"Parable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Divine direction was vouchsafed to her and she discovered her design to her sire, the Wazir, who thereupon forbade her, fearing her slaughter. However, she repeated her words to him a second time and a third, but he consented not. Then he cited to her a parable, which should deter her, and she cited to him a parable of import contrary to his, and the debate was prolonged between them and the adducing of instances, till her father saw that he was powerless to turn her from her purpose and she ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... board to both our services, and the women (all) expressed a great desire to have their children admitted into the Church. The Gospel for the Sunday gave me occasion to preach to them and myself on the "Parable of the Lost Sheep;" to myself, to make me ashamed of thinking much of serving or ministering to these two or three in the wilderness; and to them, to make them, and each of them, I trust, more grateful to ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... burst out crying, and the gentlemen, taking up the parable, said that we could not walk to Corning. A good part of the way the road was built over marshes and laid only upon timbers, so that we might easily meet with some accident; besides, six miles in such a snowstorm, and with empty stomachs! No, it was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... bete noire, my mother's pet aversion; that he was totally untrained in diplomacy was a minor, but possibly serious, objection; that he was extreme in his views seemed to me then no disqualification. I allowed him to perceive that I read his parable, but, remembering the case of the Greek generals and Themistocles, ventured to ask him to give me ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Waking dreams marched through my mind—dreams of Jim as he must have looked in khaki, dreams which made an air raid more or less seem unimportant. As the clocks of Nancy told the hours, I was in a mood for the first time since Gerbeviller to puzzle out the meaning of Paul Herter's parable. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... well for heaven who cometh to work in his vineyard toward night at such time as workmen leave work, and goeth home, being then willing to work if time should serve, as he hireth him who cometh in the morning; yet may no man upon the trust of this parable be bold all his life to lie still in sin. For let him remember that no man goeth into God's vineyard but he who is called thither. Now he who, in hope to be called toward the night, will sleep out the morning and drink out the day, is full likely to ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... she answered. "God himself shows that we ought to receive those who have done wrong when they repent and desire to return to the right way. He himself in His mercy is always thus ready to receive repentant sinners who desire to be reconciled to Him. I'll read to you the parable of the prodigal son, and you will then understand how God the Father, as He in His goodness allows us to call Him, receives all His children who come back to Him, acknowledging their sins and transgressions. He not only does this, but ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the hateless vengeance of God in the expulsion of the dishonest dealers from the temple with which the Lord initiated his mission: that was his first parable to Jerusalem; to Nazareth he comes with the sweetest words of the prophet of hope in his mouth—good tidings of great joy—of healing and sight and liberty; followed by the godlike announcement, that what the prophet had promised he was come to fulfil. His heart, his eyes, his lips, ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... 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 this new dialogue began, O'Ryan could scarcely ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... form has again been adopted in this volume, for the same reasons that obtained in the writing of "In the Twinkling of an Eye." The use of the fictional style for the presentment of sacred subjects is ever a moot-point with some people. Yet, every parable, allegory, etc., (not excepting Bunyan's Master-piece) is fictional form. So that the moot-point really becomes one of degree and not of principle—if Bunyan, Milton, and Dante, be allowed to be right. Certain it ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... he,... the light sport of his frivolous ease! Was he, too, a prey to a mortal disease? My friend, hear a parable: ponder it well: For a moral there is in the tale that I tell. One evening I sat in the Palais Royal, And there, while I laugh'd at Grassot and Arnal, My eye fell on the face of a man at my side; Every time that he laugh'd I observed that he sigh'd, As though vex'd to be pleased. I remark'd that ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... 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 ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he answered, gently. "It is because you are so perfectly natural, so true to your girlhood, that you feel as you do. In that little parable of the rose you explain yourself fully. You have no cause for self-reproach, nor has Burt for complaint. Will you ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... of neighborhood on charity would cover the field of active beneficence with an efficiency attainable in no other way, and at a greatly diminished cost of time and substance. There is yet another type of neighborhood, consecrated to our reverent observance by the parable of the Good Samaritan. There are from time to time cases of want and suffering brought, without our seeking, under our immediate regard,—cast, as it were, directly upon our kind offices. The person ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... 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 it. There are two versions of this parable, as ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... number, broken loose from the decencies of society—more, perhaps, in my early days than there are now. But our principles at least were sound; and not only was there thus a restorative and conservative spirit among us, but, what was of not less importance, there was a broad gulf, like that in the parable, between the two grand classes, the good and the evil—a gulf which, when it secured the better class from contamination, interposed no barrier to the reformation and return of even the most vile and profligate, if repentant. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... he don't want no talk o' Hell, He likes to hark to t' parable o' t' teares ; He reckons church is wheat that's gooid to sell, But chapil's nobbut kexes,(5) thorns, ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... a little perish his understanding." Surely Comineus mought have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master Louis the Eleventh, whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true: "Cor ne edito,"—"Eat not the heart." Certainly, if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I will conclude ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... to be named, and two of the most perfect in the book. The little parable poem of The Boy and the Angel is one of the most simply beautiful, yet deeply earnest, of Browning's lyrical poems. It is a parable in which "the allegorical intent seems to be shed by the story, like a natural perfume from a flower;" and it preaches a sermon on ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... through seas unknown and dark, (With Spenser's parable I close my tale,) By shoal and rock hath steered my venturous bark, And landward now I drive before the gale. And now the blue and distant shore I hail, And nearer now I see the port expand, And now I gladly furl ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... showed, once for all, how the most ordinary set of circumstances, and even the most ordinary characters in a certain sense, can be made to supply the material of prose fiction to an absolutely illimitable extent. Her philosopher's stone (to take up the old parable again) does not lose its powers even when all the metal in the house is exhausted—if indeed the metal, or anything else, in the House of Humanity were exhaustible. The chairs and tables, the beds and the basins—everything—can ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... like manner have accepted Robinson Crusoe as a delightful tale about a castaway mariner, a story of adventure pure and simple, without sub-intention of any kind. But we know very well that Defoe in writing it intended a parable—a parable of his own life. In the first place, he distinctly affirms this in his preface to the Serious Reflections which form Part iii. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... unprepared when it arrives. Certainly, Villon found, in this legitimate issue of his career, a very staggering and grave consideration. Every beast, as he says, clings bitterly to a whole skin. If everything is lost, and even honour, life still remains; nay, and it becomes, like the ewe lamb in Nathan's parable, as dear as all the rest. "Do you fancy," he asks, in a lively ballad, "that I had not enough philosophy under my hood to cry out: 'I appeal'? If I had made any bones about the matter, I should have been planted upright in the fields, the St, Denis Road" - Montfaucon being on the way ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was between one hundred and ninety-five and two hundred. Think of one pod scattering that number of seeds! Think again of the number of pods on one milkweed plant! It is staggering, is it not? To be sure we can remember the parable of the sower and have some hope, for some seed may fall on soil in which they will never come ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... 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
... that legend is tenderly beautiful and thrilling, it is almost too romantic to please the taste of simple flowers, therefore I will tell you the true story how we acquired our name. That shall be my parable—see what it ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... 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, picks one up, looks into ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... has something to do with it, the Bible says so; ministers must do it in their way and other people in other ways; everybody has his own work. Don't you remember the parable of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... 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
... that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent—of Miss Vincy, for example. Rosamond had a Providence of her own who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who seemed to have arranged Fred's illness and Mr. Wrench's ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... himself on the appropriateness of his sermons; so, this time, as he had yesterday united a distinguished and beautiful widow to her second husband, he selected for his text the parable of the widow's son. True, Mrs. Nightingale had no son, and her daughter wasn't dead, and there is not a hint in the text that the widow of Nain married again, or had any intention of doing so. On the other hand, the latter ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... 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 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... 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 as ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and say about them? You remember the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. Jesus said that this poor sinning publican, who smote upon his breast, and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner," was the one that God looked upon with favor, not the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not as the other people were. And, if there ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... mosaic of the Prophets or Fathers; and over them again, as before, are thirteen scenes from the life of Our Lord: (1) The Healing of the cripple at Capernaum, (2) The Herd of Swine, (3) The Healing of the paralytic who was let down in a bed to Jesus, (4) The Parable of the sheep and the goats, (5) The Widow's mite, (6) The Pharisee and the Publican, (7) The Raising of Lazarus, (8) The Woman of Samaria at the well, (9) The Healing of the woman with an issue of blood, (10) The Healing of the two ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... divinity-student, if he was overcome by those yearnings of human sympathy which predominate so much more in the sermons of the Master than in the writings of his successors, and which have made the parable of the Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it has been the stumbling-block of all ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... less than the legend of Buddha in Christian 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 ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... 