"Parable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... part of the national tradition, and is given to us in the Jehovistic narrative. Many critics have questioned the historical existence of Melchizedek, and believed that the passage in which he is mentioned is merely a kind of parable intended to show the head of the race paying tithe of the spoil to the priest of the supreme God residing at Jerusalem; the information, however, furnished by the Tel- el-Amarna tablets about the ancient city of Jerusalem ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the glorious parable, behold How, bow'd to mortal bonds, of old Life's dreary path divine Alcides trode: The hydra and the lion were his prey, And to restore the friend he loved to day, He went undaunted to the black-brow'd God; And all the torments ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... occupied chiefly with elementary passions and emotions,—love and hate, joy and sorrow, fear and faith,—which are an essential part of our human nature; and the more it reflects these emotions the more surely does it awaken a response in men of every race. Every father must respond to the parable of the prodigal son; wherever men are heroic, they will acknowledge the mastery of Homer; wherever a man thinks on the strange phenomenon of evil in the world, he will find his own thoughts in the Book of Job; in whatever place men love their children, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... he thought of it. I 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
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... garb.[22] The well known "Herzmaere" of the same author has likewise been shown to be of Indic origin.[23] Then there is a poem of the fourteenth or fifteenth century on the same subject as Rueckert's parable of the man in the well, which undoubtedly goes back to Buddhistic sources.[24] Besides these we mention "Vrouwenzuht" (also called "von dem Zornbraten") by a poet Sibote of the thirteenth century,[25] and Hans von Buehel's "Diocletianus Leben" (about ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... already done so: she wouldn't have hesitated to announce to me what was the matter with Ralph Limbert, or at all events to give me a glimpse of the high admonition she had read in his career. There could have been no better proof of the vividness of this parable, which we were really in our pleasant sympathy quite at one about, than that Mrs. Highmore, of all hardened sinners, should have been converted. This indeed was not news to me: she impressed upon me that for the last ten years she had wanted ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... intimate personal friend of Queen Victoria's; that immediately on my return I should make her a report upon Butaritari; and that if my house should have been again invaded by natives, a man-of-war would be despatched to make reprisals. It was scarce the fact—rather a just and necessary parable of the fact, corrected for latitude; and it certainly told upon the king. He was much affected; he had conceived the notion (he said) that I was a man of some importance, but not dreamed it was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This personage had held the keys by virtue of his being lord over the hearts of those who never at any time do good: in other words, he was the demon of covetousness. Here we have an instance, more or less conscious, of the tendency, so marked in Jewish literature, to parable. But the form of the parable bears striking testimony to its origin in a myth common to many races. The keys in particular probably indicate that the recompense at one time took the shape of a palladium. This is not ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... 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 ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in Nature and in Art were but transitory reflexions of the real and eternal. 'Alles vergaengliche ist nur ein Gleichnis'—all things transitory are but a parable, an allegory of truth and reality—such are some of the last words of his great Poem; and thus too he regarded his own poetry. 'I have,' he said, 'always regarded all that I have produced as merely symbolic, and I did not ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... The Mystic's Vision Seeking From 'Tarantella' Songs of Summer O Moon, Large Golden Summer Moon A Parable Love's Somnambulist Green Leaves ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... 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 ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... is not merely a man who acts, but one who does; that is, one who will do what he has to do regardless of intervening obstacles. Efficiency and effectiveness are the key-notes of success in actual life. They are also the lessons taught by every parable in the New Testament, even if that work is regarded as a code of ethics, and they form the spirit of that stirring definition of engineering[1] which is based on the direction of the vital forces of nature and the ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... person, wearing herself out in the zeal of her charity, turning the half of his palace into a hospital, he did not complain, but rather rejoiced that she was one of those "whom fools have for a time in derision, and for a parable of reproach; whose life is esteemed madness, and their end without honour; but who are numbered amongst the children of God, and whose lot is amongst the saints." He had his reward; he had it when his sight failed him and his breath grew short, when he felt ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... in the earth, as it were, that we may see it! And observe how that dusky hill-side, and those tall slender mournful-looking pines, with that sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and point the heart upward towards that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture, full of feeling—a picture and a parable." ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... entered by the stronger, and his goods despoiled, is a parable more frequently true of the conversion of a 'believer' into a sceptic than vice versa. The habit of firm adherence to principle, the capacity for trust, the adaptation of intellectual resources ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... flat face and the sly ways of a peasant turned monk, was a constant thorn in Jean's side. "Be firm, be firm, sir," was his parable every day, and he never missed an opportunity of doing the usher an ill turn with ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Descendants of Javan who dwelt in the tents of Shem, and possessed the Isles. Here again, and in the usual form of an historic Solution, we find the same Fact, and as characteristic of the Human Race, stated in that earliest and most venerable Mythus (or symbolic Parable) of Prometheus—that truly wonderful Fable, in which the characters of the rebellious Spirit and of the Divine Friend of Mankind ([Greek: Theos philanthropos]) are united in the same Person: and thus in the most striking manner ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to his hearers.—When Christ taught the people he used material that they could comprehend. Thus, when he spoke his parable of the sower, while he sat by the seaside, the multitude before him had gathered from the villages and farms of the country round about. They therefore could thoroughly appreciate the lesson. His parable of the vineyard was doubtless suggested ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... not in the line but in the interline it ran; and listening to the hunter's ruder tale, I heard as one may hear the night bird singing in the storm; amid the glitter of the mica I caught the glint of gold, for theirs was a parable of hill-born power that fades when it finds the plains. They told of the giant redwood's growth from a tiny seed; of the avalanche that, born a snowflake, heaves and grows on the peaks, to shrink and die on the level lands below. They told of the ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... his fellow; that other shrugged him off. Richard stretched his long arms, his clenched fists to the dumb sky. 'Have I bent the knee to good issues or not? Have I abased my head? O clement prince! O judge in Israel! O father of kings! Hear now a parable of the Prodigal: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and thou art no more worthy to be called my father. O glutton! O ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... that he seized the knave and flung him from his breast. But 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 it out ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... following from some unpublished notes on the pictures by Rossetti exhibited at Burlington House two years ago: '"Bethlehem Gate" is the name of a lovely little pictured parable. On the left we see the massacre of innocents, representing the world, in whose cruel habitations the same outrage is ever being enacted, since all sin is in truth the sin of blood-guiltiness, bringing life into jeopardy. On the right the Heavenly Dove is seen leading ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... purpose and one function; they are to awaken the mind and to direct it to the inward Word. The most startling miracle, the most momentous event in the sphere of temporal sequences, the most appealing account of historical occurrences can do nothing more than give in parable-fashion hints and suggestions of the real nature of that God who is eternally present within human spirits, and who is working endlessly to conform all lives to His perfect type and pattern. In the infant period of the race, both among the Hebrews and the Gentile peoples, God has used, like ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Gamblers? No Man Understands Iron We Long for Immortal Imperfection—We Can't Have It. Three Water-Drops Converse Did We Once Live on the Moon? William Henry Channing's Symphony The Existence of God—Parable of the Blind Kittens Have the Animals Souls? Jesus' Attitude Toward Children Study of the Character of God The Fascinating Problem of Immortality Discontent the Motive Power of Progress The Automobile Will Make Us More Human Let Us Be Thankful The Harm That Is Done by Our Friends Shall ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the discourse was particular enough: It was about a prophet's story or parable of an ewe-lamb taken by a rich man from a poor one, who dearly loved it, and whose only comfort it was: designed to strike remorse into David, on his adultery with Uriah's wife Bathsheba, and his murder of the husband. These women, Jack, have been the occasion of all manner ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... by Mr. Ward, contains in the two western lights subjects from the parable of the ten virgins; and in the others illustrations of the passage in Matt. XXV. 35, 36. "I was an hungered and ye gave me meat," &c.; designed as a memorial of Rev. ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... are wars where this parable will not apply. There are capricious wars, wars undertaken for no fit cause, wars with scarce a principle on either side. Such have often been king's wars, begun in folly, conducted in vanity, ended in shame, wars for the ambition of some crowned ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the outcome of that despair: the unhappy youth in the parable suddenly determined to arise and go to his father, to confess, with bitter remorse, his own mad wrong-doings. Would it not be well for himself to arise and return to Northbourne, and to confess ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... remarkable achievement, do you know," began the English critic, "to carry a parable along with a realistic study of life. I can't really see how you're ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... parable about a rich man who went to hell because he was rich and a poor man who went to heaven because he was poor. Rich Christians are told by the clergy that the surest way for them to get to heaven is by being rich; but they use this parable to console the poor with the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Jack," he took up his parable, "I'll be damned if ever I do a woman a good turn any more. Never, never again. Gel I know—relative of mine she is, by marriage—goes a purler with a chap. Knew something of the chap too—so did you, I expect. Not a bad chap, by any means, barring this sort of thing. Well, now she's in town—all ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... the parable about the sowing the seed. 2. Good writing depends on reading of good books. 3. Youth is the time for the forming the character. 4. "In building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always somewhere a weakest spot." 5. He would not aid me so much as by the lifting ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... faith which opens the mind to truth. The very senses are useless as a medium if the internal activity does not open the doors to receive it. When the most striking miracles of Christ are related in the gospel, the narrative always concludes with: "And many of those who saw, believed." The parable of the invitation to the feast, to which those who were absorbed in their own affairs could not respond, seems to indicate a fact similar to this intellectual fact, that the "preoccupations" of complicated pre-existing ideas prevent ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... sure, Madame, that you do not know how beautiful and superior to all other moralities is Jewish morality. Do you know the parable ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... shadow of 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 opened ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... John's Gospels; that is to say, there are applications of thoughts and expressions found in these Gospels, without citing the place or writer from which they were taken. In this form appear in Hermas the confessing and denying of Christ; (Matt. x. :i2, 33, or, Luke xli. 8, 9.) the parable of the seed sown (Matt. xiii. 3, or, Luke viii. 5); the comparison of Christ's disciples to little children; the saying "he that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery" (Luke xvi. 18.); The singular expression, "having received all power from his Father," in probable ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... of the New Testament are the sublimest recognition of that instinct. The drama is older than the theatre. Much of the greatest preaching has been dramatic, by which I mean that it has touched human life through the medium of story and parable, coloured and toned by a living fancy. Sometimes, too truly, the dramatic in preaching has degenerated into impossible anecdotes, most of them originating in the Far West of America, yet even such anecdotes testify to the overpowering force of the dramatic instincts ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... tell me about them," interrupted Miss Sherrard. "So you do read your Bible every day. Then I dare say you happen to know the beautiful story, or rather parable, spoken by ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to break his skull,' and that he cried hastily to the young man, his armor-bearer, and said unto him, 'Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him.' It is a parable of our present position. Mrs. Stowe has thrown a piece of millstone, sharp and strong, at the skull of the giant abomination of her country; he is reeling in his death pangs, and, in the fury of his despair and shame, is crying, but crying in vain, 'Say not, A woman slew me!' [Applause.] ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... 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 ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... more than a metaphor, and the detailed application of it to these various forms of disease merely allegorical, I should still have judged it not unprofitable to represent a somewhat hackneyed class of maladies in the light of a parable. None of our faculties is more familiar to us in its workings than the memory, and there is hardly any force or power in nature which every one knows so well as the force of habit. To say that a neurotic subject is like a person with a retentive ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... 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
... spirit, 'believing all things,' and separating the fault from the offender. His words had fallen on her ear in a sense beyond what he meant. Pride and uncharitable resentment might be worse sins than mere weakness and excess. She thought of the elder son in the parable, who, unknowing of his brother's temptation and sorrow, closed his heart against his return; and if her tears would have come, she would have wept that she could not bring herself to look on Gilbert otherwise than as the troubler of her ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Zealot; in this book the disciple is shown speaking and acting as we know Zealots spoke and acted. The story of the rich young ruler has been placed early in Jesus' ministry to show that he would not accept every man who wanted to be his disciple. The parable of the Good Samaritan has also been placed in the early period as an example of the informal way in which Jesus taught. That you may know what is from the Bible and what is added to make a complete story, Scripture references for each event are given in the back of the book. These references will ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... doss-house of the Rue St Paul, or do you not rather drink cool wine in some elysian Chinon looking on the Vienne where it rises in Paradise? Are you sleeping or drinking that you will not lend us the staff of Friar John wherewith he slaughtered and bashed the invaders of the vineyards, who are but a parable for the mincing pedants and bloodless thin-faced rogues of ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... for many weeks and months, the parable of the foolish virgins haunted me. And every evening, when darkness came, I would repeat to myself the words that sounded so beautiful and yet so dismaying: "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." If he should come to-night, was ever my thought, ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... perhaps the most morbid poem in our literature. There is not a page without its sad, grotesque, gay, or abhorrent imagery of the tomb. A slave cannot say that a lady is asleep without turning it into a parable ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... The Sleeping Congregation is a parable of the state of the Church of England in his day. It is a striking picture truly. The parson is delivering a long and drowsy discourse on the text: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour, and I will give you rest." The congregation is certainly resting, and the pulpit bears the appropriate verse: ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... introduced into the world, without any deduction or inconvenience from it, in proportion as the precept of rejoicing with those who rejoice was universally obeyed. Our Saviour has owned this good affection as belonging to our nature in the parable of the lost sheep, and does not think it to the disadvantage of a perfect state to represent its happiness as capable of increase from ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... The idea is fanciful, but nevertheless is a figure of a truth which I want to make you acknowledge, viz. that the life of contentment is better than the life of indulgence. Are you disposed to admit that? 'Far otherwise.' Then hear another parable. The life of self-contentment and self-indulgence may be represented respectively by two men, who are filling jars with streams of wine, honey, milk,—the jars of the one are sound, and the jars of the other leaky; the first fils his jars, and has no more trouble with them; ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... type, 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, divine ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... much for you, my friend! who own a Church, And would not leave your mother in the lurch! But when a Liberal asks me what I think— 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 sometimes may ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... wide as a church door, but beyond shedding a few drops of ichor, celestial or otherwise, he is no whit the worse. So, if any of these opponents be left, I will not waste time in vain repetition of the demonstrative evidence of the practical value of science; but knowing that a parable will sometimes penetrate where syllogisms fail to effect an entrance, I will offer a ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... 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 tomb ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... an ideal of perfect manhood, and then you proceed to demolish him as a possible example, by maintaining that he was not a man, but a God, and therefore a being whom it is beyond the power of man to imitate! Oh, you terrible, terrible clergy! You preach the parable of the buried talents, and side by side with that you have always insisted that women should put theirs away; and you have soothed their sensitive consciences with the dreadful cant of obedience—not obedience to the moral law, but obedience to the will of man; for what moral law could be affected ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Jesus spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, This generation ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... were talking about—no one better. And for why? Because it was your own story you were telling me, in the form of a parable." ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... what I shall say concerning the parable of the tower, and after this be no longer importunate with ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... 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
... assuring miracle Is fresh as heretofore; And earth takes up its parable Of life from death ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... situated women was told of the need of the ballot for working women, she held up her finger, showing the wedding ring on it, and said, "I have all the rights I want." The next time that I read the parable of the man who fell among thieves and was succored by the good Samaritan, methought I could see that woman with the wedding ring on her finger, passing by on ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Lord draw the curtain a little in His story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The "story" I say, not the "parable." It is no parable. A parable is the statement of an analogy between visible things and invisible. This is a direct statement about the invisible things themselves. Jesus is telling what happens after death. Indeed, many in the early Church thought, and many to-day think, that this is a direct ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... we know the danger wharein ye stand, we dar not desyre yow." "But dar ye and otheris hear, (said he,) and then lett my God provide for me, as best pleasith him." Finally, it was concluded, that the nixt Sounday he should preach in Leyth; as that he did, and took the text, "The Parable of the Sowar that went furth to saw sead," Mathaei, 13. And this was upoun a fyvetene dayis[357] befoir Yule. The sermon ended, the gentill men of Lotheane, who then war earnest professouris of Christ Jesus, thought not expedient that he shuld remane in ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... enallage[obs3], catachresis[obs3]; metonymy[Gram], synecdoche[Semant]; autonomasia|!, irony, figurativeness &c. adj.; image, imagery; metalepsis[obs3], type, anagoge[obs3], simile, personification, prosopopoeia[obs3], allegory, apologue[obs3], parable, fable; allusion, adumbration; application. exaggeration , hyperbole &c. 549. association, association of ideas (analogy) 514a V. employ -metaphor &c. n.; personify, allegorize, adumbrate, shadow forth, apply, allude ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... consistently fits in with all his central teachings. The outward, for Boehme, is never unimportant. It is always significant and can always be used as a parable or symbol of something inner and eternal. But the outward is at best only temporal, only symbolic, and it becomes a hindrance if it is taken for the real substance of which it is only the outward "signature": "The form shall be destroyed and shall cease with time, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... 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 ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... the 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
... Bryan does not talk down to that type for votes; he is that type. Colonel George Harvey, with sarcastic intent, alleged that Bryan became a white-ribboner after hearing a little girl recite "The Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine." There are regions which would accept that parable as Gospel truth, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... chapter of John's Gospel. You remember that last 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 ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... figure; the mock solemnity of the usher comes first, and is soon followed by the grimacing antics of the page, while each in his own way implies that the advances of courtesy are a pomp and a deceit. Metaphors of the same kind abound in the work of more modern analytic poets. Here is another parable of a ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I had been happy, and my father, an emblem of our blessed Saviour's parable, had even killed the fatted calf for me; for hearing the ship I went away in was cast away in Yarmouth Roads, it was a great while before he had any assurance that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... experience of a mountain climb with a vacation camp at the top. "Now we are on Kylasa, enjoying our 'mountain top experience.' This morning Miss —— gave a beautiful and inspiring talk on visions. She showed us that the climbing up Kylasa could be a parable of our journey through this world. In places where it was steep and where we were tired, the curiosity we had to see the full vision on the top kept us courageous to go forward and not sit long in any place. She compared this with our difficulties and dark times ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... encouragement, though I was eager to learn everything, and could soon have set types considerably well. It was here that I first conceived the idea of writing this journal, and having it printed, and applied to Mr. Watson to print it for me, telling him it was a religious parable such as the Pilgrim's Progress. He advised me to print it close, and make it a pamphlet, and then, if it did not sell, it would not cost me much; but that religious pamphlets, especially if they had a shade of allegory in them, were the very ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... And while the boy was striking a fresh one Davy stamped out the burning end that Nelly dropped on to the grass, and said: "A lie! Well, it was an' it wasn't. A sort of a scriptural parable, eh?" ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... preaching, accused him of uncharitableness, for saying, It was very hard for most to be saved; saying, by that he went about to exclude most of his congregation; but he confuted him, and put him to silence with the parable of the stony ground, and other texts out of the 13th chapter of St Matthew, in our Saviour's sermon out of a ship; all his methods being to keep close to the Scriptures, and what he found not warranted there, himself would not warrant ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... 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 really only the ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... 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 ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... him. He may be a dashing and quite decent strategist. He may be a fine romantic actor, like Burke flinging the dagger on the floor. He may even (for all I know) be a sublime mystic, profoundly impressed with the ancient meaning of the divine trade of the Carpenter, and offering to the people a parable in the form of a ceremony. All I wish to indicate is the abyss of mental confusion in which such wild ritualism can be called "sound common sense." And it is in that abyss of mental confusion, and in that alone, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of fixing his attention. All the rest of the day he lay on the sofa, silent and dozing, till in the evening, when left alone with Johnnie, he only roused himself to ask to have a Bible placed within his reach, and there losing his way in searching for the parable of the strayed sheep, he wandered about in the sayings of St. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Colomba, who remained standing close to the kitchen door, the prefect took up his parable, and after a few common-places as to local prejudices, he recalled the fact that the most inveterate enmities generally have their root in some mere misunderstanding. Next, turning to the mayor, he told him that Signor della Rebbia had never believed the Barricini family had played any part, direct ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... would answer, Take the beam out of thine own'—(Tarphon). 'Imitate God in his goodness. Be towards thy fellow-creatures as he is towards the whole creation. Clothe the naked; heal the sick; comfort the afflicted; be a brother to the children of thy Father.' The whole parable of the houses built on the rock and on the sand is taken out of the Talmud, and such instances of quotation might be indefinitely multiplied" ("On Inspiration;" by Annie Besant; Scott Series, p. 20). ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... well as you do) having read the parable of the talents. A prominent citizen, about to journey into a far country, first hands over to his servants his goods. To one he gives five talents; to another two; to another one—to every man according to his several ability, as the text has ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Gods of India are sacred, the devils of India, filthy and lawless, must be driven out. When India put the mark of the beast upon Fleete the powers of darkness had of necessity to be brought to heel, and this story may be read as a parable. The mark of the beast, wherever it may appear, is the Imperial concern of the ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... is a parable, whereof the writer will now expound the meaning. Jocasta was no other than Miss Esmond, Maid of Honor to her Majesty. She had told Mr. Esmond this little story of having met a gentleman somewhere, and forgetting his name, when the gentleman, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... seed, the leaven, was to show that the crude catastrophic conception of the coming of the kingdom must give place to the deeper and worthier idea of growth—an idea in harmony with the entire economy of God's working in the world of nature. In the parable of the fruit-bearing earth Jesus shows His faith in the growth of the good, and hence in the adaptation of the truth to the human soul. In the parables of the leaven, the light, and salt Jesus illustrates the gradual power of truth to pervade, illumine, and purify the life ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Pantschatantra. A king asked his pet monkey to watch over him while he slept. A bee settled on the king's head; the monkey could not drive it away, so he took the king's sword and killed the bee—and the king, too. A similar parable is put into the mouth of Buddha. A bald carpenter was attacked by a mosquito. He called his son to drive it away; the son took the axe, aimed a blow at the insect, but split his father's head in two, in killing the mosquito. In ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... the development of passionate romance,—the one being grave sermon writing; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing: so that the one requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive; the one is always a parable with a meaning, the other only a story with ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... was just a little increased when Mrs. Stanley announced her intention of returning to New York. The lady had been amiable on the whole, as she meant always to be; but she could not help daily taking up her parable concerning the tyranny and stupidity of man and the superior virtue of woman; and sometimes she felt it her duty to put it to Thurstane that he owed everything to his wife; all of which was more or less wearing, even to her niece. At the same time she was ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... that of an angel! And he knew that all the time his debts were increasing, and when would he begin to pay them off! His mind wandered; and when Sullivan came at length, he was talking wildly, imagining himself the prodigal son in the parable. ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... filling one cranny more of their hearts in consequence? Their assurance of immortality has not come from a knowledge of him, and without him it is worse than worthless. Little indeed has been gained, and that with the loss of much. The word applies here which our Lord in his parable puts into the mouth of Abraham: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. He does not say they would not believe in a future state though one rose from ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... fatality which so often makes the 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... of the Kilmansegg Kin, In golden text on a vellum skin, Though certain people would wink and grin, And declare the whole story a parable— That the Ancestor rich was one Jacob Ghrimes, Who held a long lease, in prosperous times, Of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... picture of primeval man, while the woman reminded one of Eve, who when she is brought to Adam becomes his helpmate and inseparable companion. The Biblical tale stands, of course, on a much higher level, and is introduced, as are other traditions and tales of primitive times, in the style of a parable to convey certain religious teachings. For all that, suggestions of earlier conceptions crop out in the picture of Adam surrounded by animals to which he assigns names. Such a phrase as "there was no helpmate ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... beloved: or say at least, He thought so, and existence charmed. The credulous indeed are blest, And he who, jealousy disarmed, In sensual sweets his soul doth steep As drunken tramps at nightfall sleep, Or, parable more flattering, As butterflies to blossoms cling. But wretched who anticipates, Whose brain no fond illusions daze, Who every gesture, every phrase In true interpretation hates: Whose heart experience icy made And ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... were those of meditation and inward thought, rather than of action. He delighted to express his opinions by an apothegm, illustrate them by a parable, or drive them home by a story. He was skilful in analysis, discerned with precision the central idea on which a question turned, and knew how to disengage it and present it by itself in a few homely, strong old English words that would be intelligible to all. He excelled in logical statement ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... the gentlemen 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
... and the parables of chapter thirteen. There is order and purpose also in the arrangement of these groups of miracles and parables. The first miracle is the cure of leprosy, and is a type of sin; while the last one is the withering of the fig tree, which is a symbol of judgment. The first parable is that of the seed of the kingdom, which is a symbol of the beginning or planting of the kingdom; the last is that of the talents and prophesies the final adjudication at the last day. This same orderly arrangement is also observed in the two great sections of the book. ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... a greater curse than the thief, for he simulates a virtue to which the latter makes no pretension. The book-plate of a certain French collector bore this text from the parable of the Ten Virgins: 'Go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.' 'Sir,' said a man of wit to an acquaintance who lamented the difficulty which he found in persuading his friends to return the volumes that he had lent ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... to have learnt this as a matter of good breeding, but she might have learnt it of a certain parable, which she could say from beginning to end, that she should "sit not ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this branch of my argument by quoting the most ancient allusion to a pet that I can discover in writing, though some of the Egyptian pictured representations are considerably older. It is the parable spoken by the Prophet Samuel to King David, that is expressed in the ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... selfishness, if used in a bad sense, should not mean simply regard for ourselves, but only disregard for our neighbours. We ought not, in other words, to be unjust because we ourselves happen to be the objects of injustice. The parable of the good Samaritan is generally regarded as a perfect embodiment of a great moral truth. Translated from poetry into an abstract logical form, it amounts to saying that we should do good to the man who most needs our services, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the story has grown up from the smallest seed, as the mustard tree in the parable, and how the account given by Matthew changes the whole complexion of the events. And see how this account has been dwelt upon to the exclusion of the others by the great painters and sculptors from whom, consciously or unconsciously, ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... custom and has been practiced by the better classes of society almost without interruption from earliest times. And "society," like the potentate of the parable whose touch transformed every object into gold, has embellished and adorned the all-too-common habit of eating, until there has been evolved throughout the ages that most charming and exquisite product of human culture—the formal dinner party. The gentleman of today who delightedly ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... self-conscious superiority. When Bret Harte was charged with confusing the boundary lines of vice and virtue he replied that his plots "conformed to the rules laid down by a Great Poet who created the parable of the Prodigal Son and ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... discourse is interspersed with figurative expressions; and their maxims of theology and philosophy, and above all, of morals and political science, are invariably couched under the guise of allegory or parable. I need not stay to enlarge upon the universal veneration paid throughout the East to the fables of Bidpai or Pilpay, and to Lokman, who is (as may easily be shown) the Esop of the Greeks:—and it is well known that the story of Isfendiyar, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... hilarious applause at his entrance had somewhat subsided, the three took up their parable, but it was not the parable of the play. They used dialogue not in the original. It had a significance which the audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to turn "The Sunburst Trail" at this point into a comedy-farce. When ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... course, is a parable. Likewise, in the new India we are studying, product of new modern influences direct and indirect, two kinds of religious changes impress us. There is, first, the gradual change coming over the whole thought of the people, a transformation like that wrought upon the face and climate of many lands. ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... I have described, went softly on, into a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room; once the Chapel of the Holy Office. The place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition chambers! But it was, and may be ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... flooded, and the hens get drowned. But, really, I am certain that, nine times out of ten, perhaps ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is better to bury the poor birds quietly and say no more about it. I don't know quite how to apply this parable. I was afraid I should get out of my depth if I ventured into such matters. But suppose that the minister finds some morning that his cellar is flooded and his pet birds drowned. Of course, it is pleasant to send in your resignation and say that you will not stand ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... my tenth birthday. My mother and I were sitting together on the broad porch which overlooked the river. She had been reading to me from the Bible,—the parable of the talents,—in which and in the kind advice of Parson Fontaine she found her only comfort in the anxious days which had gone before, and which I knew nothing of. But the lengthening shadows finally fell across the page, and she closed the book and held ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... understood by the vulgar part of mankind, and his employment of it, nevertheless, as a salutary check both to the foolish and the reflecting;—to the foolish, as an alarm; and to the reflecting, as a parable. It is possible, in the teeth of many appearances to the contrary, that such may have been the case; but in the doubt that it affects either the foolish or the wise to any good purpose, and in the certainty that such doctrines ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... instruction in wise conduct, In justice, judgment and equity; That discretion may be given to the inexperienced, To the youth knowledge and a purpose; That the wise man may hear and increase in learning, And the intelligent man may receive counsel, That he may understand proverb and parable, The words of the ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... he returns, in a parable, to his epoch. For this book is the history of France "from the earliest time to the present day," seen in the mirror of the writer's ironical temperament. It is very good. It is inimitable. It is sheer genius. One cannot reasonably ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... of the Graces, what an almighty wise man Protagoras must have been! He spoke these things in a parable to the common herd, like you and me, but told the truth, 'his Truth,' (In allusion to a book of Protagoras' which bore this title.) in secret ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... in creating it, when, in the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John, He speaks of the Temple at Jerusalem, and says that if the Jews destroy it He will rebuild it in three days, expressly prefiguring by that parable His own Body. This set forth to all generations the form which the new temples were thenceforth to take after ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... understand too, surely the famous parable of Plato, the greatest of heathen philosophers, who says, that the soul of man is like a chariot, guided by a man's will, but drawn by two horses. The one horse he says is white, beautiful and noble, well-broken and winged, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley |
