looked as solemn as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... found within him a Christianity with which the Christian world in which he lived had no share or part. He still stared out in the soft autumn night at the huge quiet city, his chin on his hands and his elbows on the parapet, half perceiving the parable at which he looked. Once it was this river beneath him that had made the city; now the city set the river within bars and ordered its goings. Once it was Christianity—the meek and gentle spirit of Christ—that had made civilization; now civilization had fettered Christianity ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... her somewhat fitful in her conduct, particularly as regarded her expenditure, being sometimes tempted to costly purchases, and anon shrinking from outlay as though not entitled to spend the money which was nominally hers. Nathan's parable did not strike more humiliating conviction to Israel's erring king than Bertie Payne's "ower true tale." At length she mastered these painful thoughts, and sought relief ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... little comment and the classification they embody is of the loosest. The word parabula is Spanish in source and equivalent to our parable; biniyabas is Tagal. ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... with the serious air of a very learned man, "is a most interesting subject. It is a historical subject—it is a biblical subject. As an article of food it is mentioned oftener in the Bible than any other. It is used in parable and to point a moral. 'Ye must not live on ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... consists merely in getting together a large lump of gold, and then being off with it, to enjoy it, as he fancies, in some other place: as if that which is but a small part of his business in life, were all in all to him; as if indeed, the parable of the talents were to be taken literally, and that a man should think that he has done his part when he has made much gold and silver out of little? If these men saw their position rightly, what would ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... 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 ill-suited to the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... atonement, we feel, that, while we looked to be entertained with the airiest of fictions, we were dealing with the most august truths of psychology, with the most pregnant facts of modern history, and studying a profound parable of the development of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... 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
... years ago, like the geologist's skeletons reconstructed from lifeless strata of the earth, can answer the vital purposes of the revelation from God. Of no pompous or abstract ritual administration did the Son of God set an example. He had a parable for the steward living when He did; He called King Herod, then reigning, a fox, and the Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites; He declared the prerogatives of His Father beyond Caesar's; He maintained a responsibility ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... thought when I recently quoted from Dr. Hake’s account of that Christmas gathering of the Rossettis at Bognor in 1875—a gathering which he has made historic—that to-day I should be writing an obituary notice of the “parable-poet” himself. It is true that, having fractured a leg in a lamentable accident which befell him, he had for the last few years been imprisoned in one room and compelled during most of the time to lie in a horizontal position. But notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding his great age, his mental ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... shall take up our parable and say: Do you wish to have the greatest and most vehement pleasures for your companions in addition to the true ones? 'Why, Socrates,' they will say, 'how can we? seeing that they are the source of ten thousand hindrances ...
— Philebus • Plato
... pair : paro. pale : pala; malhela. paling : palisaro. palm : palmo, manplato. palpitation : korbatado. pan : tervazo. "sauce-", kaserolo; "frying-," pato. pane : vitrajxo. pansy : violo trikolora, trikoloreto. paper : papero. "wall-," tapeto. parable : komparajxo, alegorio. parade : parado, pompo. paragraph : paragrafo. parchment : pergameno. parish : parohxo. park : parko. parliament : parlamento. parrot : papago. parsley : petroselo. parson : pastro. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... 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 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... of the Gospel, in the light of the interpretation of the previous parables they can mean only the mixture of evil with that which began as small as a mustard seed and as pure as meal. The fifth parable is of a treasure hid in a field, which pictures the earthly people in the world; while their real relation to Christ is covered until the accomplishment of that which is revealed in the sixth. Here ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... luxuriant ivy conceal its walls, in which are found sections of a Roman arch and a sculptured Roman column, part of the spoil of the city of Uriconium. Among its relics is a reading-desk, carved, it is supposed, by Albert Durer, with panels representing passages in the parable of the ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... to Mr Greswell our Lord adopted this method of teaching about eighteen months after the commencement of His ministry, and the Parable of the Sower was the first delivered. "Exposition of the Parables," ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... There were two of them, you remember; and though they looked alike at first glance, I soon found out that there is just as much difference in fawns as there is in folks. Eyes, faces, dispositions, characters,—in all things they were as unlike as the virgins of the parable. One of them was wise, and the other was very foolish. The one was a follower, a learner; he never forgot his second lesson, to follow the white flag. The other followed from the first only his own willful head and feet, and discovered too late that ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... 