Quotes about miracle
page 3

“I continue
to believe in miracles. But i know that miracles come to those
who work very hard”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Gray Wolf Throne

“exists no miracle mightier than this:to feel”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

89
95 poems (1958)

Feeling

“either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

“To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Perfection, Night

“The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.”

William Kent Krueger book Ordinary Grace

Source: Ordinary Grace

Beauty

“It's all right to sit on your pity pot every now and again. Just be sure to flush when you are finished.
Mrs. Miracle”

Debbie Macomber (1948) American writer

Source: Mrs. Miracle

“We can become inspired to shape a higher, more ideal future, and when we do, miracles happen.”

James Redfield book The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision

Source: The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision

Future

“Miracles happen quietly every day - in an operating room, on a stormy sea, in the sudden appearance of a road side stranger. They are rarely tallied. No one keeps score.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Appearance, Sea

“The truth is more magical - in the best and most exciting sense of the word - than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.”

Richard Dawkins book The Magic of Reality

Duke University, 01/03/2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYcOoqxuroI&t=54m51s <br class="br">The Magic Of Reality (2012) <br class="br">Source: The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True <br class="br">Context: Don’t ever be lazy enough, defeatist enough, cowardly enough to say “I don't understand it so it must be a miracle - it must be supernatural - God did it”. Say instead, that it’s a puzzle, it’s strange, it’s a challenge that we should rise to. Whether we rise to the challenge by questioning the truth of the observation, or by expanding our science in new and exciting directions - the proper and brave response to any such challenge is to tackle it head-on. And until we've found a proper answer to the mystery, it's perfectly ok simply to say “this is something we don't yet understand - but we're working on it”. It's the only honest thing to do. Miracles, magic and myths, they can be fun. Everybody likes a good story. Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth. The real truth has a magic of its own. The truth is more magical, in the best and most exciting sense of the word, than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic - the magic of reality.

Truth, Reality, Sense, Science

“You know what we need?"

"A new plan?" asked Lissa.

"A miracle?" asked Eddie.

I paused and glared at them both before responding. Since when had they become the comedians here? "”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

World

“… a miracles is a reasonable thing to ask for.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“And that leaves me with the belief that miracles, no matter how inexplicable or unbelievable, are real and can occur without regard to the natural order of things.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nature

“[T[his isn’t just “another day, another dollar.” It’s more like “another day, another miracle.” (213)”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: Lit From Within: Tending Your Soul For Lifelong Beauty

“The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

Source: The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

Love, Feeling

“The amazing miracle of death, when one second you're walking and talking, and the next second you're an object.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Death

“Like the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles--they kept reality from paralyzing you”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Reality

“The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison, was the miracle.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Dreams

“I am miracle ingredient Z-247. I'm immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch 22

“Many people are alive but don't touch the miracle of being alive.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

People

“To live at all is miracle enough.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Poem of the same title (also on Peake's tombstone)
Source: Collected Poems

“When you are able to shift your inner awareness to how you can serve others, and when you make this the central focus of your life, you will then be in a position to know true miracles in your progress toward prosperity.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Life

“life itself is not the miracle.
that pain should be so constant,
that's the miracle”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Life, Pain

“Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Source: Life's Little Instruction Book: 511 Suggestions, Observations, and Reminders on How to Live a Happy and Rewarding Life

“It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs (2006), Truly
Context: If you follow the diamond in my mother's ring from Africa to Germany to California to Arizona to Wisconsin, in the heel of a grandmother, in the beak of a magpie, in the gravel of the path, in someone else's novel, in the center of the earth where the volcanoes are from, you would forget the miracle, the reason diamonds end up in people's fingers in the first place. it is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes, it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.

Love, People, Way, Bird

“Once you believe in yourself
and see your soul as divine and precious,
you'll automatically be converted
to a being who can create miracles.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Soul

“Every day you're alive and someone loves you is a miracle.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Love

“The music could even penetrate his remote world, more distant than the moon itself; it could even perform miracles.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

World, Music, Distant

“Don't give up before the miracle happens.”

Fannie Flagg (1944) American actress, comedian and author

Source: I Still Dream About You

“It was possible that a miracle was not something that happened to you, but rather something that didn’t.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

“The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Water

“Offended people still may experience miracles, words of utterance, strong preaching, and healing in their lives. But these are gifts of the Spirit, not fruits. We will be judged according to fruit, not gifting. A gift is given. Fruit is cultivated.”

