#parable

The vibrations he felt in his sleep had nothing to do with his soul easing out of his body as he dreamily thought; they came solely from the weight and motion of the freight train rolling north to deliver fuel, furniture and other items having no relevance to Elijah’s life or his dreaming. On the metal rail his arm itched like a nose with a feeling that something bad was about to happen. In another life the sound of the train would have been reminiscent of certain songs by Muddy Waters or even Bruce Springsteen but not in this one. In this life the sound stabbed viciously against the night exactly like a human being demonstrating flawless disrespect for the life of another human being. --from short story ELIJAH’S SKIN ↗

— Aberjhani

#parables #philosophical-inquiry #short-fiction #short-story #dreams

By telling stories, Jesus isn’t somehow putting sugar in a spoon to make the medicine go down a bit easier. These stories are the medicine. These stories are an extension and explanation of Jesus’ revolutionary ministry. These stories show us that things are not as they appear. Our tidy, well-packaged ideas about spirituality, faith, and reality shatter when confronted by Christ and the God he represents. ↗

— Ronnie McBrayer

#parables #storytelling #faith

The naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth's surface;he would never leave the bottom of this shaft, and he would go mad there drinking blood and eating human flesh, without ever being able to die. Up there, against the sky, there were good angels with ropes, and bad angels with grenades and rifles, and a big old man with a white beard who waved his arms but could not save him. ↗

— Italo Calvino

#parable #religion-is-evil #love

I follow suit, said the lion, vacating his coat of arms and movie logos; and the eagle said, Get me off this flag. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#animals #humans #morals #parable #movies

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#brooks #creation #destruction #earth #environment

We all agree that its fit to be as Happy as we can, and we need no Instructor to teach us this Knowledge, 'tis born with us, and is inseparable from our Being, but we very much need to be Inform'd what is the true Way to Happiness. ↗

— Mary Astell

#being #born #fit #happiness #happy

The career of a writer is comparable to that of a woman of easy virtue. You write first for pleasure, later for the pleasure of others and finally for money. ↗

— Marcel Achard

#comparable #easy #finally #first #later

Contention is inseparable from creating knowledge. It is not contention we should try to avoid, but discourses that attempt to suppress contention. ↗

— Joyce Appleby

#avoid #contention #creating #discourses #inseparable

The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#being #enjoys #himself #incomparable #others

Because it's not only that a child is inseparable from the family in which he lives, but that the lives of families are determined by the community in which they live and the cultural tradition from which they come. ↗

— Bernice Weissbourd

#child #come #community #cultural #determined