128 Quotes About Parables

To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message.

Being popular doesn’t always win spiritual change. Christ didn’t pour out the coins of the moneychangers and overturn their tables with any degree of manners when he cleansed the temple. His harshness drew a point—to make people realize how much better they could become.

I believe ALL of us has a certain quantity of talents. It's up to us to do something with them. Will we share them and multiply its effect, or will we just bury them out of cowardly fear of getting out in front of people? Many people might be missing out just because you aren't spending your talents wisely.

[On famous Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr][Niels] Bohr's sort of humor, use of parables and stories, tolerance, dependence on family, feelings of indebtedness, obligation, and guilt, and his sense of responsibility for science, community, and, ultimately, humankind in general, are common traits of the Jewish intellectual. So too is a well-fortified atheism. Bohr ended with no religious belief and a dislike of all religions that claimed to base their teachings on revelations.

Parables, yes. We here are to lead life with woe. Tasting bitter.

You see de rattlesnake in de woods?' Dey say, 'Yeah.' I say 'If you bother wid him, he bite you. If you know de snake killee you, why you bother wid him?' (Oluale Kossula)

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

A journey or pilgrimage also follows the parabolic curve of an arch: it swings out from a known point and returns symmetrically to a point on the same line or plane, but farther along. For this reason, ancient philosophers chose the arch as a symbol for the process of interpretation. That is why teaching stories, such as those of Jesus or Buddha, are known as parables.

Throughout the parables the paradoxical teachings continue: Give to receive. Die to live. Lose to win.