"Parable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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. The questions that are to fill ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... once, and in three feverish days completed the first draft of his parable. In this the Hyde aspect was only Jekyll's unassuming disguise, adopted at hours when he wished to be a little gay. Stevenson burned his first draft, and rewrote ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... befell Punch, a double faux pas. An excellent child story had been printed in "Vanity Fair" of October 15th, in which a little girl at a Sunday-school class was asked to define a parable: "Please, miss," replies the child, "a parable's a 'eavenly story with no earthly meaning!" A fortnight later Punch, who had been victimised, had the misfortune, not only to come out with the same joke, but by a typographical slip to spoil it by making the child ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 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 ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... legend is tenderly beautiful and thrilling, it is almost too romantic to please the taste of simple flowers, therefore I will tell you the true story how we acquired our name. That shall be my parable—see ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... is what the poet wrote down. He wrote it in the form of a parable, which he called "The Master and ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... more or less the part of the villain, how is she to be permitted any importance at all? For there cannot be two suns in one sphere, or two centres to one world. Thus the mother has to be sacrificed to the daughter: which is a parable; or else it is the other way, which is against all the principles and ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the rain falls in less abundance; on a third who listens, but continues to eat, with head bent downward, the rain falls scantily; while on a fourth, who has turned away to crop the grass, scarcely a drop descends. Into this parable in painting the irreverence of a succeeding century cut its now rifled and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... tolerance of his nature may have been caught from old Peter Folger, his grandfather. We can imagine with what relish that sturdy Protestant, if he had lived so long, would have received Benjamin's famous "Parable against Persecution," which the author used to pretend to read as the last chapter of Genesis, to the great mystification of his audience,—"And it came to pass after these things that Abraham sat in the door of his tent," etc. Try the trick ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... follows the lines of the Bible parable in the principal incidents, but in certain important particulars it departs from them. In a most convincing way, and with rare beauty, the story shows that Christ's parable is a picture of heavenly mercy, and not of human justice, and if it were used as an example of conduct among men ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... take up our parable and say: Do you wish to have the greatest and most vehement pleasures for your companions in addition to the true ones? 'Why, Socrates,' they will say, 'how can we? seeing that they are the source of ten thousand hindrances to us; they trouble the souls of men, which are our habitation, ...
— Philebus • Plato
... seated save 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 ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... sentimental feeling," as his family defined it, by breaking faith with the mother of the man now standing at Joseph Frowenfeld's elbow, and who was then a little toddling boy. It was necessary to save the party—nay, that was a slip; we should say, to save the family; this is not a parable. Yet Numa loved his wife. She bore him a boy and a girl, twins; and as her son grew in physical, intellectual, and moral symmetry, he indulged the hope that—the ambition and pride of all the various Grandissimes ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... want to understand what real bullying is, should call to mind that parable about the servant who, having quailed and cringed and implored before his lord until he was forgiven his huge debt, forthwith pounced on a poor fellow-servant who happened to owe him a few shillings, and, deaf to the very entreaties which he himself had but a minute ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... and they certainly have the true faith, which shows itself by these true fruits of charity. They are the elect, and consequently, they are not like the Catholic Priests, who are all wicked. The reader may recollect the parable of ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... have gone with a rush this year," he drawled. "The Talfer comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the Etsch and make it green; a parable of the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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
... heart of fire; And in the storm-dismantled forest-choir For thine own elegy thy winds attune Their wild and wizard lyre: And poignant grows the charm of thy decay, The pathos of thy beauty, and the sting, Thou parable of greatness vanishing! For me, thy woods of gold and skies of grey With ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. And he 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 ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... means nothing as regards Hawthorne's own state of mind, his conviction of human depravity and his consequent melancholy; for the simple reason that if it meant anything, it would mean too much. Mr. Lathrop speaks of it as a "terrible and lurid parable;" but this, it seems to me, is just what it is not. It is not a parable, but a picture, which is a very different thing. What does M. Montegut make, one would ask, from the point of view of Hawthorne's ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... free and our equal, that may not invalidate or affect his claim on his neighbour—no matter whether that claim be larger or smaller than the one we remitted. But what did our SAVIOUR intend to teach us by the parable of Matthew xviii. 