John Bevere (1959) American author

Source: The Bait Of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense

People, Strong

“[Jem] looked from Will to Tessa and raised his silvery eyebrows. "A miracle," he said. "You got him to speak."
"Just to shout at me, really," said Tessa. "Not quite loaves and fishes.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Fish

“A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Grass

“But this is okay. I smile slightly, looking toward
the sky, knowing
there's one thing I still haven't told you: I now believe,
by the way, that
miracles can happen.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Smile, Way

“one must not allow the clock and the calender to blind him to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle --and mystery”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Life

“The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Law, Appearance

“Miracles occur,
If you dare to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's
begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Angels, Waiting

“I palliate the sufferings of others. yes I see myself as softening the blows, dissolving acids, neutralizing poisons, every moment of the day. I try to fulfill the wishes of others, to perform miracles. I exert myself performing miracles.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Suffering

“There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Hunger

“She crawled on top of him, naked and warm and soft, smelling like a miracle that had saved him from a lifetime of aloneness.”

Patricia Briggs book Fair Game

Source: Fair Game

“Miracles are merely events that happen just when they are needed.”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

“… no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 1
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding/An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

“Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

People, Light

“Knowing there's one thing I still haven't told you: I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Way

“And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

People, World, Flowers, Appearance

“Let us not ask for miracles, let us not ask for concern with what is good for the country of him who comes as a stranger to make his fortune and leave afterwards.”

José Rizal book Noli Me Tángere

Source: Noli Me Tángere

Country

“Think of the magic of the foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Thinking, Dance

“No matter who you are, there is always some part of you that wishes you were someone else, and when, for a millisecond, you get that wish, it's a miracle.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Parting

“Her joy with him was like nothing she had ever experienced. His love for her felt like a miracle.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: Evercrossed

Love, Joy

“Life from nonlife, like wine from water, has long been considered a miracle wrought by gods or God. Now it is seen to be the near-inevitable consequence of our thermal and chemical circumstances.”

Ursula Goodenough book The Sacred Depths of Nature

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 28

Life, God, Water, Wine

“What do you do when old prophecies come true? I’ve never met a priest who honestly expected miracles in his own lifetime. For them miracles are like good wine, best when aged.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter (p. 430)

Age, Wine

“You are like a person who consumes herself in love and giving and does not know the miracles that are born of this.”

Anaïs Nin book A Spy in the House of Love

A Spy in the House of Love (1954)

Love, Personality

“Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an' made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o' humans, yay, a hunger for more.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After", p. 286
Cloud Atlas (2004)

Hunger, Heart

“Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? "I am a Public Preacher;" appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly "a sign to you," if your eyes were open!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

World

“Miracle is simply the religious name for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle, as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant. To me all is miracle.”

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) German theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar

[On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, 1893, London, Paul, Trench, Trubner, 23, Second Speech: The Nature of Religion]
On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799)

Nature

“You must take a house beside the Physician. It will be a miracle if ye be the first sick that Christ hath put away uncured.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 154.

Christ, Housing

“The spectator of a sculpture, modern or ancient, is not called to examine his own or the sculptor's knowledge of anatomy but to participations, so to say, a participation where the motions which have strangulated the carver, while working, must operate the same mysterious attraction and inexpressible miracle of forms and lines, its dramaticism, its graphic tragedy, or its smiling gaiety and happiness: its words carved out of forms and sown with lines into phrases of philosophy, religion.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

n.p.
1960 - 1968, Plastic Language, Ossip Zadkine

Religion, Smile, Knowledge, Happiness

“Human learning, with the blessing of God upon it, introduces us to divine wisdom; and while we study the works of nature the God of nature will manifest himself to us; since, to a well-tutored mind, “The heavens,” without a miracle, “declare his glory, and the firmament showeth his handy-work.””

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

George Horne (bp. of Norwich.) (1799). Discourses on several subjects and occasions. Vol. 1,2, p. 357; As quoted in Allibone (1880)

Wisdom, God, Nature, Study

“The Tale of Genji in particular is the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature. Even down to our day there has not been a piece of fiction to compare with it. That such a modern work should have been written in the eleventh century is a miracle, and as a miracle the work is widely known abroad.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Literature

“We may also fitly remember that Satan has his miracles, which, though they are deceitful tricks rather than true powers, are such a sort as to mislead the simple-minded and untutored [Thes, 2:9-10] … Idolatry has been nourished by wonderful miracles, yet these are not sufficient to sanction the superstition either of magicians or of idolators.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Prefatory Address, McNeill (ed.), Institutes, p. 17; as quoted in ibid, p.222

“One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse. But equally one can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car engine or the action of digestive processes in a stomach when it is digesting pizza. And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the brain than it is in the case of the car or the stomach. Barring miracles, you could not run your car by doing a computer simulation of the oxidation of gasoline, and you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion. It seems obvious that a simulation of cognition will similarly not produce the effects of the neurobiology of cognition.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

"Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program?", Scientific American (January 1990).

