"Pharisee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... relieve suffering. To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim. He would have thought little of the Prisoners' Aid Society and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... of the Pharisees invited Jesus to dine with him. So Jesus entered the Pharisee's house and sat down at the table. In the town was a wicked woman who, when she heard that Jesus was sitting at the table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster jar of perfume. She stood behind at his feet, weeping; ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... and bad you see, Ignorant, heathenish, gone to his rest. Parson or Presbyter, Pharisee, Sadducee, What did you do for him? — bad was ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the pulsation of a single unselfish emotion. Another, meanwhile, shall have been hurried by an impulsive nature into fault after fault, shall have been reckless, improvident, perhaps profligate, yet be fitter after all for the kingdom of Heaven than the Pharisee—fitter, because against the catalogue of faults there could perhaps be set a fairer list of acts of comparative generosity and self-forgetfulness—fitter, because to those who love much, much is forgiven. Fielding had no occasion to make Blifil, behind his decent coat, a traitor and ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... respects as to lead at once to the conclusion that they were brothers. Jack was the cleaner man and the better dressed of the two. I admit that, at the outset. It is, perhaps, one of my failings to push justice and impartiality to their utmost limits. I am no Pharisee; and where Vice has its redeeming point, I say, let Vice have its due—yes, yes, by all manner of means, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... he's no gift at stringin' the words together wi'out book; he'd be stuck fast like a cow i' wet clay. But he's got tongue enough to speak disrespectful about's neebors, for he said as I was a blind Pharisee—a-usin' the Bible i' that way to find nick-names for folks as are his elders an' betters!—and what's worse, he's been heard to say very unbecomin' words about Your Reverence; for I could bring them as 'ud swear as he called you a 'dumb dog,' an' a 'idle ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Magdalene" was perhaps the most moving and exciting. This extremely original design showed the Magdalene pursued by her lovers, but turning away from them all to seek Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee. The architecture in this drawing was almost childish; the wall of Simon's house is not three inches thick, and there is not room for a grown-up person on the stairs that lead to it; but the tender imagination of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... thought herself something better than her fellow-creatures, ma'am, since she held that their calamities, and even crimes, were necessary to minister to her convenience. You say she was religious. Her religion must have been that of the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not as other men are, nor ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by education, and exposed, without any protection, to the infectious virulence of the enthusiasm which was then epidemic in England, began to be fearfully disordered. In outward things he soon became a strict Pharisee. He was constant in attendance at prayers and sermons. His favorite amusements were, one after another, relinquished, though not without many painful struggles. In the middle of a game at tip-cat he paused, and stood staring wildly upward with his stick in his hand. He had heard a voice asking ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... and slink of the derelict and the pompous strut of the pharisee, or the swagger of the bully or the dandy, there is the golden mean in posture, which stands for self-respect and self-confidence, combined with courtesy ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... those among whom he lives. His aspirations are of a healthy, if not of the highest, kind. Though never an austere man, he upholds propriety of conduct both by example and precept. He is generous to the poor, and hospitable to the rich; in matters of religion he is sincere, and yet no Pharisee; he is in earnest, and yet no fanatic. On the whole, the Archdeacon of Barchester is a man doing more good than harm,—a man to be furthered and supported, though perhaps also to be controlled; and it is matter of regret to us that the course of our ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... was of the highest importance that, within the shortest possible time after his decease, the successor designated by the Bill of Rights and the Act of Succession should receive the homage of the Estates of the Realm, and be publicly proclaimed in the Council: and the most rigid Pharisee in the Society for the Reformation of Manners could hardly deny that it was lawful to save the state, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were indelible if we should lose it. Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties. And it is the trouble with moral men that they have neither one nor other. It was the moral man, the Pharisee, whom Christ could not away with. If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last journey to Jerusalem. It was both the background and the barrier to all his work. It is the key to the interpretation of Paul's conception of the Christ, or the Messiah, for he had been educated a Pharisee. This apocalyptic type of messianic hope powerfully influenced the life and thought of the early Christian Church and even permeated the Gospel narratives. The question of how far Jesus himself was influenced by it is one of the most vital and difficult problems ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... course of spiritual evolution that such a teacher as Jesus—a spiritual messiah—should arise to be the deliverer not of one people only, but of the world itself. Among the Jewish doctors when Jesus was a child was at least one wise and liberal rabbi, Hillel, a Pharisee, the great reformer of his time, and "the most eminent Jew of the generation before the birth of Jesus." At his feet the boy Jesus may have sat and learned lessons of wisdom and liberality. It gives us a reassurance of spiritual continuity to think that the teachings of Hillel may have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Farel. The son of pious parents, and educated to accept with implicit faith the teachings of the church, he might, with the apostle Paul, have declared concerning himself, "After the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee."(317) A devoted Romanist, he burned with zeal to destroy all who should dare to oppose the church. "I would gnash my teeth like a furious wolf," he afterward said, referring to this period of his life, "when I heard any ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... exceptions; and at the end of all things here below, it may be found that some of those poor outcasts, and some of the men who have cast them forth to perish, and now despise them, may fill, respectively, the places of the Publican and Pharisee in our Lord's parable; the convict may leave the throne of judgment justified rather than his master; the poor repentant criminal may be pardoned, while the proud one,—the self-sufficiency of the nation, by which he was transported, and left without further care,—may be condemned. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... infinitely better. Such should be indignant with St. Paul and say—if he was the chief of sinners, what insolence to lecture them! and certainly the more justified publican would never by them have been allowed to touch the robe of the less justified Pharisee. Such critics surely take little or no pains to understand the object of their contempt: because Hamlet is troubled and blames himself, they without hesitation condemn him—and there where he is most commendable. It is the righteous man who is most ready to accuse himself; the unrighteous ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... years before, seen reason to believe that my strong, and perhaps bigoted free-trade ideas were at least not so universal in their application as I had supposed. Down to the time of our Civil War I had been very intolerant on this subject, practically holding a protectionist to be either a Pharisee or an idiot. I had convinced myself not only that the principles of free trade are axiomatic, but that they afford the only means of binding nations together in permanent peace; that Great Britain was our best friend; that, in desiring us to adopt her own system, she was moved by broad, philosophic, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... desire to pose as the British Pharisee, and I am aware that, though we make the better showing in this instance, there are others in which our record is at least as bad. The following paragraph is taken from the Field (December ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... own satisfaction. Whereon a certain great divine, and a very clever divine was he, called him a regular Sadducee; and probably he was quite right. Whereon the professor, in return, called him a regular Pharisee; and probably he was quite right too. But they did not quarrel in the least; for, when men are men of the world, hard words run off them like water off a duck's back. So the professor and the divine met at dinner that evening, and sat together on the sofa afterwards for an hour, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... was already old. What would my father say if he could see his daughter arriving thus at a house which would have been too much honoured by a visit from him? I was suddenly ashamed. My boasted sense of humour, about which I am usually such a Pharisee, sulked in a corner and refused to come out to my rescue, though I called upon it. Funny it might be to eat in the kitchens of inns, but I could not feel that it was funny to be relegated to the servants' brigade in the private house of a countryman ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... that the history of a fact is not the mere statement of the outward thing that has happened. Suppose four people, for instance, standing at the foot of Christ's Cross; four other 'evangelists' than the four that we know. There is a Roman soldier; there is a Pharisee; there is one of the weeping crowd of poor women, not disciples; and there is a disciple. The first man tells the fact as he saw it: 'A Jewish rebel was crucified this morning.' The second man tells the fact: 'A blaspheming apostate suffered what he deserved to-day.' The woman tells ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... never guilty of proclaiming with the trumpet tongue of a Pharisee, either what he felt or did, and though he kept a carefully written diary, extending over several volumes, and the reading of which has been a great spiritual treat to the writer of this book,—revealing, as it does, the secret of that intense earnestness, unbending ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... the case is by no means so extravagant as Mr. Rogers would have us suppose. There is no reason for believing that Paul's character was essentially different afterwards from what it had been before. The very fervour which caused him, as a Pharisee, to exclude all but orthodox Jews from the hope of salvation, would lead him, as a Christian, to carry the Christian idea to its extreme development, and admit all persons whatever to the privileges of the Church. The same zeal for the truth which