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 ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... Punch, a double faux pas. An excellent child story had been printed in "Vanity Fair" of October 15th, in which a little girl at a Sunday-school class was asked to define a parable: "Please, miss," replies the child, "a parable's a 'eavenly story with no earthly meaning!" A fortnight later Punch, who had been victimised, had the misfortune, not only to come out with the same joke, but by a typographical slip to spoil it by making the child define ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... human heart, and the devices of our great adversary. It is on this account he does not always feel assured of his salvation. He is afraid that he may be deceiving himself, and be thinking more highly of himself then he ought to think. He has learned, from the parable of the sower, that some "receive the word with joy," and "for a while believe," but as they have "no root," they "in time of temptation fall away." This leads him to examine himself, and to prove himself, whether he be in ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... looked mournfully into each other's eyes. They had but stepped across the threshold of their homes, when lo! the dark array of cares and sorrows that rose up to warn them back. The varied narratives of the strangers had arranged themselves into a parable; they seemed not merely instances of woful fate that had befallen others, but shadowy omens of disappointed hope and unavailing toil, domestic grief and estranged affection, that would cloud the onward path of these poor fugitives. But after one instant's hesitation, they opened their ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... give you a likeness, or a parable, which I think will help you to understand what is the matter with you all. For you all have something the matter with you; and most of you know this to be the case; though you may not know what is the matter. And those of you that feel ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... reply. "He knows the ford," was the enigmatic answer of the man as he turned to his work; but whether this reply was suggested by the general belief that Confucius was omniscient, or by wry of a parable to signify that Confucius possessed the knowledge by which the river of disorder, which was barring the progress of liberty and freedom, might be crossed, we are only left to conjecture. Nor from the second recluse could Tsze-loo gain any practical information. "Who are you, sir?" was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... clothes into the new world; the Jewish spirit come up into the day from out the basement and cellar rooms of the synagogue where it had been seated for a thousand years drugging itself with rabbinical lore, refining almost maniacally upon the intention of some obscure phrase or parable, negating the lure of the world and of experience with a mass of rites and observances and ceremonials, losing itself in the gray desert stretches of theory, or wasting itself in the impossible dream of Zion restored in modern Palestine and Solomon's temple rebuilt in a provincial ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... as in a parable. He was thinking of a greater change. He was rejoicing over the boy of ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... walking one Sabbath we came across several booths where the natives who were making the Government road were living. She began chatting with them, and then told them the Parable of the Lost Sheep. She told everything in a graphic way, and with a perfect knowledge of the vernacular, and they followed her with reverence and intense interest all through. To most of them, if not to all, that ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... uneasy feeling about where this parable was leading us but my mind shied away from the essential point and Erics went relentlessly on. "As the years passed more repairs were made—first a new set of oars, then some more planks, still newer oars, still more planks. Eventually Achilles, an unthinking man of ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... Red Men is a kind of parable representing a part of the purport of the following treatise. The Indians, making a hasty inference from a trivial phenomenon, arrived unawares at a probably correct conclusion, long unknown to civilised science. They connected the Aurora Borealis with electricity, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... "In his own characteristic way the Bishop told it me. 'My son,' he said, 'you have reversed the sacred parable. In your case it was the bride-groom who, this morning, slumbered and slept.' 'True, my lord,' said I. 'But there were no foolish virgins about.' 'Nay, verily!' replied the Bishop. 'The two virgins awake at that ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... 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, ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... "conquer nature by obeying her," as the great Lord Bacon said two hundred and fifty years ago. For so only will you in your theories and your movements, draw "bills which nature will honour"—to use Mr. Carlyle's famous parable—because they are according to her unchanging laws, and not have them returned on your hands, as too many theorists' are, with "no effects" written ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... man who, having in his youth invented many things and told them often for truth, believed them when he came to old age to be actually true and was ever ready to stake his salvation upon them. Whereupon he shut the window and left van der Myle to make such application of the parable as he thought proper, vouchsafing no further answer to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... precisely as he did. I don't think he ought to be blamed. And it would certainly have been more just and proper for the father to have given the feast and the gifts to the son who never at any time transgressed his commandments. You see, Charlotte, that parable is going on all over the world ever since; going on right here in Seat-Sandal; and I am on the elder brother's side. Harry has given me a headache to-night; and I dare say he is enjoying himself precisely as the Jerusalem prodigal ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... pretty parable the other day that I must needs write it. A Coptic Reis stole some of my wood, which we got back by force and there was some reviling of the Nazarenes in consequence from Hoseyn and Ali; but Reis Mohammed said: 'Not so; Girgis is a thief, it is true, but many Christians are honest; ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... sent me forty dollars to bring me ower the sea to him—God bless him for that, I ken he worked hard to earn it, for he lo'ed me then—I was na' idle during his absence. I had saved enough to bury my dear auld grandfather, and to pay my ain expenses out, and I thought, like the gude servant in the parable, I wud return Willie his ain with interest; an' I hoped to see him smile at my diligence, an' ca' me his bonnie gude lassie. Jamie, I canna' keep this siller, it lies like a weight o' lead on my heart. Tak' it back to him, an' tell him fra' me, that I forgi'e ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... of the drowsed soul from the dreams and phantom world of sensuality to actual reality—how has it been evaded! His word, that was spirit! His mysteries, which even the apostles must wait for the parable in order to comprehend! These spiritual things, which can only be spiritually discerned, were—say some—mere metaphors! Figures of speech! Oriental hyperboles! "All this means only morality!" Ah! how far nearer the truth to say that morality means ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... 