Parables Quotes

• Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

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• Jesus was short on sermons, long on conversations; short on answers, long on questions; short on abstraction and propositions, long on stories and parables; short on telling you what to think, long on challenging you to think for yourself.

  Brian D. McLaren

  Jesus, Thinking, Long

  Brian D. McLaren (2009). “More Ready Than You Realize: The Power of Everyday Conversations”, p.11, Zondervan

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• Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.

  Philip Yancey

  Jesus, Believe, Giving

  Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.53, Harper Collins

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• Jesus communicated parables to the secular people around him and he used stories that were very relevant to their lives, and He was taking heaven's truth and packaging it in an earthly context.

  Stephen Kendrick

  Jesus, People, Heaven

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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• All that passes is raised to the dignity of expression; all that happens is raised to the dignity of meaning. Everything is either symbol or parable.

  Paul Claudel

  Expression, Everything Happens For A Reason, Dignity

  "Relating: An Astrological Guide to Living with Others on a Small Planet". Book by Liz Greene, p. 15, 1977.

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• Jesus disclosed that God is compassionate. Jesus spoke of God that way: "Be compassionate, as God is compassionate." Compassion is the primary quality of the central figures in two of his most famous parables: the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan. And Jesus himself, as a manifestation of the sacred, is often spoken of as embodying compassion.

  Marcus Borg

  Jesus, Father, Son

  49 Copy quote

• The teachings of Jesus begin in story and end in symbol - they begin in parable and end in us. These are not Bible stories that we learn; these are our stories.

  Leonard Sweet

  Jesus, Teaching, Stories

  Leonard Sweet (2001). “SoulTsunami: Sink Or Swim in New Millennium Culture”, p.426, Zondervan

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• What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Beauty, Beautiful, Beach

  "The Little Prince". Book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, April, 1943.

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• There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Sleep, Men

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• None so blind as those who will not see.

  Matthew Henry

  Vegan, Blind, American Gods

  Matthew Henry (2010). “The New Matthew Henry Commentary: The Classic Work with Updated Language”, p.3624, Zondervan

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• Our lives are like the talents in the parable of the three stewards. It is something that has been given to us for the time being and we have the opportunity and privilege of doing our best with this precious gift.

  George Vaillant

  Opportunity, Three, Privilege

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• If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

  David Foster Wallace

  Real, Grieving, Skeletons

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

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• A parable: A man was examining the construction of a cathedral. He asked a stone mason what he was doing chipping the stones, and the mason replied, "I am making stones." He asked a stone carver what he was doing. "I am carving a gargoyle." And so it went, each person said in detail what they were doing. Finally he came to an old woman who was sweeping the ground. She said. "I am helping build a cathedral." ...Most of the time each person is immersed in the details of one special part of the whole and does not think of how what they are doing relates to the larger picture.

  Richard Hamming

  Science, Men, Thinking

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• And there's a wonderful parable in the New Testament: The sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don't grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don't grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who knows where some good little thing that you've done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of?

  Pete Seeger

  Fall, Years, Rocks

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• All happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks. The art of life is to get the message. To see all that is offered us at the windows of the soul, and to reach out and receive what is offered, this is the art of living.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Art, Grace, Soul

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• Jesus of Nazareth could have chosen simply to express Himself in moral precepts; but like a great poet He chose the form of the parable, wonderful short stories that entertained and clothed the moral precept in an eternal form. It is not sufficient to catch man's mind, you must also catch the imaginative faculties of his mind.

  Dudley Nichols

  Jesus, Men, Mind

  "Film and/as literature". Book by John Harrington, p. 238, 1977.

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• Christ does not save us by acting a parable of divine love; he acts the parable of divine love by saving us. That is the Christian faith.

  Austin Farrer

  Christian, Acting, Doe

  "Faith and Logic: Oxford Essays in Philosophical Theology". Book by Basil Mitchell, p. 99, 1957.

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• Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

  Simone Weil

  Life, Perfect, Life Is Short

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• On every parable you ride to every truth.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Truth

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.182, Penguin

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• We have a 'now you see Him, now you don't' God. We have Himself clothed in visions, in dreams, in metaphors, in parables, in the poetry of the Bible, and in all the ordinariness of the lives we live.

  Luci Shaw

  Dream, Vision, Invisible

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• I'd like to be remembered as the sower of seeds. That's the greatest parable in the bible as far as I'm concerned. Some seeds fall in the pathway, get stomped on and don't grow. Some fall on the stones and don't even sprout, but others fall on the ground and multiply a thousand fold.

  Pete Seeger

  Fall, Stones, Pathways

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• Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections - whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

  Robert Frost

  Mean, Thinking, People

  "Education by Poetry". Robert Frost's speech at Amherst College in Massachusetts, www.en.utexas.edu. February 1931.

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• Remember the 'Parable of the Talents' in the New Testament? Christ exhorts us to be the best we can be by developing our skills and abilities, by succeeding in all our tasks and endeavors. What better description can there be of capitalism?

  Margaret Thatcher

  Skills, Tasks, Succeed

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• The Bible parable says that while men slept, the enemy sowed tares among the wheat. A boy who rises at 4:30 to deliver papers is considered a go-getter, but to urge our young people to rise at 5:30 to pray is considered fanaticism. We must once again wear the harness of discipline. There is no other way.

  Leonard Ravenhill

  Men, Boys, Discipline

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• Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Illustration, Connections, Facts

  Werner Heisenberg (1971). “Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations”

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