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; the tiny 'germ is the ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... said I, "for your clear and correct statement of my position. And now I will take up Mr. North's parable about the horses, and apply it justly. Let hay and grass be exceedingly scarce, and I had rather take my chance with an owner and be a horse, in a stable, and at work, than a horse roaming in search of food, chased away everywhere. The comparison is between horse ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... from this abstracted Thought, by relating here a Jewish Tradition concerning Moses [5] which seems to be a kind of Parable, illustrating what I have last mentioned. That great Prophet, it is said, was called up by a Voice from Heaven to the top of a Mountain; where, in a Conference with the Supreme Being, he was permitted to propose to him some Questions concerning ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Stuart Mill calls the literature of slavery for woman, in length and breadth; and, that all women may understand the doctrine, the Shepherd now takes up his parable, and expounds the true position of the wife. We render his ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... family scene of reconciliation, Aunt Sophia imitated the eldest son in the parable. She had never been on good terms with her romantic sister; she persisted in regarding her brother-in-law as an abductor and a deceiver, who had obtruded himself on the family; charged her parents with blameworthy infirmity of purpose, and, ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... 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
... soul, the other sanctifies it. He greatly admired the saying of St. Bernard that all the spiritual good which we possess is derived from the frequent use of the Sacraments. He would say that those who neglect the Sacraments are not unlike the people in the Parable, who would not accept the invitation to the Marriage Feast, and who thus incurred the wrath of the Lord who had prepared it. Some plead as their excuse that they "are not good enough"; but how are ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable—was already an illustration of the young minister's argument against sundering the relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus early had the child saved her ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for the magnificent edition of the Bible which he printed in 1716-1717, in two volumes imperial folio, and which from an error in the headline of the 20th chapter of St. Luke, where the parable of the Vineyard was rendered as the 'parable of the Vinegar,' has ever since been known as the 'Vinegar Bible.' This slip was only one of many faults in the edition, which earned for it the title of 'A Baskett-full of printer's errors.' But apart from ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... clear broad road out of the heart of this dense and matted jungle forest; its inhabitants are in many cases so degraded, so hopeless, so utterly desperate that we shall have to do something more than make roads. As we read in the parable, it is often not enough that the feast be prepared, and the guests be bidden; we must needs go into the highways and byways and compel them to come in. So it is not enough to provide our City Colony and our Farm Colony, and then rest on our oars as if we had done our work. That kind ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... 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 Christ ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... trope, metaphor, enallage^, catachresis^; metonymy [Gramm.], synecdoche [Sem.]; autonomasia^, irony, figurativeness &c adj.; image, imagery; metalepsis^, type, anagoge^, simile, personification, prosopopoeia^, allegory, apologue^, parable, fable; allusion, adumbration; application. exaggeration, hyperbole &c 549. association, association of ideas (analogy) 514.1 V. employ a metaphor &c n.; personify, allegorize, adumbrate, shadow forth, apply, allude to. Adj. metaphorical, figurative, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... reform he had set his heart upon was complete; and yet, somehow, it did not seem to please him. In reclaiming his son, he had fulfilled all the requirements that his religious duty required of him, and yet the act seemed to lack sanctification. In this perplexity, he read again the parable of the Prodigal Son,—which he had long ago adopted for his guidance,—and found that he had omitted the final feast of reconciliation. This seemed to offer the proper quality of ceremoniousness in the sacrament between himself and his son; and so, a year after the appearance ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... wait