Cars, Imagination

“He shared the common human hallmark: he was simultaneously predictable and unfathomable—a routine miracle.”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 1 (p. 14)

“If my parents had made love a tenth of a second earlier or later, I wouldn’t exist. What an enormous miracle, just being given life.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Interview by Jonathan Robinson (1994), p. 163.

Love, Life, Parent

“I have known only one person in my life who claimed to have seen a ghost. It was a woman; and the interesting thing is that she disbelieved in the immortality of the soul before seeing the ghost and still disbelieves after having seen it. She thinks it was a hallucination. In other words, seeing is not believing. This is the first thing to get clear in talking about miracles.”

Clive Staples Lewis book God in the Dock

"Miracles" (1942), p. 25
God in the Dock (1970)

Life, Soul, Thinking, Personality

“It was a miracle — more than a miracle — when I found you, Melanie. Right now, if I was given the choice between having the world back and having you, I wouldn't be able to give you up. Not to save five billion lives.”

Stephenie Meyer book The Host

Jared Howe to Melanie Stryder, p. 78
The Host (2008)

World

“How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, "I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place." Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.”

Duke Ellington (1899–1974) American jazz musician, composer and band leader

Program notes for A Concert of Sacred Music http://earshot.org/Events/sacred.html (1965).

Love, God, Children, World

“Hell is when we look back during that fraction of a second and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at that moment: “I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

I lived my life and did what I had to do.”
Aleph (2011)

Life, Hell

“The public wants miracles. The public demands miracles; and if one source ceases to provide them, they will turn to another source which seems to accomplish the spectacular. Even while they resented and opposed the scientific attitude, they lapped up the miracles which this attitude accomplished with glee.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), pp. 76-77.

“IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change – Nobel-winning scientific body that informs us about what is the scientific knowledge – issued a report last week, which you can find online. Just google “IPCC 1.5 degrees C” because they were asking the question, what does it take for us to achieve the goal we set in Paris in December 2015 to keep the planet safe? And they said we’re running out of time, that there still is… By a miracle, if the politicians acted and we really focused on it and so on, we could still do it. But, basically, we’re running out of time, because in Canberra and in Washington and in other places they are not representing the common interest at all. They’re representing a few big companies, but not the people.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

Climate, Welfare..., Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 15 October, 2018 http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4892252.htm

People, Question, Knowledge, Change

“It was evident that the treatment program’s building was a place where miracles happen.”

Virgil Miller Newton (1938) American priest

Miller Newton in: Beth Polson and Miller Newton (1984). Not my Kid: A Parent's Guide to Kids and Drugs. Avon, NY, NY, pg 3.

“I was walking late one night along a tree-lined path; a chestnut fell at my feet. The noise it made as it burst, the resonance it provoked in me, and an upheaval out of all proportion to this insignificant event thrust me into miracle, into the rapture of the definitive, as if there were no more questions — only answers. I was drunk on a thousand unexpected discoveries, none of which I could make use of. This is how I nearly reached the Supreme. But instead I went on with my walk.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Question, Tree, Night

“I’ve lost a lot of young, brilliant friends. Andy Wood and Layne [Staley] and Jeff Buckley, who was a good friend, and Kurt [Cobain], and Shannon Hoon [of Blind Melon] was a friend, and Mike Starr [Alice In Chains] was a friend, the list can kind of go on if I sit here and try and remember. And they’re all young and these guys all had limitless potential in their lives in front of them. And I think there’s something so inspiring about that – that is like the miracle of youth. And to see that be the final chapter so young is a really hard thing to swallow every time.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

The Life & Times of Chris Cornell, Rolling Stone Australia, 17 September 2015 https://rollingstoneaus.com/music/post/the-life-and-times-of-chris-cornell/2273, <br class="br">Solo career Era

Youth, Guy, Thinking, Time

“In these conditions, our people can make miracles. I have often had the opportunity to realize that the sense of duty of our villagers is authentic. It is a sign of awareness. One call by the National Council is enough for him to leave his home and to rush to arms, when there is nothing that compels him to do so. At the time, the mobilization by the Russian government was always executed on the force of terror.”