had urged him to persecute the Christians ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... While Paul remained a Pharisee he was the idol of his nation; but no sooner did he become a Christian, than their love was turned to hatred. No other was so abhorred as he. Against no other did they unite with such determined rancor. Numbers soon leagued together, and even "bound themselves ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... of him another and more thrilling game than the man-hunt now. And Marie, unsuspicious, put her arms about the shoulders of the Pharisee and helped him to rise. They ate their supper with a narrow table between them. If there had been a doubt in Blake's mind before that, the half hour in which she sat facing him dispelled it utterly. At first the amazing beauty of Thoreau's wife had impinged itself upon his senses with ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of Heaven, not rending or wrecking any thing. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all past time, as, in the Providence ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... contemplative mysticism of the Essenes, they are the most important offshoots from the Jewish system as held at that time. In consequence of the external conditions that brought about the destruction of the Maccabean state[12] after a century's existence (165-63 B. C. E.), the Pharisee tendency, which had proved itself the best in practice, won the upper hand. When Judea was held fast in the clutches of the Roman eagle, all hope of escape being cut off, the far-seeing leaders of the people ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... them all false. Whenever in any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points in which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devil's power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving—"Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are."[260] At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what we agree with them; and the moment we find we can agree as to anything ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... and hatred was too severe for the offender; and serious apprehension for the safety of Newgate, his present habitation, was generally expressed. The more saintly members of that sect to which the hypocrite had ostensibly belonged, held up their hands, and declared that the fall of the Pharisee was a judgment of Providence. Nor did they think it worth while to make, for a moment, the trifling inquiry how far the judgment of Providence was also implicated in the destruction of the numerous and ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not doubt it," said the Countess, earnestly. "Don't think that I mean to turn away from you or to push you away. There is nothing of the Pharisee in me. I would gladly trust you with what I have. I will consult you and advise ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... holy saints who kneel before the Mother of all Mothers, take the transgression of her guilty child to Him who—long ago in the house of the self-righteous Pharisee—said to the woman who was a sinner and yet loved much—the woman who had washed His feet with her tears and dried them with the hair of her head—"Thy sins ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Johannine writings, are fully understandable only as posterior to St. Paul—the most enthusiastic and influential, indeed, of all our Lord's early disciples, but a convert, from the activity of a strict persecuting Pharisee, not to the earthly Jesus, of soul and body, whom he never knew, but to the heavenly Spirit-Christ, whom he had so suddenly experienced. Saul, the man of violent passions and acute interior conflicts, thus abruptly changed in a substantially pneumatic manner, is henceforth absorbed, not ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Ulysses? they are Mures, Muscae, culices prae se, nits and flies compared to his inexorable and supercilious, eminent and arrogant worship: though indeed they be far before him. Only wise, only rich, only fortunate, valorous, and fair, puffed up with this tympany of self-conceit; [1918]as that proud Pharisee, they are not (as they suppose) "like other men," of a purer and more precious metal: [1919]Soli rei gerendi sunt efficaces, which that wise Periander held of such: [1920]meditantur omne qui prius negotium, &c. Novi quendam (saith [1921]Erasmus) I knew one so arrogant that he thought himself ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... always loved you better than any one else in the world, you would let me go crying to bed without forgiving me. You have no pity; you have no sense of your own imperfection and your own sins. It is a sin to be hard; it is not fitting for a mortal, for a Christian. You are nothing but a Pharisee. You thank God for nothing but your own virtues; you think they are great enough to win you everything else. You have not even a vision of feelings by the side of which your shining virtues are ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye cleanse the outside of the cup and the platter, but within they are full of rapacity and excess. (26)Blind Pharisee! Cleanse first the inside of the cup and the platter, that its outside also ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... in all those eighteen months no word of gossip, no lightest breath of scandal against her, had reached his ears. Had he been merely a self-righteous Pharisee, enforcing the penalty of old sins, bygone failings? A grim smile twisted his lips. If so, and he had made her suffer, he had at least suffered ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... toward perfection of the publican of the publican Zaccheus, of the woman that was a sinner, of the robber on the cross, is a greater state of blessedness, according