23-35? There the King and Master and Owner of a slave remits His claim in clemency and pity (and does so, as our LORD elsewhere clearly shows, on express condition of His servant's forgiving as he is forgiven—Matthew vi. 14, ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... unlawful to kill men who have sinned. For our Lord in the parable (Matt. 13) forbade the uprooting of the cockle which denotes wicked men according to a gloss. Now whatever is forbidden by God is a sin. Therefore it is a sin ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... gods at last pay well," So Hellas sang her taunting song, "The fisher in his net is caught, The Chian hath his master bought;" And isle from isle, with laughter long, Took up and sped the mocking parable. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that it deserves to be widely adopted to-day, at the latter end of the nineteenth century. To understand antiquity, we must follow the methods of the wise among the ancients, and the method of allegory and parable was the manner of teaching of the great Masters of ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... Umpqua Valley that they heard the parable of the white sparrow. The farmer who told it was elderly and flourishing. His farm was a model of orderliness and system. Afterwards, Billy heard neighbors estimate his wealth at ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... is a parable designed to show Napoleon's real place in history. It was painted within a dozen miles of the field of Waterloo, and not many years after the noise of its cannon had died away. It shows the point of view of the man of the future. Save in the degradation ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... will open our mouth in a parable; We will utter dark sayings of old, Which we have heard and known, Which our fathers have told us; We will not hide them from our children, That the generation to come may know them, Who shall declare them ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Western Sea, many leagues distant, to sell that book at half the price it cost; and that their souls' welfare depended on their being acquainted with it. I then explained to them the nature of the New Testament, and read to them the parable of the Sower. They stared at each other again, but said that they were poor, and could not buy books. I rose, mounted, and was going away, saying to them: "Peace bide with you." Whereupon the young man with the gun rose, and saying, "Caspita! this is odd," snatched the book from my hand ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... took up his parable and said, "If thou wilt learn who is my Master, it is Jesus Christ the Lord, the only-begotten Son of God, 'the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings, and Lords of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto'; who with the Father and the ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... 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 light-heartedly into ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... L——w [Scott's Laidlaw] and others. The whole thing ends with a very well written bit of rationalisation of the now familiar kind, discussing the authenticity of the Memoirs, and concluding that they are probably the work of some one suffering from religious mania, or perhaps a sort of parable or allegory worked out ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... in the wheat-fields of a bitter leguminous plant, with a yellowish white flower, which the Kermanis were too lazy to separate, so that much remained in the thrashing, and imparted its bitter flavour to the grain (surely the Tare of our Lord's Parable!). ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Whereupon he goeth on and saith, that toward his latter time "that closeness did impair and 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... through presumption and unbelief. The same exhibition of opposite circumstances and qualities, and the same principle of condemnation for sins of omission exclusively of those of commission, are observable in the two other symbolic representations contained in the same chapter—the parable of the ten virgins, and the parable of the talents. In short, the general purport of the chapter is to indicate, that in the sight of the righteous Judge sins of omission, not less than sins of commission, ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... short, is made to appear very ridiculous in his union with the Jesuits. Clearly he fights on their side against the Jansenists at the expense of his honesty and consistency. He is confounded by a parable representing the absurdity ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Angel of the Odd Mellonia Tauta The Duc de l'Omlette The Oblong Box Loss of Breath The Man That Was Used Up The Business Man The Landscape Garden Maelzel's Chess-Player The Power of Words The Colloquy of Monas and Una The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion Shadow.—A Parable ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 corresponding to him" becomes intelligible ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... starshine lights upon our heads, and where mine is a little bald, I daresay you can see it glisten in the darkness. The mountain and the mouse. That is like to be all we shall ever have to do with Arcturus or Aldebaran. Can you apply a parable?" he added, laying his hand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the steps of our fallen race (rapid and triumphant enough in that broad road of theories which leads to intellectual destruction) whensoever they tread the narrow path of true science, which leads (if I may be allowed to transfer our Lord's great parable from moral to intellectual matters) to Life; to the living and permanent knowledge of living things and of the laws of their existence. Humbling, truly, to one who looks back to the summer of 1754, when good Mr. Ellis, the wise ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... he replied. "What I'm tellin' you is t' truth, or if it isn't' truth it's a parable, and I reckon a parable's Bible truth. It were gettin' on towards back-end, and I'd bin diggin' potatoes