Aram Manukian (1879–1919) Armenian revolutionary, politician and general who managed and led the Van Resistance and instrumented the …

On January 5, 1918, on the eve of Armenian Christmas. Attributed without citation in [Death of Aram Manoukian - January 29, 1919, http://thisweekinarmenianhistory.blogspot.com/2013/01/death-of-aram-manoukian-january-29-1919.html, thisweekinarmenianhistory.com, 29 January 2013, 15 March 2014]

People, Home, Sense, Time

“… we have a situation in which millions of vehicles, each a miracle of often unnecssary complication, are hurtling in all directions under the impulse of anything up to 200 horsepower. Many of them are the size of small houses and contain a couple of tons of sophisticated alloys — yet often carry a single passenger. They can travel at a hundred miles an hour, but are lucky if they average forty. In one lifetime they have consumed more irreplaceable fuel than has been used in the whole previous history of mankind. The roads to support them, inadequate though they are, cost as much as a small war; the analogy is a good one, for the casualties are on the same scale.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Source: 1970s, Chapter 3 (The Future of Transport) in Profiles of the Future (7th printing, 1972)

War, Travel, History, Support

“The Protestants say that it is the duty of every person to read, to understand, and to believe this revelation—that a man should use his reason; but if he honestly concludes that the Bible is not a revelation from God, and dies with that conclusion in his mind, he will be tormented forever. They say:—“Read,” and then add: “Believe, or be damned.” “No matter how unreasonable the Bible may appear to you, you must believe. No matter how impossible the miracles may seem, you must believe. No matter how cruel the laws, your heart must approve them all!” This is what the church calls the liberty of thought. We read the Bible under the scowl and threat of God. We read by the glare of hell.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Truth (1896)

God, Law, Hell, Understanding

“Ballet for a rainy day
Silent film of melting miracle play
Dancing out there through my window
To the backdrop of a slow descending grey”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"Ballet For A Rainy Day".
Skylarking (1986)

Dance

“The real emancipation of the Chinese people from age-long slavery would be impossible without the great, sincerely democratic enthusiasm which is rousing the working masses and making them capable of miracles, and which is evident from every sentence of Sun Yat-sen’s platform.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 18, pp. 163–169.
Collected Works

People, Age, Sun, Sincerity

“The miracles of Christ were studiously performed in the most unostentatious way. He seemed anxious to veil His majesty under the love with which they were wrought.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 66

Love, Way, Christ

“There is no mystery in humans creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

Kirilov
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation

Secret

“America… It is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.”

Thomas Wolfe book Of Time and the River

Book 2, chapter 14, p. 155
Of Time and the River (1935)

Time, Country

“We, too, must enter into the Saviour's sorrow. For us, if we believe in Him, He breaks the bread, and pours the wine: and when we eat and drink, we do show the Lord's death until He come. His death, not His life, though that was lustrous with a holiness without the shadow of a stain. His death, not His teaching, though that embodied the fullness of a wisdom that was Divine. His death, not His miracles, though His course was a march of mercy, and in His track of blessing the world rejoiced and was glad. His death! His body not glorious, but broken; His blood, not coursing through the veins of a conqueror, but shed, poured out for man. His death! Still His death! Grandest and most consecrating memory both for earth and heaven!”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 373.

Life, Death, Wisdom, World

“It seems to me that art is a great miracle-it is the showing forth of the Holy Spirit transubstantiation. It is to find and proclaim the poetry of life, without which there is no life.”

Jim Ede (1895–1990) art collector

Introduction,In Engrave Glass:David Peace,Cambridge 1973.