to this doctrine, than the stationary righteousness of the Pharisee. The lost sheep is dearer than ninety-nine that were not lost. The prodigal son, the piece of money that was lost and found again, are dearer, more precious to God than those which have ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... tell it all now to Ezra," answered Naomi confidently. "I have not forgotten a single sight. So far I liked it best of all when the great Pharisee gave alms to the poor in the market-place just now, when we were waiting there for Jacob. I liked it when his servant blew upon the trumpet, and the poor came hurrying, and every one turned to look. And next best I liked the cages of sparrows for sale. We have them ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... wonderfully comforting to the elect; that is, to those who imagine themselves to be so. But what if they are mistaken? What if a man, yea a fancied saint, may be damned without knowing it? God Almighty has not published lists of the Sect. Many a Calvinistic Pharisee is perhaps a self-elected saint after all, and at the finish of his journey may find that he has been walking in ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Anne; ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have lost theirs; and you'll say so if ever I give you the details. Of course blame attached to me; to me, and not to her. Though at the time I mentally gave her, I assure you, her full share, somewhat after the manner of the Pharisee condemning the publican. That also has come home to me: she believed herself to be legally my wife; I never gave a thought to that evening's farce, and should have supposed its bearing any meaning ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Rutherford. He is proudly conscious at the time that he is a witness to perfection in a gay world which is content with excitement, and he would be more than human if he had not in him a touch of the literary Pharisee. She has not read Mark Rutherford, and he does not advise her to seek it at the circulating library, because it will not be there, and if she got it she would never read more than ten pages. Twenty ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... ran and fell upon each other's necks and kissed each other's grimy, bearded faces upon both cheeks. It explained instantly a something which had always seemed to me only a farfetched Oriental figure of speech. I refer to the circumstance of Christ's rebuking a Pharisee, or some such character, and reminding him that from him he had received no "kiss of welcome." It did not seem reasonable to me that men should kiss each other, but I am aware, now, that they did. There was reason in it, too. The custom was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the walls," said Abel-Phittim to Buzi-Ben-Levi and Simeon the Pharisee, on the tenth day of the month Thammuz, in the year of the world three thousand nine hundred and forty-one—let us hasten to the ramparts adjoining the gate of Benjamin, which is in the city of David, and overlooking the camp of the uncircumcised; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... long taught in the schools of Babylon, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. A Pagan declared to the Pharisee HILLEL, that he was ready to embrace the Jewish religion, if he could make known to him in a few words a summary of the whole law of Moses. "That which thou likest not done to thyself," said Hillel, "do it not unto thy neighbor. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... upon a role I had never filled before, or had any ambition for—I "entered society," and for ten days I was in it from before breakfast till after midnight; and I prayed the prayer of the Pharisee—I thanked the Lord that I was not as other women are who have to go into society all the time. I had thought that traveling up and down the country with gripsack in hand was hard enough; but it is child's play to hand-shaking and hob-nobbing with duchesses and countesses. However, the experience ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... members of a non-human class sometimes betray traces of saving grace after all, it might better become you to wish that some of their saving graces appertained to yourself. At your best showing, you are a pharisee and a hypocrite, and he is not; he stands confessed; your sin is still secret in your soul. By what right do you look down ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... lawyer-like, he puts the case abstractly. "Hmm—does our law judge a man without giving him a fair hearing?" That sounds fair, though it does seem rather feeble in face of their determined opposition. But near by sits a burly Pharisee, who turns sharply around and, glaring savagely at Nicodemus, says sneeringly: "Who are you? Do you come from Galilee, too? Look and see! No prophet comes out of Galilee"—with intensest contempt in the tone with which he pronounces ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... were to come from the hands of a friend! Was it wonderful that parsons should be seen about Westminster in flocks with "Et tu, Brute" written on their faces as plainly as the law on the brows of a Pharisee? ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... home of endless night; There he learned, as he stood gazin' at the beggar in the sky, "It isn't all of life to live, nor all of death to die." I doubt not there were wealthy sires in that religious fold, Who went up from their dwellings like the Pharisee of old, Then returned home from their worship, with a head uplifted high, To spurn the hungry from their door, with naught to satisfy. Out, out with such professions! they are doin' more to-day To stop the weary sinner from the Gospel's shinin' way Than all the books of infidels; than all that ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... gradually developed social organization and had considerable liberty. About that time the Jews were divided into two classes, the Pharisees and Sadducees. Those who adopted the religious ideas of the Parsees were called Pharisees (according to some authorities the word Pharisee was the Hebrew form of Parsee), and those who followed strictly the Jewish ideas, ceremonies, rituals and beliefs were called Sadducees. The former were sharply opposed to the latter in their doctrinal beliefs. They believed in angels and ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... than ever like the Pharisee did the publican," she said bitterly to herself, "Max and Gracie will be ashamed of their sister, Walter will look at me as if he thought me the worst girl alive, and perhaps Evelyn won't be my friend any more. Mr. Dinsmore ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... But the Pharisee, who wraps the robe of his respectability around him, and, with head high in the air, thanks God he is not as other men are, what spark of divine compassion or human feeling has he in ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... himself with probing further the grained spot in his superior. "My promise then stands in bad case, which I made to the Rhine-daughters when they turned to me in their trouble." Wotan, with the coldness of the Pharisee's "Look thou to that," replies, "Your promise does not bind me. The ring, my ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... we read the Gospels, and have we forgotten all the instances in which Jesus said, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," before there had been any change of conduct, or reform of character? and have we forgotten the memorable passage in which he explains to the captious Pharisee why he does this (Luke 7:36-50),—on the principle that the one to whom the most is ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... pick out easily the Deacon, the Old Lady Who Brought Flowers, the President of the Sewing Circle, and, above all, the Chief Pharisee, sitting in his high place. The Chief Pharisee—his name I learned was Nash, Mr. J. H. Nash (I did not know then that I was soon to make his acquaintance)—the Chief Pharisee looked as hard as nails, a middle-aged man with stiff chin-whiskers, small round, sharp ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... least of all the artist who works for the theatre,—for here loneliness is lacking; everything perfect does not suffer a witness.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} In the theatre one becomes mob, herd, woman, Pharisee, electing cattle, patron, idiot—Wagnerite: there, the most personal conscience is bound to submit to the levelling charm of the great multitude, there the neighbour rules, there one ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... on the day when it was tested, on the Pont de Charenton, and killed four and twenty curious spectators. You see that I am not a bad match in marriage. I know a great many sorts of very engaging tricks, which I will teach your goat; for example, to mimic the Bishop of Paris, that cursed Pharisee whose mill wheels splash passers-by the whole length of the Pont aux Meuniers. And then my mystery will bring me in a great deal of coined money, if they will only pay me. And finally, I am at your orders, I and my wits, and my science and my letters, ready ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... can scarce suppose it unacceptable to the only true Deity, who regards the motives, and not the forms of prayer, and in whose eyes the sincere devotion of a heathen is more estimable than the specious hypocrisy of a Pharisee. ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... worn broadcloth and a smile, how different the popular verdict might have been. Who then would have said that he was a villain? Certainly not yonder sleek minister of Christ who was humming a psalm tune a moment ago, and paused to whisper, "Be sure your sin will find you out." The black-coated Pharisee was handing a ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... certain austerity, impetuosity, and intensity of life. This vigour, however, is seldom lasting; fanaticism dries its own roots and becomes, when traditionally established, a convention as arbitrary as any fashion and the nest for a new brood of mean and sinister habits. The Pharisee is a new worldling, only his little world is narrowed to a temple, a tribe, and a ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... "Being a Pharisee, I do," Frederick drily rejoined, and went on cruelly: "I think for your years you are extremely forward and cock-sure. Your dance pleases me better than your conversation." He felt much like a ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... "prefers either matrimony or other ordinance before the good of man and the plain exigence of charity, let him profess Papist or Protestant or what he will, he is no better than a pharisee, and understands not the gospel; whom, as a misinterpreter of Christ, I openly protest against." And, in another passage, he rebukes those who would rest "in the mere element of the text," as favoring "the policy of the Devil to ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... been, in fact, the incarnation, the fulfilment, the realization of this "kingdom of God." It was only now that all the familiar contempt for and bitterness against Pharisees and theologians began to appear in the character of the Master—he was thereby turned into a Pharisee and theologian himself! On the other hand, the savage veneration of these completely unbalanced souls could no longer endure the Gospel doctrine, taught by Jesus, of the equal right of all men to be children ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... The self-righteousness of the Pharisee is scarcely more to be dreaded than the spiritual pride of the Calvinist, when it has passed from under the control of holy wisdom. It assumes the character of selfishness, bigotry, and the lust of ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... Devil in fiendish glee. "'Tis a silver crown I win! Thrice have you fallen! 