until they had recognized and grasped the truth, you would undoubtedly come too late; and truth, supposing that it had been found, would surpass their powers of comprehension. In any case an allegorical investiture of it, a parable or myth, is all that would be of any service to them. As Kant said, there must be a public standard of Right and Virtue; it must always flutter high overhead. It is a matter of indifference what heraldic figures are inscribed on it, so long as they signify what is ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... splendours? In what orgies of the Gentiles? And who are they to whom He showed most tenderness? Who but the rich young man? The woman taken in adultery? And Mary Magdalene with her seven devils? Which is the divinest of the divine parables? The parable of the prodigal son who devoured ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... deliberation and patient continuance in resolved humility with which He goes down the successive steps of the descent, are wonderfully given in the evangelist's record of how He 'riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments and girded Himself, and poured water into the basin.' It is a parable. Thus, in the consciousness of His divine authority and dignity, and moved by His love to the whole world, He laid aside the garments of His glory, and vested Himself with the towel of His humanity, the servant's garb, and took the water of His cleansing power, and came to wash the feet of all who ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of an antique Gem Cat-Pie Legend Authors The Critic The Dilettante and the Critic The Wrangler The Yelpers The Stork's Vocation Celebrity Playing at Priests Songs Poetry A Parable Should e'er the loveless day remain A Plan the Muses entertained The Death of the Fly By the River The Fox and Crane The Fox and Huntsman The Frogs The Wedding Burial Threatening Signs The Buyers The Mountain ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... think he was flattered by 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
... whiter than thou," is simply a new and indefensible form of Pharisaism. The church exists to proclaim certain truths, among which the brotherhood of man stands pre-eminent. It is difficult to see with what consistency a Christian minister can preach on the parable of the Good Samaritan if his church refuses to recognize a Christian brother in one of another race because he belongs to another race. There is no reason for an attempt to corral all men of all races in one inclosure; but for any church, especially for a church of the Puritans, ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... swear it. Let us fill Mansoul full with our abundance. Let us make of this castle, as they vainly call it, a warehouse, as the name is in some of their cities above. For if we can only get Mansoul to fill herself full with much goods she is henceforth ours. My peers,' he said, 'you all know His parable of how unblessed riches choke the word; and, again, we know what happens when the hearts of men are overcharged with surfeiting and with drunkenness. Let us give them all that, then, to their heart's desire.' This advice of Lucifer, our history tells us, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... one of his well-known hearers. And then John Bunyan takes up that so expressive profile, and puts flesh and blood into it, till it becomes the well-known Pliable of The Pilgrim's Progress. We call the text a parable, but our Lord's parables are all portraits—portraits and groups of portraits, rather than ordinary parables. Our Lord knew this man quite well who had no root in himself. Our Lord had crowds of such men ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... of display of scarlet double-hibiscus blooms. And abruptly all that he was suffering, all that he had just observed, from the night- blooming hedge and the two-by-two love-murmuring humans to the pair like thieves in each other's arms, crystallized into a parable of life enunciated by the day-blooming hibiscus upon which he gazed, now at the end of its day. Bursting into its bloom after the dawn, snow-white, warming to pink under the hours of sun, and quickening to scarlet with the dark from which its beauty and its ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... for this world. He had sunk all his capital in his gold and silver, and purple and fine linen. He had no treasure laid up in Heaven. So when the moth and rust had done their work, and death had broken through like a thief and stolen all his earthly goods, he had nothing left. This parable is full of sharp contrasts. First, there is the contrast in the life of these two men. The one rich, the other a beggar. The one clothed in purple and fine linen, the other almost naked, and covered with sores. The one fared ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... When a man is hardened by indulgence in his own sin, so that he cannot perceive the truth which condemns it, the lesson which would have been kept out, if it had approached in a straight line before his face, may be brought home effectually by a circuitous route in the form of a parable. When the conscience stands on its guard against conviction you may sometimes turn the flank of its defences unperceived, and make the culprit a captive ere he is aware. The Pharisees were frequently outwitted in this manner. With complacent self-righteousness ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... wastes between these