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 from ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... of good estate. In 1740 he received into his house a Protestant clergyman, to whom he gave supper and lodging. In a country where priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan" this was a crime. For this crime Espenasse was tried, convicted and sentenced to the galleys for life. When he had been imprisoned for twenty-three years his case came to the knowledge of Voltaire, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... edition. Berenice was a fervid patriot, but was beguiled by love and ambition into attaching herself to the arch-enemy of her people. Whence the Nemesis. Mirah takes it as a tragic parable, and cries to think what the penitent Berenice suffered as she wandered back to Jerusalem and sat desolate amidst desolation. That was her own phrase. I couldn't find it in my heart to tell her I invented that part of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... before all the tribes of Rome summoned him to answer for his savage treatment of free Roman citizens. He made a violent answer, but he saw how it would go with him, and put himself to death to avoid the sentence. So were the Romans proving again and again the truth of Agrippa's parable, that nothing can go well with body or members unless each will be ready to serve ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... studied him; then replied, "Why not the truth in a jest as well as a parable? The great Fulvia went fishing the other day; she caught more than all the company besides. They said it was because the barb of her ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the emissaries of Baal, and advise the attack. And if God's prophet intimated disaster—which actually occurred—where was there deception? When it is said that God told the lying spirit to go and deceive Ahab, this is the mere drapery of the parable, and must be held as denoting sufferance, and not authoritative command. When the literal meaning of a passage leads to absurdity, we are required, to seek for its spirit or other explanation. Christ said, "Give to him that asketh of thee; ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... 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 ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... popularly put first in our agricultural and educational theory. "A sower went forth to sow." A teacher went forth to teach, that is, to scatter information, facts:—arithmetical, historical, geographical, linguistic facts. But the emphasis of the greatest agricultural parable in our literature was after all not on the sowing but on the soil, on that upon which or into which the seed fell,—or as it might be better expressed, upon the fallow. It was only the fallow ground, the ground ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... 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
... suffering from fears peculiar to them, but to a world of individuals suffering, or about to suffer, from the collapse of world-wide materialism. In this day of chaos and uncertainty, here is the modern version of the parable of the man who built his house upon a rock instead of on the sand: "and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not for it was ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... rise. The cellar gets 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 ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... earth to-day, and others even mightier in 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 ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... it all flash together for her, as a connected thing? Her talk that morning, many weeks ago, that had seemed to ramble so from one irrelevant matter to another,—from the parable to her fancy-traveling, the scenes and pleasures she had made for herself, wondering if the real would ever come; to the linen-drawer, representing her little feminine absorptions and interests; and back to the fig-tree again, ending with that word,—"the real living is ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... can bring water from the rock, and grace from a hard heart. I mean mine, not the butcher's. He has behaved to me as I don't see how any but a Christian could, and that although his principles are scarcely those of one who had given up all for the truth. He is like the son in the parable who said, I go not, but went; while I, much I fear me, am like the other who said, I go, sir, but went not. Alas! I have always found it hard to be grateful; there is something in it unpalatable to the old Adam; but from the bottom of my heart I thank Mr. Jones, and I will ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... W. Reynolds! But the fame that is built merely on publishers' press sheets does not dig very deep in the iron soil of time. We are all only raft-builders, as Lord Dunsany tells us in his little parable; even the raft that Homer made for Helen must break up some day. Who in these States knows the works of Nat Gould? Twelve million of his dashing paddock novels have been sold in England, but he is as unknown here as is Preacher Wright in England. What is so dead as a dead best seller? ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... both 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 much care whether what I made were pots or dishes.' ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... which has now been given of the early years of flying in England may serve to show what a wealth of private enterprise lay ready to the hand of the Government when the building of the air force began. The Royal Air Force, like the tree of the Gospel parable, grew from a small seed, but it was nourished in a rich soil. The great experiment of flying attracted a multitude of adventurous minds, and prepared recruits for the nation long before the nation asked for them. This early predominance of private ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... in "Spiridion" it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who are not afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found most delightful. The author's intention, I presume, is to describe, in a parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic church; and, indeed, of the whole Christian scheme: she places her hero in a monastery in Italy, where, among the characters about him, and the events which occur, the particular tenets of Madame Dudevant's doctrine are not inaptly laid ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the parable, I have married a wife," he says; then, putting his hand kindly on the young fellow's shoulder—"Nancy, you have been wishing that we might meet some one we knew, have not you? Well, here is some one. I suppose that I must introduce you formally to each ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... just that neighborhood in which she resides, but in the sum total of that society to which she belongs; and that she should feel that her duties are not discharged until they are commensurate with the definition which our Saviour gave in the parable of the good Samaritan. I argue, not a woman's right to vote: I argue woman's duty to discharge citizenship. (Applause.) I say that more and more the great interests of human society in America are such as need the peculiar genius that God has given to woman. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but because of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected it. A parable. ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... To impart discretion to the inexperienced, To the young knowledge and insight; That the wise man may hear and add to his learning, And the man of intelligence gain education, To understand a proverb and a parable, The words of sages ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... What a strange parable it all made! the sparkling drops so soon lost to sight and thought alike, each with its own definite place in the limitless mind of God, all numbered, none forgotten; each drop,—bright, new-born, and fresh as it appeared, racing out so ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... know what nerves was, in a frail woman, which he uses us both as his negro slaves, or would if I didn't stand up to him pretty sharp now and then, and give him a piece of my mind, which I will do, like the faithful servant in the parable, if he kills me ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... Hesitating at undertaking such a difficult task, she asked the warden what he would think she should talk about. "Anything you like," he said, "except this: don't speak on the prodigal son, for the last fourteen ministers and speakers have read that parable and talked about it." "Indeed, no," answered the young woman, "that parable is not for them. They should be taught what is justice to the elder brother and preached to from the text, 'Work out your own salvation.'" It is really a bit difficult to find just ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... des Pingouins" he returns, in a parable, to his epoch. For this book is the history of France "from the earliest time to the present day," seen in the mirror of the writer's ironical temperament. It is very good. It is inimitable. It is sheer genius. One cannot ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... this 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
... course of the Moon; and adding a month to the year, as often as they found the twelve Lunar months too short for the return of the four seasons. Cleobulus, [52] one of the seven wise men of Greece, alluded to this year of the Greeks, in his Parable of one father who had twelve sons, each of which had thirty daughters half white and half black: and Thales [53] called the last day of the month [Greek: triakada], the thirtieth: and Solon counted the ten ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... proceeded with all applause: after many expenses, he is fit for preferment, where shall he have it? he is as far to seek it as he was (after twenty years' standing) at the first day of his coming to the University. For what course shall he take, being now capable and ready? The most parable and easy, and about which many are employed, is to teach a school, turn lecturer or curate, and for that he shall have falconer's wages, ten pound per annum, and his diet, or some small stipend, so long as he can please his ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 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 be their objects, what their ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I had been happy, and my father, as in 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 assurances that ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... a parable, said to have been related by the Buddha himself, about some monkeys who found a well under a tree, and mistook for reality the image of the moon in the water. They resolved to seize the bright apparition. One monkey suspended himself by the ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... why should not the parable of our blessed Lord be acted again? Call in the poor! The Church is ever at variance with the kings, and ever at one with the poor. I marked a group of lazars in the marketplace—half-rag, half-sore—beggars, poor rogues (Heaven bless 'em) who never saw nor dreamed of ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... have not been taught even how to read and write. The storm of political controversy on educational matters has centred round such questions as whether the story of Joseph and his Brethren and the Parable of the Prodigal Son should be taught to little Baptists by a Church of England teacher, and what proportion of rates paid by Church of England ratepayers should go to giving little Baptists a Baptistical training. If there was a Christ who could come down among us, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... his countenance. If we could have listened to his teaching we should have found tenderness running through all that he said. Just take one of his many parables as a sample of his way of teaching—the parable of the lost sheep—and see how full of tenderness it is. The sweet lines of the hymn, about the shepherd seeking his lost sheep, that most of us love to sing, bring out the tenderness of Jesus ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... 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, or alloyed with the pride, of the world, betoken His original agency, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... were looking for something in the root of the hedge, you wouldn't want to scour the road in a high-speed automobile. And still less would you want to get a bird's-eye view in an aeroplane. That parable about fits my case. I have been in the clouds and I've been scorching on the pikes, but what I was wanting was in the ditch all the time, and I naturally missed it ... I had the wrong stunt, Major. I was too high up and refined. I've been ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... general purpose of showing that the Scriptures abound with moral principles, and call into exercise moral feelings inconsistent with slavery. It is this: "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me." The design of the Saviour, in the parable from which these words are taken, in Matt. xxv, is, to impress strongly upon the human mind, that character, deficient in correct moral feeling, will prove fatal to human ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Horry," he replied; "when you see that your fellow man is wretched, can't you give him quarter? You must have observed, ever since we darkened his door, that with spleen and toryism, this poor gentleman is in the condition of him in the parable, who was possessed of seven devils. Since we have not the power to cast them out, let us not torment him before his time. Besides, this excellent woman his wife; these charming girls his daughters. They love him, no doubt, and therefore, to us, at least, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... 