while I were in a fair sweat wi' t' heat. So I reckoned I'd just sit down for a bit on t' bench ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... Hear the parable of the Sibyl; for it conveys a wise and wholesome moral. "She now appears at your gate, and offers you mildly the volumes—the precious volumes—of wisdom and peace. The price she asks is reasonable; to restore the franchise, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... only to man, and it is right they should. He it was whom God created first, let him take pre-eminence. But among those stars of lesser glory, which are given to lighten the nations, among sweet-voiced poets, earnest prose writers, who, by lofty truth that lies hid beneath legend and parable, purify the world, graceful painters and beautiful musicians, each brightening their generation with serene and holy lustre—among these, let woman shine! But her sphere is, and ever must be, bounded; because, however lofty her genius may be, it always dwells ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... pastoral husbandry, and that with success, for "he sowed in the land Gerar, and reaped an hundred-fold''—a return which, it would appear, in some favoured regions, occasionally rewarded the labour of the husbandman. In the parable of the sower, Jesus Christ mentions an increase of thirty, sixty and an ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... New Testament we find the same idea applied to a shorter distance in the "sabbath-day's journey," which was about two miles. But the Jews in New Testament times adopted, not the Babylonian day of twelve hours, but the Egyptian of twenty-four. So we find, in the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, mention made of hiring early in the morning, and at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours; and since those hired latest worked for but one hour, it is evident that there were twelve hours in the daylight. Our Lord ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... price. Framed in the arching of two clover-stems Where-through I gaze from off my hill, afar, The spacious fields from me to Heaven take on Tremors of change and new significance To th' eye, as to the ear a simple tale Begins to hint a parable's sense beneath. The prospect widens, cuts all bounds of blue Where horizontal limits bend, and spreads Into a curious-hill'd and curious-valley'd Vast, Endless before, behind, around; which seems Th' incalculable ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... seven anecdotes appended are as follows: (1) the well-known story of Omar's prisoner and the glass of water; (2) Elhedjadj and a young Arab; (3)our No. 140; (4) Anecdote of Elhedjadj and a story-teller; (5)our No. 86; (6) King Bahman and the Moubed's parable of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... and felt her cool hand upon my hot forehead, and heard the low sweet song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly told parable from the Bible, with which she tried to soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to steal a glance at her through ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... to everything in nature, and a God's meaning, too. Your friends, the zoologists, have surely taught you better than that. As I read Nature's parable to-night, I find nothing in it but hope. What if there be darkness, the sun will rise to-morrow. What if there seem a chaos: the great organic world is still living, and growing, and feeding, unseen by us, all the black night through; and every phosphoric ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... adapted to its purpose, like one of Sir William Watson's sonnets on the same subject. But this object only adds a touch of triviality to the much more tremendous negative effect of the gap by the gate. That remains a parable as well as a puzzle, under all the changing skies of day and night; with the shadows that gather tinder the narrow Gate of Humility; and beside it, blank as daybreak and abrupt as an abyss, the broad road that has led already ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... write, thank Mr. Kingsley for thinking of letting me see the sound sense of an Eastern potentate. (154/1. Kingsley's letter to Huxley, dated December 20th, 1862, contains a story or parable of a heathen Khan in Tartary who was visited by a pair of proselytising Moollahs. The first Moollah said: "Oh! Khan, worship my God. He is so wise that he made all things." But Moollah No. 2 won the day by pointing out that his God is "so wise that he makes all things make themselves.") ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the reason, think you, why Christ should so easily take a denial of the great ones, that were the grandeur of the world, and struggle so hard for hedge-creepers and highwaymen (as that parable, Luke xiv., seems to import he doth), but to show forth the riches of the glory of his grace to his praise? This I say, is ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... the forests of America,' is claimed by Mr. Noel as a true nature-worshipper and Pantheist along with Wordsworth and Shelley; and we wonder what Keats would have thought of a critic who gravely suggests that Endymion is 'a parable of the development of the individual soul.' There are two ways of misunderstanding a poem. One is to misunderstand it and the other to praise it for qualities that it does not possess. The latter is Mr. Noel's method, and in his anxiety to glorify the artist he often does ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... introduced this parable to show that however much learned men despise the ignorant, these are a hundredfold more scornful of the learned:—A zahid, or holy man, fell in company with some wandering minstrels. One of them, a charmer of Balkh, said to him: "If thou art displeased with us, do not look ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... aspects of the Ideas were doubtless indicated to Plato's own mind, as the corresponding theological problems are to us. The immanence of things in the Ideas, or the partial separation of them, and the self-motion of the supreme Idea, are probably the forms in which he would have interpreted his own parable. ...