0 Pharisee, You have sinned your darling sin!" "But, nay," said I; "and I scorn your lure. I have sinned no sin, and my heart is pure. Come, show me a sign of the sin you see!" But the Devil was gone . . . and ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... the cloth—as it is so ingenuously called—be touched with delicate hands, unless it be that it is shoddy? Yet the man who would stand well in the eyes of society must not whisper a word against pharisaism; for the Pharisee is a highly respectable person, and observes the proprieties; he typifies the conventional righteousness and religion ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Perhaps mercy for those poor abandoned men had sent a Christian boy to dwell among them and show forth the image of his Master. With deep shame Blair saw how unchristian had been his thoughts and acts towards his uncongenial associates. Had he not cherished the very spirit of the Pharisee, "Stand by thyself; I am holier than thou?" Blair thought of his proud and hasty temper and of the many sins of his boyhood, and meekly owned that but for the loving hand of God which had hedged him round against temptation, and planted him in the garden of the Lord, he ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... vows, and a great many more such dainty dishes as these; persuading himself that now he must be fair for heaven, and thinks besides that he serveth God as well as any man: but all this while he is as ignorant of Christ as the stool he sits on, and no nearer heaven than was the blind Pharisee, only he has got in a cleaner way to hell than the rest of ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... it for myself," I said. "And now it is doing its best to make me feel like a Pharisee. So I hasten to add that there are other rooms in the house in which it will be allowed human nature to assert itself in this long-established, hereditary, and ineradicable right. Our guests have only to intimate that they can no longer restrain their propensities and we will conduct them to another ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... heart is once steeled with infidelity, infidelity confirmed by carnal wisdom, an exuberance of the grace of God is required to melt it, which is seldom manifested; for we read in the blessed book that the Pharisee and the wizard became receptacles of grace, but where is there mention made of the conversion of the sneering Sadducee, and is the modern infidel aught but a Sadducee ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... shrines will say that the people who can do so much in poverty and tribulation are insincere? Bigoted they may seem to those who believe not as they do; fanatics they may be to multitudes who like the proud Pharisee of old thank God they are not as these; but insincere they cannot be, even in the judgment of their bitterest opponent, if he be a ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... "is the needle-point of the whole business. He has fallen in love with just the wrong sort of woman. Very pretty, very good, a demure puritanical little Pharisee, clever enough, too, to see Lewie's merits, too weak to hope to remedy them, and too full of prejudice to accept them. There you have the makings ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... freedom, of beauty, of outdoor spaces that was ineradicably a part of his nature. The essence of vagabondage is the spirit of romance. One may tour every corner of the earth and still be a respectable Pharisee. One may never move a dozen miles from the village of his birth and yet be of the happy company of romantics. Jeff could find in a sunset, in a stretch of windswept plain, in the sight of water through leafless trees, something that filled his ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... the parable of the unforgiving debtor and the parallel passage containing the matchless story of the sinful woman and the proud Pharisee. In the reading of these lessons the voice, which had hitherto carried the strident note of nervousness, mellowed into rich and subduing fulness. The men listened with that hushed attention that they give ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... nation. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were constituted largely from the common people; they were believers in, and strict observers of, the traditional laws, and were ardent nationalists. The bitter attack of Jesus on them, which has resulted in making the word "Pharisee" synonymous with "hypocrite" and "self-righteous person," was, to say the least, unjust, as Herford has so lucidly pointed out in his sympathetic study of the Pharisees. Herford, though not a Jew, has taken ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... if she's so good as thou say'st, she'll have pity on such as my Lizzie. If she has no pity for such, she's a cruel Pharisee, and thou'rt ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... for to-day how the Lord Jesus put forth a parable to those who were invited to a dinner with Him at the Pharisee's house. A parable means an example of any rules or laws; a story about some rule, by hearing which people may see how the rule works in practice, and understand it. Now, our Lord's parables were about the kingdom of God. They were ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... Testament were selected from many, and were collected and sanctioned by a council of the Pharisees, as we showed in Chap. X. (49) The books of the New Testament were also chosen from many by councils which rejected as spurious other books held sacred by many. (50) But these councils, both Pharisee and Christian, were not composed of prophets, but only of learned men and teachers. (51) Still, we must grant that they were guided in their choice by a regard for the Word of God ; and they must, therefore, have known what the law ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... Pharisees, viz, these:—(1.) The shoulder Pharisee, i.e., he who, as it were, shoulders his good works to be seen of men. (2.) The time-gaining Pharisee, he who says, "Wait a while; let me first perform this or that good work." (3.) The compounding Pharisee, i.e., he who says, "May ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Neither men nor angels have any patience with a fool, and it is the deed of a fool to cultivate occasions of folly. One serves best by making the most of one's faculties, not by choosing a life where one's disabilities have full play, in order to correct them. I might as well tell the Pharisee, who bids me let myself go, to take to drink, in order that he may learn moral humility, or to do dishonest things for the discipline of reprobation. I do not think so ill of God as not to believe that he is trying to help me; as ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... comprehend one another, sympathise with one another; they do not even understand one another's speech. The same social and moral gulf has opened between them, as parted the cultivated and wealthy Pharisee of Jerusalem from the rough fishers of the Galilaean Lake: and yet the Galilaean fishers (if we are to trust Josephus and the Gospels) were trusty, generous, affectionate- -and it was not from among the Pharisees, it is said, that the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... sages of the Middle Ages in contemplative piety. Niebuhr says it is more delightful to speak of him than of any man in history. The historical critic can see but one defect—his persecution of the Christians. He was doubtless a bigoted Stoic, as Paul was, at one time, a bigoted Pharisee; and the great delusion of his life was to rear a basis of national prosperity on the sublime morality of the philosophers whom he copied. He sought to save the state by the Stoical philosophy. Never were nobler efforts ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... whose mountain fastnesses were intrusted by the Jews to Joseph, the son of Matthias—lineally descended from an illustrious priestly family, with the blood of the Asmonaean running in his veins—a man of culture and learning—a Pharisee who had at first opposed the insurrection, but drawn into it after the defeat of Certius. He is better known to us as the historian Josephus. His measures of defence were prudent and vigorous, and he ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... despair, suffering such agonies of conscience, that, to get rid of present trouble, he hurried himself into eternity. Probably Bunyan alludes to this awful instance of fell despair in his Publican and Pharisee: 'Sin, when appearing in its monstrous shape and hue, frighteth all mortals out of their wits, away from God; and if he stops them not, also out of the world.'[111] To arm Bunyan against being overcome by a fear of the lions in the way ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... miracles, that of healing ten lepers and the blind man of Jericho. The following show how large a place is given to teaching: (a) Concerning the coming of the kingdom; (b) concerning prayer, illustrated by the importunate widow and the Pharisee and publican; (c) Concerning divorce; (d) the blessing of little children; (e) the ambitions of James and John; (g) the visit to Zachaeus; (h) the parable of the pounds and the ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... question is the dining of Christ at the house of Simon the Pharisee, and, while they were reclining at meat, the entrance of a woman which was a sinner, who bathes the feet of Jesus with tears, and wipes them with the hair of her head. The place is the city of Nain; the hour noon. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... he deserved for having abandoned you in that hut. Madonna, I tremble to think of the harm that might have come to you through that knave's desertion." And he scowled across at me, much as the Pharisee might have scowled ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... up the century; And still the Church of Christ upon the earth Which marks the Christmas of His lowly birth, Contains the selfish Scribe and Pharisee. O Christ of God, exchanging gain for loss, Would men still nail thee to the ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... another, Senior Vice Commander in a third, and Worshipful Benefactress in a fourth, to say nothing of positions as corresponding secretary, delegate to the state convention, Keeper of the Records and Seals, Scribe,—and perhaps Pharisee,—in half a dozen others, all in the interests of her husband's political future; and with such obvious devotion before him, it is small wonder after all that ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... A Pharisee, very vexed, his bonnet tottering, gnashed back: "The Messiah will uphold the law; this ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... fight, and though they may pray for us, they do not carp at our imperfections—and occasionally they get hit by the Pharisees just as we do, being rather whiter than we and therefore offering a more tempting mark for a jagged stone or a handful of pious mud. You may know the Pharisee by his intimate knowledge of the ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... equal facility to the purloining of subsidies and the roasting of rebels, to prayer and land grants, had impressed themselves upon the Satirist of the Gilded Age as upon his immediate colleagues in Congress. He was a ruffle-shirted Pharisee, who affected the airs of a bishop, and resembled ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... was any wholesome feeling missing in his heart hitherto, it was what theologians call the sense of sin. He had no sense of sin whatever, and no sense of any need of pardon. His masters soon proceeded to humble his pride. He was introduced as a smug little Pharisee, and they treated him as a viper. Of all systems of school discipline, the most revolting is the system of employing spies; and that was the system used by the staff at Halle. They placed the young Count under boyish police supervision, encouraged the lads to tell ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... not a goody-goody, a prig, or a little Pharisee, but just healthy, happy, and full ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... they cherish that desire for the conversion of Israel, which we ought also to cherish, and of which Paul has left so splendid an example. Half-converted men, in whom the carnal pride of the old Pharisee has never been broken down by a divinely wrought sense of the guilt of unbelief in Christ, who, when they were baptized, thought they did Christ and his people an honor; these, of course, never fail to consider themselves as something special in the kingdom of Christ, and they expect to be treated ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... stood far from the Pharisee, who had no good word for him, even in his prayer, and he took a great deal of blame to heart, and prayed to God for mercy on him for his shortcomings. No doubt the Publican was well aware in what estimation ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... jest," she said, more gravely. "Can't you see that it's false economy to risk a break-down even if you use yourself purely for others? You're looking far from well. You are overtaxing human strength. Come now, admit my sermon is just. Remember I speak not as a Pharisee, but as one who made the mistake herself—a fellow-sinner." She turned her dark eyes ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the letter as her voluntary act. But if she were really in love with Ferdinand as she has pretended to be, how easy it would be for her, without violating her oath, to put him on his guard against the trap that has been laid for him! In the scene with Lady Milford she appears as a pert little pharisee, caustic, sententious and philosophical beyond her years; so that one wonders why a girl that knows so much should not know more. She herself has just cast her lover off, after meeting his passionate ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... conduct them by encouragement and persuasion to the paths of righteousness and peace. His presence was not needed among those who were whole. He was of course seldom found in their society. He did not desire to rank with the rich, self-righteous pharisee. So ought those, who profess to be the servants of Christ, to go among them, who are most in need of their aid. "The servant is not above his Master." They ought, therefore, to condescend to men of low estate, and visit the abodes ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... they are women, and their digestions if they are men; but all the time I am inwardly lifting up my eyes, and patting myself on the back, and thanking heaven that I am not as they are, and generally out-Phariseeing the veriest Pharisee that ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the light and atmosphere each knew best—Lhermitte's Christ suffered little children to come unto Him in a French peasant's cottage; Edelfelt's Christ walked in the sunlight of the North; Jean Beraud's Christ found Simon the Pharisee at home in a Parisian club; and no landscape, realistic, impressionistic, decorative, was complete unless a familiar figure or group came straying into it from out the Bible. Much that was done perished ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... I shall beg leave to discourse a little of the wonderful excellency of negative religion and negative virtue. The latter sets out, like the Pharisee, with, God, I thank thee; it is a piece of religious pageantry, the hypocrite's hope: and, in a word, it is positive vice: for it is either a mask to deceive others, or a mist to deceive ourselves. A man that is clothed with negatives, thus ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... moral judgment the world has ever known, held deliberately that the open and acknowledged sinner, just because he was aware of his condition, was in a more hopeful spiritual state than the man who through ignorance of his own shortcomings believed himself to be righteous. The Pharisee, who compared himself with others to his own advantage, was condemned in the sight of GOD. The Publican, who would not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but judging himself and his deeds by the standard of GOD'S holiness acknowledged himself a sinner, went away justified ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... the Haggadah, so that the statement is not to be taken strictly. It is probably nothing more than a grandiloquent way of saying that he was a precocious child, who impressed his elders. Paul, too, claimed that he was "a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and zealous beyond those of his own age in the Jews' religion," and yet he can hardly be regarded as an authority on the tradition. The autobiography of Josephus, it is pertinent to remember, was designed ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... of a good deal of heart, such as the pew-haunting Pharisee knows not of. Perhaps he was not in love: at all events ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies |
