Parables Quotes - Page 2

• I believe that Jesus was both priest and poet. Imagine those powerful parables! My experience as a priest tells me it's not possible to reach the hearts of the congregants without a bit of poetry and storytelling.

  Uwem Akpan

  Jesus, Powerful, Believe

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I don't think God is a gender. He presents himself as a father but he comes to us with the tenderness of a mother. In some of the parables, he is the housewife who cleans the house looking for the lost coin.

  Max Lucado

  Mother, Father, Thinking

  "Max Lucado, Christian Author, Answers Twitter Followers’ Questions". Religion News Service Interview, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 19, 2012.

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• A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: 'You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.'

  Anthony de Mello

  Distance, Frustrated, Stories

  Anthony De Mello (1999). “Anthony De Mello: Writings”

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• Jesus told parables. When he wanted to say something really profound about God, he went into parable. I don't find it surprising then that when earliest Christianity wanted to say something profound about Jesus, they went into parable too. That doesn't mean everything is a parable. When it says Jesus was in Nazareth I don't think that's a parable, I think Jesus was in Nazareth. When it talks about Jesus walking on the water, I don't think that's the point at all, I think the point is that the church without Jesus sinks.

  John Dominic Crossan

  Jesus, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Believe, Moving

  "Viruses of the Mind". Book by Richard Dawkins, 1993.

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• I think you often say more by saying less. And interestingly enough, I mean, Jesus really set the standard. I mean, he could say more with fewer words than anybody. Most of the parables were less than 250 words. And, boy, did he have some one-liners just packed with truth.

  Mark Batterson

  Jesus, Mean, Boys

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• whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Hate, Profound, Mask

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.240, Modern Library

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• I make a distinction between true and real. I think that the story is true, it’s just not real. That’s what a parable is. It takes things that we all know are real, and it takes life events that actually happens, and it weaves them into a fiction that allows truth to actually be embedded.

  William P. Young

  Real, Thinking, Fiction

  Interview with C.J. Darlington, Miriam Parker, Deena Peterson, Melissa J. Carswell, www.titletrakk.com.

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• The parable of the talents is a good analogy of what happens when we give. When we merely try to hold on to what is given or entrusted to us, life may seem to take away even that. But when we choose to use what life has given us, the return of abundance can include friendship, companionship, financial blessings, homes, transportation, and security in wonderful ways. The universe holds nothing back from the one who lovingly and sincerely gives.

  John Templeton

  Home, Blessing, Giving

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• The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Thinking

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• He who retains unchangeable in his heart the rule of the truth which he received by means of baptism will doubtless recognise the names, the expressions, and the parables taken from the Scriptures [by the gnostics], but will by no means acknowledge the blasphemous use which these men make of them.

  Irenaeus of Lyons

  Taken, Mean, Heart

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• None so blind as those who won't see.

  John Heywood

  Vision, Blind, American Gods

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• Anecdotes, personal stories, reminiscences, like biblical parables, are the medium through which faith is restored. Stories are a form of poetry, and give us a saving image to personally relate to.

  Peter Block

  Biblical, Giving, Anecdotes

  Peter Block (2003). “The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters”, p.54, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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• In seventeen of His thirty-seven parables, Jesus dealt with property and man's responsibility for using it wisely.

  George Sweeting

  Jesus, Responsibility, Men

  George Sweeting (2012). “How to Begin the Christian Life: Following Jesus as a New Believer”, p.128, Moody Publishers

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• Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from one pattern to another: a potential translation in which narrative becomes parable and the once upon a time comes to stand for some renascent truth. This approach applies to all the incidents of everyday life: the phrase in the newspaper, the endearing or infuriating game of a toddler, the misunderstanding at the office. Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Memories, Thinking, Games

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• The Vision of Christ that thou dost see,
  Is my vision's greatest enemy.
  Thine is the Friend of all Mankind,
  Mine speaks in Parables to the blind.
  Thine loves the same world that mine hates,
  Thy heaven-doors are my hell gates.

  William Blake

  Hate, Doors, Heaven

  William Blake (1977). “The Portable William Blake”, p.14, Penguin

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• If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?

  Thomas Hardy

  Stories, Moral, True Story

  Thomas Hardy (2014). “Thomas Hardy: Selected Prose, Volume I”, p.65, Anthem Press

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• These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the original parable, the bland lead the bland.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Taken, Men, Discipline

  'The Affluent Society' (1958) ch. 1, sect. 3

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• I have been told that one of the reasons the astronomers of the world cooperate is the fact that there is no one nation from which the entire sphere of the sky can be seen. Perhaps there is in that fact a parable for national statesmen, whose political horizons are all too often limited by national horizons.

  Adlai Stevenson I

  Sky, Astrology, Political

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• The growth of all the plants of the garden from seeds and roots keep us mindful, in accordance with of the Parable of the Sower, of the need for our loving, mortified reception and cultivation in our hearts and souls of the seeds and roots of the supernatural gifts and virtues necessary for progress in the ascetical/mystical ascent of our souls toward union with God and with the divine will for Creation and Kingdom

  John Stokes

  Heart, Garden, Roots

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• I suspect that Jesus spoke many of his parables as a kind of sad and holy joke and that that may be part of why he seemed reluctant to explain them because if you have to explain a joke, you might as well save your breath.

  Frederick Buechner

  Jesus, May, Might

  FaceBook post by Frederick Buechner from Mar 29, 2017

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• Greed is not defined by what something costs; it is measured by what it costs you. If anything costs you your faith or your family, the price is too high. Such is the point Jesus makes in the parable of the portfolio.

  Max Lucado

  Jesus, Greed, Cost

  Max Lucado (1999). “When God Whispers Your Name”, p.64, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• He [Jesus] speaks in parables, and though we have approached these parables reverentially all these many years and have heard them expounded as grave and reverent vehicles of holy truth, I suspect that many if not all of them were originally not grave at all but were antic, comic, often more than just a little shocking.

  Frederick Buechner

  Jesus, Years, Littles

  "Drama Team Handbook". Book by Alison Siewert, 2003.

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• Sculpture is a parable in three dimensions, a symbol of a spiritual experience, and a means of conveying truth by concentrating its essence into visible form. ... It must be the reflection of the artist who creates it and of the era in which he lives, not an echo or a memory of other days and other ways.

  Malvina Hoffman

  Spiritual, Art, Memories

  Malvina Hoffman (1939). “Sculpture inside and out”

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• Divine things are too deep to be expressed by common words. The heavenly teachings are expressed in parable in order to be understood and preserved for ages to come. When the spiritually minded dive deeply into the ocean of their meaning they bring to the surface the pearls of their inner significance. There is no greater pleasure than to study God’s Word with a spiritual mind.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Spiritual, Ocean, Teaching

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