— Statesman • Plato
... other government in the church beside that of the Christian magistrate. That which he driveth at is, That the Christian magistrate should leave no power of spiritual censures to the elderships. He would have the magistrate to do like the rich man in the parable, who had exceeding many flocks and herds, and yet did take away the little ewe-lamb from the poor man, who had nothing save that. The brother saith, "Of other governments besides magistracy, I find no institution; of them I do, Rom. xiii. 1, 2." I am sorry he sought no better, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... and Night," "The Spirit on the Face of the Waters," "Creation of Birds and Fishes," "Eden," and "The Parable of the Good Seed," by Pupils of H. A. Payne, Birmingham School of Art. These lose very much by reduction, and should be seen with a lens magnifying 2-1/2 diameters. They are the designs of the pupils themselves (boys in their teens), and are examples of bold outline ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... chapter you read of the reason of the parable of the unjust judge and the poor widow; namely, to encourage men to pray. "He spake a parable to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;" and a most sweet parable for that purpose it is: for if through ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... parable, there's something to be said for it. (Pause.) As a child I was always crying and didn't seem to take to life in this world. I hated my parents, as they hated me. I brooked no constraint, no conventions, no laws, and my longing was for ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... MOTHER,—I give my father up. I give him a parable: that the Waverley novels are better reading for every day than the tragic Life. And he takes it back-side foremost, and shakes his head, and is gloomier than ever. Tell him that I give him up. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... being a public man, I am not wholly averse to publicity; first person, singular, perpendicular, as Thackeray had it, in type looks rather agreeable to the eye. And I rather believe that I have a moral to point out and a parable to expound. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... the young, God's wisdom in the baby tongue That fears not anything. —The Parable ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... 33. A PARABLE is a similitude taken from natural things, to instruct us in the knowledge of spiritual. Examples.—Matt. 13th, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... 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. ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... disguised, but it's a parable. It's botany on the surface, but it gets over enough chain-reaction theory to be good physics, if you read it right. You see botany is what you might call ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... the value of tact, and the Christian worker should know the value of consecrated tact. A special study of the life of Christ to notice his methods of dealing with various people, and to see the aptness with which he used parable and exhortation, would prove very helpful to every soul-winner. The life of Paul might also be studied in the same manner with profit. He knew how to become all things to all ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... affects the translation. Thus, the Revisers propose in the parable of the prodigal son,—'And I perish here with hunger!' But why 'here?' Because I answer, whereas in the earliest copies of St. Luke the words stood thus,—[Greek: EGODELIMOAPOLLYMAI], some careless scribe ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... authority of Scripture. To suppose all men were born equal, is to suppose that they are equally endowed with the same strength, and with the same capacity of mind, which we know is not the case. I deny it from Scripture, from which I could quote many passages; but I will restrict myself to one— the parable of the Talents: 'To one he gave five talents, to another but one,' holding them responsible for the trust reposed in them. We are all intended to fill various situations in society, and are provided ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... 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 find ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... 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 down in the ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... lark ascending heavenward, loud and long Sings to the dawning day his wanton song. The moaning dove, attentive to the sound, Its hidden meaning hastens to expound: Explains its principles, design—in brief, Pronounces it a parable ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... 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
... tale of the primitive may be a narrative, true or imaginary, or a sort of fairy story, a fable or a parable, intended mainly for the edification of the young and obviously pointing a moral or emphasizing some useful truth or precept. And here we do recognize symbolism, much in the nature of historical record. But the special class of stories regarded by the primitive as sacred, ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... compensation in the award of a future condition. It is treading on delicate ground even to set one foot within the pale of their unscriptural theory; but as many of them hold the Christian faith in pureness of living and doctrine, let me remind them of that parable which shows so impressively how the disparities in human condition here are reversed in the destinies of the ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the past. The whole notion of charity as a social duty was foreign to ancient thought. Families and clans had their own dependents, and benefit societies helped their own members. The Hebrew prophets called for mercy and kindness, Jesus spoke his parable of the good Samaritan, and the primitive Christians went so far as to organize their charity, so that none of their members would fail of a fair share. The church taught alms-giving as a deed of merit before God, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... thoughts, which dart unbidden into the most reverent souls: there are unholy thoughts, which torture with their hateful presence the fancy that would fain be pure. Against all these some real mental work is a most helpful ally. That "unclean spirit" of the parable, who brought back with him seven others more wicked than himself, only did so because he found the chamber "swept and garnished," and its owner sitting with folded hands. Had he found it all alive with the "busy hum" of active work, there would have been scant ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... all too long, through seas unknown and dark, (With Spenser's parable I close my tale,) By shoal and rock hath steered my venturous bark, And landward now I drive before the gale. And now the blue and distant shore I hail, And nearer now I see the port expand, And now I gladly furl my weary sail, And, as the prow light touches on the strand, I strike ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... to show the people the danger of caring too much for money or the things of this life, so he told them this parable or story. ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 9, March 1, 1914 • Various
... be a legend, but not an idle one. Perhaps he related it himself as a parable, and by the fiction explained the process of thought that decided his career. In the prime of his manhood, about 1042, when he was thirty-seven years old, and in the zenith of his scholarly fame, he professed. The Convent of Bee had been lately founded, under ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soul. We do not deny it, for it is not wise to deny where we know nothing. But we can assert that Christianity does not require us to believe those chapters of Genesis to contain historic truth. It may be allegorical truth. It may be a parable, representing how every little child comes into an Eden of innocence, and is tempted by that wily serpent, the sophistical understanding, and is betrayed by desire, his Eve, and goes out of his garden of childhood, where all ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... leaflets, entitled, "The Issue," were distributed among the spectators. These leaflets had been published by the Socialist Party of New York City and openly advocated the old doctrine of Karl Marx, the Father of modern Socialism, for on the third page appeared "A Parable," from which ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... colonel perorated, "the little china people remained together, and were thankful for the rivet in grandfather's neck, and continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces—And the tale is a parable, my son. You will find that out some day. I wish you didn't ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... day he took them into a great meadow and feasted them with corn and wine, and all that his father's farm would yield, and asked them which day they liked best; and, when they answered as was to be expected, how he opened his parable and told them, 'Choose, then, to work for the Persians like slaves, or ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... The above 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, with ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... of surprise was not lost upon Inspector Field. He stood obviously waiting for the gallant officer to say something. As there was a somewhat long pause, the inspector took up the parable for himself. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... intellectual equipment of a public school-boy of twelve, and, as I have declared, a large remnant 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, with what scorching sarcasm would ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... containing Joshua, Judges with Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah with Lamentations, Ezekiel and the twelve minor prophets. It was not completed prior to 300 B.C., because the book of Jonah was not written before. This work may be called a historical parable composed for a didactic purpose, giving a milder, larger view of Jehovah's favor than the orthodox one, that excluded the Gentiles. Ruth, containing an idyllic story with an unfinished genealogy attached, meant to glorify the house of David, and ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... Yates with the serious air of a very learned man, "is a most interesting subject. It is a historical subject—it is a biblical subject. As an article of food it is mentioned oftener in the Bible than any other. It is used in parable and to point a moral. 'Ye must not live on ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Jest-Book is perhaps the most morbid poem in our literature. There is not a page without its sad, grotesque, gay, or abhorrent imagery of the tomb. A slave cannot say that a lady is asleep without turning it into a parable of death: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... policy with ironical praise for doing exactly what it failed to do. More was a wit and a philosopher, but at the same time so practical and earnest that Erasmus tells of a burgomaster at Antwerp who fastened upon the parable of Utopia with such goodwill that he learnt it by heart. And in 1517 Erasmus advised a correspondent to send for Utopia, if he had not yet read it, and if he wished to see the true source of ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... 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 ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... "such as have no helper," and cannot, without a violent twist (F), be construed into a general law determining forever and in all cases the legitimate use of capital. Indeed, on another occasion, and in a very memorable parable, the great Founder of Christianity recognizes, and impliedly sanctions, the practice of lending money at interest. "Thou oughtest," says the master, addressing his unprofitable servant, "thou oughtest"—[Greek: edei se]—"to have put my money to the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... draws his finger softly across your heel. You listen and listen until you drop your head. Pleasant, exceedingly pleasant! like the sleep after a bath. Ivan Nikiforovitch, on the contrary, is more reticent; but if he once takes up his parable, look out for yourself! He ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... given us some good words and hints. How could we get along without the parable of the cow that gave a good pail of milk and then kicked it over? One could hardly keep house without it. Or the parable of the cream and the skimmed milk, or of the buttered bread? We know, too, through her aid, what the horns of the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... 