Life, Art

“We don't have to explain miracles; all we have to do is accept them.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 146

“The proper course, therefore, is, in the first instance, to ascertain and examine the doctrine which is said by the Evangelist to precede; then after it has been proved, but not till then, it may receive confirmation from miracles. But the mark of sound doctrine given by our Saviour himself is its tendency to promote the glory not of men, but of God (John 7:18; 8:50). Our Saviour having declared this to be test of doctrine, we are in error if we regard as miraculous, works which are used for any other purpose than to magnify the name of God.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Prefatory Address, p. 18
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Men, God, Error

“I felt the body I was occupying so weakened that all its organs were shutting down. I asked the way to the hospital, and as soon as I walked in I discovered the body of a young man who had just given up the ghost. I approached the body and pretended I had seen it move. I protested to all the attendants that he wasn't dead and that his illness wasn't even dangerous. Nobody noticed when I adroitly breathed myself into him. My old body immediately dropped dead, and I stood up in this fresh body. Everyone exclaimed that it was a miracle, and I didn't stop to disabuse them.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Way, Dead

“We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgement of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life, Men, World, Birthday

“I do not mock men who have faith. It goves them comfort, and oft times leads them to help others. Yet I have also seen great evils done in the name of the Source. And never have I witnessed a miracle. Until I do I shall remain sceptical.”

David Gemmell book Stormrider

Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 2

Men, Faith, Evil, Time

“Just six kilometers – never my world was bigger than that, actually. That starting time [of his painting & drawing, c. 1946], to which I return now; watercolor; I prefer a bit foggy, a small world - and not the cows themselves, but only their traces in the mist. The tenderness... I am currently [1993] deeply immersed in little trees and in the reeds. You have to experience it as mysticism, as a miracle. And afterwards: passing it on..”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Maar een straal van zes kilometer, groter is mijn wereld eigenlijk nooit geweest. Die begintijd [c. 1946], waar ik nu [1993] weer naar terugkeer; waterverf; het liefst een beetje mistig, een klein wereldje, en dan niet de koeien zelf, maar hun sporen in die damp. De tederheid.. .Ik verdiep me op het moment erg in boompjes, en in het riet. Dat moet je als mystiek, als een wonder ondergaan. En vervolgens doorgeven.
Mens & Gevoelens: Jopie Huisman', 1993

World, Tree, Time, Drawing

“Don't think about why you question, simply don't stop questioning. Don't worry about what you can't answer, and don't try to explain what you can't know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren't you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind—to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant transcription from "Death of a Genius" in Life Magazine: "Then do not stop to think about the reasons for what you are doing, about why you are questioning. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reasons for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 138

Life, Feeling, Question, Thinking

“There is nothing in the nature of a miracle that should render it incredible: its credibility depends upon the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. An event of extreme probability will not necessarily command our belief unless upon a sufficiency of proof; and so an event which we may regard as highly improbable may command our belief if it is sustained by sufficient evidence. So that the credibility or incredibility of an event does not rest upon the nature of the event itself, but depends upon the nature and sufficiency of the proof which sustains it.”

Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher

"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix: Miracle. Note (A), p. 88
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

Support, Nature, Dependency

“It's offense you maybe can't live with because it opens up a crack inside your thinking, and if you look down into it you see there are evil things down there, and they have little yellow eyes that don't blink, and there's a stink down there in that dark and after a while you think maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything, he would have told them if he could. Go to your church and listen to your stories about Jesus walking on the water, but if I saw a guy doing that I'd scream and scream and scream. Because it wouldn't look like a miracle to me. It would look like an offense.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Guy, Star, Thinking, Universe

“The unerring signs of truth and falsehood are clear, distinct consistency and contradiction. This is also the case with revelation, in so far as that it must, in common with other truths, be free from contradiction. And just as little as miracles can prove that twice two are five or that a triangle has four angles, can a contradiction lying in the history and dogmas of Christianity be removed by any number of miracles.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 75

Truth, History, Lying

“This is the establishment, chiefly upon Kant's foundations, of a new idealistic philosophy, in extension and fulfilment of Kant's own, though also taking impulse from the views of Aristotle and of Leibnitz. This new idealism seeks to rehabilitate the moral individual in his proper autonomy by seating him in the eternal world; that is, in the self-active, and therefore absolutely real, or noumenal, order of being. It thus stands opposed (1) to the current Monism, whether of Naturalism (Spencer, Haeckel, etc.) or of Absolute Idealism (Hegel and the Neo-Hegelians), and (2) to the older Monotheism, with its dualism (the eternal Creator, the temporal creation) of literal production out of nothing, by miracle”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix A: The Essays in their Systematic Connexion, p.383

World, Nature

“Portugal converted a portion of India to the Catholic religion with the arms of her soldiers, with the blood of her martyrs, with the miracles of her saints, and with the fires of her Inquisition. Those who were vanquished in this struggle became Christians and Portuguese. England might imitate the example, except as regards force.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Quoted by Nishitha Desai in Lusotopie 2000, p. 474

Religion