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, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... catastrophe of decay, the poet concludes with the Preacher "that there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave." After this profession of unfaith, before he returns to Harold and his pilgrimage, he takes up his parable and curses Elgin and all his works. The passage as a whole suggests the essential difference between painting and poetry. As a composition, it recalls the frontispiece of a seventeenth-century classic. The pictured scene, with its superfluity of accessories, is grotesque enough; but ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... he imposed on himself; and he was well advanced in it before he was sixteen years of age. His memory and his imagination must both have served him well; for he not only acquired a style fit for narrative, exposition, or argument, but also learned to use the fable, parable, paraphrase, proverb, and dialogue. The third element in his education was writing for publication; he began very early, while he was still a young boy, to put all he had learned to use in writing for the press. When he was but nineteen years ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... draw its own conclusions from a hint let fall than be puzzled by what the West believes are facts. And parables are not good evidence in courts of law, which is always a consideration. So her song took the form of a parable. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... 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 ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... elderly Turk, who piped weakly and plied his calling listlessly. The Camps, Smug, the gentlemanly agent, all had disappeared from off Midway. I was not surprised at this, neither was I disappointed; and having said as much, I took up the parable of my latest adventure upon Midway, telling of my encounter with the guard and the little brunette, and letting my fun-loving friend enjoy another good ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... 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 sumptuously ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... father nor mother, to spouse, son, or daughter; neither to be spoken aloud nor whispered; to be told in words or written in characters; to be carved or to be painted, or to be otherwise communicated, either directly, or by parable and emblem. Obey this behest, and thy life is in surety. Let thy heart then rejoice within thee, but let it rejoice with trembling. Never more let thy vanity persuade thee that thou art secure from the servants and Judges of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... 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 Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and returned to Salem for thirteen brooding lonely years in which he tried to teach himself the art of story-writing. His earliest tales, like Irving's, are essays in which characters emerge; he is absorbed in finding a setting for a preconceived "moral"; he is in love with allegory and parable. His own words about his first collection of stories, "Twice-Told Tales," have often been quoted: "They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade." Yet they are for the most part exquisitely written. After a couple of years ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... his letters not commended, a son of Rev. Mr. Wilbur, quoted. Serbonian bog of literature. Sermons, some pitched too high. Seward, Mister, the late, his gift of prophecy, needs stiffening, misunderstands parable of fatted calf. Sextons, demand for, heroic official devotion of one. Seymour, Governor. Shakespeare, a good reporter. Shaking fever, considered as an employment. Sham, President, honest. Shannon, Mrs., a widow, her family and accomplishments, has tantrums, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the struggle is over, the battle fought and won, and his heart has flowed over in that magnificent song of victory, the note once more changes: he turns back to earth to linger over those old departed days, with which the present is so hard a contrast; and his parable dies away in a strain of plaintive, but resigned melancholy. Once more he throws himself on God, no longer in passionate expostulation, but in pleading humility.[L] And then comes (perhaps, as Ewald says, it could not have ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... relief, and the head man explained that their village was small and poor (which was quite unnecessary to say of a Montenegrin village), and they could not support more refugees; whereupon the Prince, addressing himself to the deputation of the larger village, repeated to them the parable of the widow and her mite, and, assuring them that the little village had done its best, as the widow did, and they must be content, dismissed the case, and without a word of complaint the two deputations went off together, discussing with each other in the most friendly ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... them out of their suffering and degradation. Without some degree of external order and obedience to the laws of natural life, it is, I hold, next to impossible, to plant in the mind any seeds of spiritual truth. There is no ground there. The parable of the sower that went forth to sow illustrates this law. Only the seed that fell on good ground brought forth fruit. Our true work, then, among this heathen people, of whom the churches take so little care, is first to get the ground in ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... 