words of the New Testament and those other words of the Old; but the parable of Christ really finished the prayer of David: in each there was the same young prodigal—the ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... have come over to the opinion of the common people. The peculiar glory of Bunyan is that those who hated his doctrines have acknowledged his genius by printing and using a Catholic version of his parable, The Pilgrim's Progress, with the Virgin's head in ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... popularly given to the "rich man" in our Lord's parable of the rich man and Lazarus; in Latin, Dives et ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... moral and social life of all its people. It needs the spirit and devotion of the Good Samaritan on the part of the people, but it also needs the public health nurse and the social worker who, like the inn-keeper of the parable, can give adequate ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... joined by the gentlemen, and as soon as decency would permit, Mrs. Star made her adieux, followed by Deena. The Minthrop brougham was dismissed, and the ladies whirled away in Mrs. Star's electric carriage. She at once took up her parable, but this time the topic was not the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... thee from sowing thy land?" Answered he, "Allah advance the King! It reached me that the lion entered the field wherefore I stood in awe of him and dared not draw near it, since knowing that I cannot cope with the lion, I stand in fear of him." The King understood the parable and rejoined, saying, "O man, the lion trod and trampled not thy land, and it is good for seed so do thou till it and Allah prosper thee in it, for the lion hath done it no hurt." Then he bade give the man and his wife a handsome ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... were given to be used: our inclinations were intended to impel us in certain directions, and God's will and glory were meant to be our guide and aim. So the Scripture teaches, we think, in the parable of the talents, and in the words, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;" and, "Whether, therefore, ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... times and seasons. And that happy creature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it not, scorned it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the earth, sees Abraham's bosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go up to the Lord. But that is just his torment, to rise up to the Lord without ever having loved, to be brought close to those who have loved when ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... all, a little parable which Waldo Gillespie read to a certain doubting Thomas, on the very evening of the day which changed Gladys Edgecombe, spinster, into Mrs. Bruno Gillespie, may better serve ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... accompanied by Christ. He was their unseen Guide and Benefactor. He supported their faith. "They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them; and that Rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10, 4). At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord relates a parable about a wise and a foolish builder. The foolish builder set up his house on sand; the wise builder built on rock. By the rock, however, the Lord would have us understand "these sayings of Mine" (Matt. 7, 24). Paul speaks of the Church to the Ephesians thus: ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... spectators would cry, 'See what a bold, strong fellow that is!'—then we should be only playing the madman from the motive of the coxcomb. I fear you will find in the military history of the French and English the application of my parable." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by his concubine from 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 then that long afterward ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... I have some misgivings about Mr. HENRY ARTHUR JONES'S farce—parable, The Pacifists. Assume Market Pewbury's afflictions to have been as stated: an intolerable stalwart cad of a butcher fencing-in the best part of the common, assaulting people's grandmothers, shutting them up in coal-cellars and eating their crumpets, kissing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... its charter for it came from something else. There is a joke about a Benedictine monk who used the common grace of Benedictus benedicat, whereupon the unlettered Franciscan triumphantly retorted Franciscus Franciscat. It is something of a parable of mediaeval history; for if there were a verb Franciscare it would be an approximate description of what St. Francis afterwards did. But that more individual mysticism was only approaching its birth, and Benedictus benedicat is very precisely the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... to everything in nature, and a God's meaning too. As I read nature's parable to-night I find nothing in it but hope. What if there be darkness, the sun will rise to-morrow; what if there seem chaos, the great organic world is still living and growing and feeding, unseen by us all the night through; and every phosphoric ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... a defence of the cosmopolitan attitude which could rejoice at an improvement in the prospects of our hereditary rival. Christ taught not patriotism, but universal benevolence, as the parable of the Good Samaritan shows. "My neighbour" is he to whom I can do most good, whether foreigner or fellow-citizen. We should love our country "ardently but not exclusively," considering ourselves "citizens of the ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... 