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, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the white men come to the bank, on the other side of the river, and call to the black men, saying, "Come, it is better over here." I fear there is little doubt that this story is a modified version of some parable preached to the Cabindas at the time the Capuchins had such influence among them, before they were driven out of the lower Congo regions more than a hundred years ago, for political ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... stock of histories setting forth the beauty and charm, and also the terror and wickedness, of that wonderful land. Some echoes of this legend had doubtless drifted down to Scotland, and possibly still more may have been wafted over from France. Ascham had taken up his parable in the Schoolmaster, describing the devilish sins and corruptions of Italy, and now the good people of Edinburgh were to be given the sight of a man coming thence, one who was fabled to have gathered ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... are easy to find. He states truths without parable. His moral satires are aimed at the Church corruptions of the day, and yet are conservative; and are taken, says Berthelet, in his dedication of the Confessio to Henry VIII., not only out of "poets, orators, historic ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the food that we need. Remember His own adaptation of this great vision of my text in more than one parable; such as the supper that was provided, and to which all men were invited, and, 'with one consent,' declined the invitation. Remember His own utterance,' I am the Bread of God which came down from heaven to give life to the world.' Remembering such words, let me plead with you to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Bible, about which the educated majority have come over to the opinion of the common people. The peculiar glory of Bunyan is that those who hated his doctrines have acknowledged his genius by printing and using a Catholic version of his parable, The Pilgrim's Progress, with the Virgin's head in the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... he sat by the sea of Galilee, he told the people the parable of the Sower. The sower cast some seed by the wayside, that is, along the edge of the field or road-side. Some seed fell upon stony ground, some among thorns, and some ...
— Light On the Child's Path • William Allen Bixler
... edition of the Bible printed at Oxford, in which the page containing the "Parable of the Vineyard" in Luke xx. was headed "Parable of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... end. The swing has been made from plain talking to the less direct, parable-form of teaching. The issue with the national leaders has reached its acutest stage. The culmination of their hatred, short of the cross, found vent in charging Him with being inspired by the spirit ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... Heywood's "Spider and Fly:"] "This parable, apologue, or allegory (for it is one and all three), is not perhaps so 'dull, tedious, and trifling,' as Warton contends; and if it be without much 'fancy,' it has both meaning and moral. In 'the conclusion,' Heywood informs us that he began the work ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... 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 said to him, "There is no help but that I marry ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Adjoining the hill lay an extensive parish, wherein many souls were given me to watch over, and render an account of, at the day of the great Shepherd's appearing. The pastoral scene before me seemed to be a living parable, illustrative of my own spiritual charge. I felt a prayerful wish, that the good Shepherd, who gave His life for the sheep, might enable me to ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... a low stool, her face wearing a puzzled expression, and she began to repeat to herself the parable of the prodigal son. Suddenly a bright look came over her face, for she had solved the troublesome riddle, and she ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... form of Pharisaism. The church exists to proclaim certain truths, among which the brotherhood of man stands pre-eminent. It is difficult to see with what consistency a Christian minister can preach on the parable of the Good Samaritan if his church refuses to recognize a Christian brother in one of another race because he belongs to another race. There is no reason for an attempt to corral all men of all races in one inclosure; but for any church, especially for a ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... mislead 'em, we call it lyin', but when his imagination invents what's not true merely for the fun o' the thing, an' tells it as a joke, never pretendin' that it's true, he ain't lyin', he's only tellin' a story, or a anecdote, or a parable. Now, Dan, put that in your pipe an' smoke it. Likewise shut your potato-trap, and let me go on wi' my story, which is, (he looked impressively round, while every eye gazed, and ear listened, and mouth opened in breathless ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... assuring miracle Is fresh as heretofore; And earth takes up its parable Of life from ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... wintry afternoon as she pressed close to the window, to catch the fading light on the page of her Bible, it chanced to be the chapter in St. Luke, which contained the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican; and while she read, a great compunction smote her; a remorseful sense of having scorned as utterly unclean and debased, her suffering ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson |