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 ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... this parable to show that however much learned men despise the ignorant, these are a hundredfold more scornful of the learned:—A zahid, or holy man, fell in company with some wandering minstrels. One of them, a charmer of Balkh, said to him: ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... thinking," resumed the beggar, "that they'll be, like mony folk's gude gifts, that often seem maist gracious in adversityor maybe it's a parable, to teach us no to slight them that are in the darkness of sin and the decay of tribulation, since God sends odours to refresh the mirkest hour, and flowers and pleasant bushes to clothe the ruined buildings. And now I wad like a wise man to tell ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... in parable form. A young man has reached an absolute poise of incentive. He tosses a shekel. "Head—I go and see life; tail—I stay at home. Head it is." The alternative is accepted; whereupon Destiny puts in her spoke, bringing such ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... thus becomes thoroughly ethical, so is the notion of the Messianic kingdom transformed. Its essential characteristic is the doing of the Father's will on earth as in heaven. Jesus uses parable after parable to establish its meaning. It is a seed cast into the ground which grows and prospers (Matt. xiii. 31-32). It is a seed sown in good ground and bringing forth fruit, or in bad ground and fruitless (Luke viii. 5-8; Mark ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... servants of the householder came near, and said unto him, ' Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence, then, hath it tares?' And he saith unto them, an enemy hath done this." You know the rest of the parable. The explanation of it is as follows:—"He who soweth the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and the good seed are the sons of the kingdom, and the tares are the sons of the Evil One, and the enemy who sowed them is the Devil." Here you see, as far as it goes, a precise agreement ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... 33. A PARABLE is a similitude taken from natural things, to instruct us in the knowledge of spiritual. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... did not know what else to do, so as to show his intellectual appreciation of the parable; but in his heart, for all his gratitude, he thought Barney bill rather a prosy moralizer. It was one of the disabilities of advanced old age. Alas! what can bridge the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she explained. "This morning she told me a most interesting parable about Death. And she mentioned that it was you who had suggested to her ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... who, having never a word ready, 'thrust the lance through his fause bodie,'—all these are told in the most vigorous and graphic style of rough first-hand narrative. And then the story-teller takes up the parable in his own person, and describes how he and his comrades plunged through the flooded Eden, climbed the bank, and through 'wind and weet and fire and sleet' came beneath ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... this man speaks of it, his speaking signifies something; the powers and bands of love are upon him, and he shows to all that he knows what he is speaking of. But the very mentioning of love is, in the mouth of the profane, like a parable in the mouth of fools. Wherefore, Christian, improve this love of God as thou shouldst, and that will improve thee ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... "Amen," she said, "so be it.—And so, no doubt, it will be. Did the Lord cast out the woman taken in adultery? Did he not give us the parable of the Samaritan?—Poor little girl! We have often wished for a daughter and now we have found one; a pretty creature she is too. God grants us all our wishes! But you must be tired, old man; go ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... likely, as Buddha did not require the help of a teacher to find truth, and his followers would not have invented the person of Balauhar-Barlaam; on the other hand, the introduction of the Evangelical Parable of The Sower, which exists in the original of all the versions of our Book, shows that this original was a Christian adaptation of the Legend of Buddha. Mr. Jacobs seeks vainly to lessen the force of this proof in showing that this Parable has ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 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 ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... by Infessura, is repeated in Matarazzo and in Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was yellow, another that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation for the legend may really have existed need not here be questioned. Let us rather use the mythus as a parable of the ecstatic devotion which prompted the men of that age to discover a form of unimaginable beauty in the tomb of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... again, and sent a centurion who cut Ofella down. The people brought the centurion to him, demanding justice. [Sidenote: Sulla's parables.] Sulla told them the man had done what he ordered, and then spoke a grim parable to them. A rustic, he said, was so bitten by lice that twice he took off his coat and shook it. But as they went on biting him he burnt it. And so those who had twice been humbled had better not provoke him to use fire the third time. [Sidenote: Murena provokes the second ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... things are often seen to signify the things most high. A parable, paraballo, is that which "throws before" us such concrete imagery as best serves to foreshadow and to fit the mind to understand a certain abstract principle. As we become disciples, "learners" of the Truth, we find it speaks to us only through such emblems as enable us to reason ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... replied Roland Graeme; "I guess at a part of your parable, fair mistress mine—and perhaps I know as much of you as you do of me, and can well dispense with the information which you ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... leading ones were wheat, barley, olives, grapes, and figs. The two grain crops were, of course, the most necessary to life. They were planted in the early spring, and harvested in the summer. The grain was sown broadcast, by hand, just as Jesus describes in his great parable of the sower. ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... after the doctrines of Christianity had been cast into mythical moulds by the oriental fancy, that it was introduced in its completed form to modern thought. Although expressly repudiated by Jesus of Nazareth himself, and applied in maxim and parable as a universal symbol of intelligence to the religious growth of the individual and race, his followers reverted to the coarser and literal meaning, and ever since teach to a greater or less extent the chiliastic or millennial dogma, often mathematically computing, in direct ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... variation of weight in so small a quantity of Air, as is but equal in bulk to an Orange, is manifestly discoverable upon such Balances, as are none of the nicest. 3. This Statical Baroscope will oftentimes be more parable, than the other: For many will finde it more easie, to procure a good pair of Gold-scales, and a Buble or two, than a long Cane seal'd, a quantity of Quick-silver, and all the other requisits of the Mercurial Baroscope; especially if we comprise the trouble ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... the hint, and laughed. "Then I'll pledge Frank out of the next ditch, if it please you and him. But first—I say—he must hearken to a parable; a manner mystery, miracle play, I have got in my head, like what they have at Easter, to the town-hall. Now then, hearken, madam, and I and Frank will act." And up rose Amyas, and shoved back his chair, and put on a ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... is a parable, which takes upon it purely legendary drapery, and ridding ourselves thus of all the questions which puzzle Sunday-school scholars and theologians, we are ready to read the meaning of the parable. God is not the God of any one ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... moral lessons, and afterwards modified, in their passage from mouth to mouth, by the well-known magic of credulity. The most ancient poets graced their productions with apologues. Hesiod's fable of the Hawk and the Nightingale is an instance. The fable or parable was anciently, as it is even now, a favourite weapon of the most successful orators. When Jotham would show the Shechemites the folly of their ingratitude, he uttered the fable of the Fig-Tree, the Olive, the Vine, and the Bramble. ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... William Blake A Story for a Child Bayard Taylor The Spider and the Fly Mary Howitt The Captain's Daughter James Thomas Fields The Nightingale and the Glow-Worm William Cowper Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable George Macdonald The Courtship, Merry Marriage, and Picnic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren Unknown The Babes in the Wood Unknown God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop Robert Southey The Pied Piper ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man as charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ's parable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so-called poor that Shelley showed his generosity. His purse was always open to his friends. Peacock received from him an annual allowance of 100 pounds. He gave Leigh Hunt, on one occasion, 1400 ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... see how easily Cato falls into the trap. He takes up his parable, and preaches his sermon, but he does it with a marvellous enthusiasm, so that we cannot understand that the man who wrote it intended to demolish it all in the next few pages. I will translate his last words of Cato's appeal to the world at large: "I have been carried farther than my intention. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... his autumn holiday in Scotland the footman came in to put coals on the fire, and a child (a relation) coughed vehemently. "Why do you cough so much?" said Sir Andrew. "To make James look at me," said the child. Sir Andrew was "solemnly interested," and afterwards took it as a parable of a woman's nature, which, speaking generally, he considered morally and ethically inferior to a man's. In his opinion very many women were wanting in the two great qualities—justice and truth—considering their own, their children's, ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... of a parable which gives his essential doctrine more forcibly than I could do it. I will only add that he remained upon good terms with Newman, who had, as he heard, spoken of his article as honest, plain-spoken, and fair to him. He hopes, as he says upon this, to see the old ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... for. The tour, indeed, has been a wapenschouwing, with oratory of the most dangerous and pernicious type for its accompaniment. His Honour's contribution to this interesting display of martial ardour has been couched, as usual, in the enigmatic form. He has spoken another parable. A mind so fertile in image and in simile cannot have lost much of its wonted vigour. The one he has chosen to employ on this occasion is full of instruction, and is derived, as Mr. Kruger's images frequently are, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... His eye fell on the great wood through which he had rambled in August, now one blaze of colour, rich green and light yellow, with patches of fiery red and dark purple. God seemed to have given him a sermon, and he wrote that evening, like one inspired, on the same parable of nature Jesus loved, with its subtle interpretation of our sorrows, joys, trust, and hope. People told me that it was a "rael bonnie sermon," and that Netherton had forgotten his after-sermon snuff, although it was his turn to pass the ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... right enough on that point: but it varies with the time, in a manner depending upon the difference of the true longitudes of the Sun and Moon. A friend of mine—at least until he misbehaved—insisted on the mean right ascensions: but I served him as Abraham served his guest in Franklin's parable. The true formula is, A and a being the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of endeavouring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed: these are fearful odds. Admirer as you are of Lord Bacon, you may perhaps remember a certain parable of his, called 'Memnon, or a youth too forward.' I hope you are not going to be one of those sons of Aurora, 'who, puffed up with the glittering show of vanity and ostentation, attempt ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... 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 do a world of mischief to tender consciences and the cause of sound ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... the oldest 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 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... hint in it of the cleansing and filling that is needed in sinful man before he can follow the path of the plant. It shows us some of the Divine principles of the new life rather than a set sequence of experience; above all, the parable gives a lesson that most of us only begin to learn after Pentecost has become a reality to us—the lesson of walking, not after the flesh, but after ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... was given by a parable. It was a story of a poor man who had one dear little lamb. It grew up in his house, played with his children, and was very precious to him. But one day a traveller came to a rich neighbour, who possessed great flocks and herds, and this neighbour, instead ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous |