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, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... about how the worker lives: what homes, what food, his wage will provide. The journalist holds up a moral umbrella, protecting society from the fiery hail of conscience. The baser sort of clergyman will take up the parable and begin advocating a servile peace, glibly misinterpreting the divine teaching of love to prove that the lamb should lie down inside the lion, and only so can it be saved soul and body, forgetful that the peace which was Christ's gift to humanity was the peace of God which passes ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... what it involved, I saw, or seemed to see, that it meant essentially the introduction of Natural Law into the Spiritual World. It was not, I repeat, that new and detailed analogies of Phenomena rose into view—although material for Parable lies unnoticed and unused on the field of recent Science in inexhaustible profusion. But Law has a still grander function to discharge toward Religion than Parable. There is a deeper unity between the two Kingdoms than the analogy ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the rich endowments of the intellect, the irradiation of genius, the imagination of the poet, the sagacity of the politician, the wisdom (as Scripture calls it), which now rears and decorates the Temple, now manifests itself in proverb or in parable. The old saws of nations, the majestic precepts of philosophy, the luminous maxims of law, the oracles of individual wisdom, the traditionary rules of truth, justice, and religion, even though imbedded in the corruption, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... in figure, in symbol, in analogue, in parable, in hyperbole and metaphor, in exalted song, in noblest poetry and in rarest rhetoric. It is set before us in dramatic and dynamic statement, in high prophetic forecast, in simple narrative, close linked logic, expanded doctrine, ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... heart of the prudent will understand a parable; and an attentive ear is the desire of a ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... carries soap and fine-tooth combs. God save the dying children of the street! I saw a child in the Tombs four years of age, and said, "What in the world can this little child be doing here?" They told me the father had been arrested and the child had to go with him. Allegory, parable, prophecy: "Where the father goes the child goes." Father inside the grates, and son outside waiting ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... eminent among the Hebrews at that time for shrewdness; those I mean were Ethan, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol. He also composed books of odes and songs a thousand and five, of parables and similitudes three thousand; for he spake a parable upon every sort of tree, from the hyssop to the cedar; and in like manner also about beasts, about all sorts of living creatures, whether upon the earth, or in the seas, or in the air; for he was not unacquainted with any of their natures, nor omitted inquiries about them, but described ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... diseases which they inflicted could be cured. It is worthy of remark that the Bramble forms the subject of the oldest known apologue. When Jonathan upbraided the men of Shechem for their base ingratitude to his father's house, he related to them the parable of the trees choosing a king, by whom the Bramble was finally elected, after the olive, the fig tree, and the vine had excused themselves from accepting ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... are! All babes are blest by the Lord, in an independent parable, whether they can walk, or crawl, or put up their feet and take nourishment. Jerry, you come in this very moment. What are you doing with your two brothers there, and a dead skate—bless the children! Now say the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... of natural imagery? Nature was always the presentation to his senses of the divine thought and purpose. He studied the words of the ancient Scripture, he found the same words and teachings clearly and concretely embodied in the processes of Nature. The interpretation of the Parable of the Sower was no mere play of fancy to him; it was the genuine and fundamental truth, deeper and more real than the existence of the sower, the soil, and the seed. The spiritual truth was the substance; the tangible soil and seed ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... the big Bible from its place upon the table, and turning the leaves read aloud from the teachings of the world's greatest Master. It was the parable ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... do you not need rest? There is a restlessness all over the world to-day. Men are sighing and struggling after rest. The cry of the world is, "Where can rest be found?" The rich man that we read of in the parable pulled down his barns, that he might build greater; and said to his soul, "Take thine ease." He thought he was going to find rest in wealth; but he was disappointed. That night his soul was summoned away. No; there is no rest in ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody |
