"Miracle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Richie, and their father all fell to work, and presently, a miracle to Julia, the little boat was running toward Richardson's Bay under a good breeze. Presently glorious sunlight enveloped them, flashed from a thousand windows on San Francisco hills, and struck to dazzling whiteness the breasts of the gulls that circled Sausalito's ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... of tapping, in which it was easy to divine distant shots. Stas ordered all the Remingtons to be fired, and from that time the colloquy of rifles was not interrupted at all and became more and more distinct. The boy, sitting on a horse, which also as though by a miracle recovered its strength, and keeping Nell before him, dashed across the plain towards the saving sounds. Beside him rushed Saba and after him trumpeted the gigantic King. The two camps were separated by a space of a few miles, but as from both sides they drew ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... motion, he tore away the ministerial band from his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to describe that revelation. For an instant the gaze of the horror-stricken multitude was concentrated on the ghastly miracle; while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Hester partly raised him, and supported ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's chief accountant, and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station. He had come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of fresh air.' The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... of my plot? Has it not succeeded to a miracle? The instant that I introduced his Highness the Prince of Como to the pompous mother and the scornful daughter, it was all over with them: he came—he saw—he conquered: and, though it is not many days since he arrived, they have already promised ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... district, with its under-current of human passions, mystery and misunderstanding, that Pearl Watson came. The miracle of Spring was going on—bare trees budding, dead flowers springing; the river which had been a prisoner all winter, running brimming full, its ice all gone, and only little white cakes of foam riding on its current. Over all was ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... him how strangely inverted these thoughts were; what an utter negation of his waking thoughts, as they flashed through his mind while Garthorne was speaking. They seemed perfectly reasonable to him, and—so subtle was the miracle wrought by those ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... proceeds to relate some famous Bible story, resolving its naive Semitic theophanies, its pictorial narration, its primitive morality, into the terms of contemporary ethical or political or economic principles. Take, for instance, the account of the miracle of Moses and the Burning Bush. The preacher will point out that Moses saw a bush that burned and burned and that, unlike most furze bushes of those upland pastures which were ignited by the hot Syrian sun, was not consumed. It was this enduring quality ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... of the ancient pond was a miracle of rustic beauty. Everything like inequality or imperfection had disappeared, the whole presenting a broad and picturesquely shaped basin, with outlines fashioned principally by nature, an artist that rarely fails in effect. The flat was divided into fields by low post-and-rail fences, the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... rapids anywhere inland is as useful to the ear as the noise of breakers on the shore. But the voice of the breakers is louder and fainter by turns. The roar of waters in a river-bed is like an audible fog, a monotony of sound beyond reason, contrary to all sense, a miracle of idiocy. "What is the time, do you know?" "Yes, isn't it?" "Day or night?" "Yes!" As if some one had laid a stone on six keys of an organ, and walked off and left ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... The miracle of impossible happiness had been worked for him. It confused me like a dazzle of fireworks. I turned my back and bowed my head, waiting for him to speak again or to leave me out, as ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... divining-rod; the miraculous cures of Lourdes and elsewhere; fluidic asepsis; and lastly the famous thinking animals of Elberfeld and Mannheim. These, if I be not mistaken, after eliminating all that is in, sufficiently attested, constitute the residue or caput mortuum of this latter-day miracle. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... I have a Miracle to tell you, the Collonel from a blustering, ranting Heroe is dwindl'd to a panting, pining Lover; talks in blank Verse, and Sighs in mournful postures: He the fam'd Pyramus, ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... memory of a moment, when with feet, Arrested and spell bound, and captured eyes, Made wide with joy and wonder, I beheld The spaces of a white and wintery land Swept with the fire of sunset, all its width Vale, forest, town, and misty eminence, A miracle of color and ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... as envoy to the capital itself.[496] The change from a private station to a throne did not alter his conviction that the best interests of his country would be served by a steady adherence to the power, whose marvellous development to be the mainspring of Eastern politics was a miracle which he had witnessed with his own eyes. He had grasped the essentials of the Roman character sufficiently to see that this was not one of the temporary waves of conquest that had so often swept over the unchangeable ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... closing scene of all.[6] There is another reason equally probable:—A wise Christian prudence, and delicate consideration for the feelings of the living, may have prevented the other Evangelists giving publicity to facts connected with their Lord's greatest miracle; a premature disclosure of which might have exposed Lazarus and his sisters to the violence of the unscrupulous persecutors of the day. They would, moreover, (as human feelings are the same in every age,) naturally shrink from violating the peculiar sacredness of domestic grief by publishing ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... a miracle," replied Titbottom, "and for that one sight I am devoutly grateful for my grandfather's gift. I saw, that although a flower may have lost its hold upon earthly moisture, it may still bloom as sweetly, fed by ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... the Indian who had wrought this miracle. "Art sure it is not a dream, Nantauquas?" I said. "I think that Opechancanough would not lift a finger to save me from all the deaths the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... belonged unto Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself was also at Jerusalem at that time. And when Herod saw Jesus he was exceeding glad; for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him. Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing. And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him. And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate. And the same ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... void, chaos was stirring, and faint sounds came from the darkness. Agony filled him: a shiver ran down his spine: his skin tingled: he clutched the table so as not to fall. Convulsively he awaited nameless things, a miracle, a God.... ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... and as the train pulled out, the eggs began to come; the window fell down and I did not get a spatter. God said: "I'll stand by you." explains this. In two minutes a rock the size of my fist came crashing in at the window; shivered the glass, and the rock fell down at my side; which was a miracle. Not once did I feel alarmed but smiled; while all the passengers were ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... "A miracle which makes you travel fifteen leagues an hour in exchange for a hundred and thirty-three francs first-class, and is called ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... their passage "the people will not be stopped by trifles." The outcome of the convention also worried him. "If it should happen to lay down a platform," he continued, "which shall command the respect of the country, it would be such a miracle as we have no right to expect in these days. However," he concluded, "I shall be governed in my course toward it by developments. I do not see the necessity of denouncing it from the start, nor until more is known of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... you are down in the mouth you use poor judgment," she went on. "You know only by a miracle could Rojas or anybody have headed those white horses. Where's your old stubborn confidence? Yaqui was up on Diablo. Dick was up on Sol. And there were the other horses. They could not have been headed or ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... end well," thought Ramses, "if I yielded to priests and assisted at puerile ceremonies. Perhaps Mefres would even command me to stand for whole hours at an altar, as he himself does, beyond doubt, while expecting a miracle." ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... traveling men, not to supercilious tourists in limousines, that Milt turned for suggestions as to how to perform the miracle of changing from an ambitious boy into what Claire would recognize as a charming man. He had not met enough traveling men at Schoenstrom. They scooped up what little business there was, and escaped from ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... has cheese sputtered on toast with such hot delight. Never have such fair round eggs perched upon the top. The hen who laid the golden egg—for it could be none other than she who worked the miracle at Mory's—must have clucked like a braggart when the smoking dish came in. The dullest nose, even if it had drowsed like a Stoic through the day, perked and quivered when the breath came off the kitchen. Ears that before had never wiggled ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... you that, sir, without betraying any confidences," the purser replied. "Unless a miracle happens, there'll be a burial before we get across. Poor fellow, it seems too bad after such ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then raged, indeed, and among such broken rocks, swimming, in the strict sense, was utterly impossible. By some mere miracle of dashing about, however—here, battered against the sharp rocks; there, flung over them by the breakers; and yonder, again, sucked down, like a straw in an eddy, by the fierce strength of the undertow—Eustace found himself at ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... how it gradually but surely expands and grows! By what marvelous mechanism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life! What beautiful colors it presents! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of thought it must have required to invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to produce ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... conditions the causes of your misery. Your explanation is, however, fully as much a fabrication as the Biblical one. Pain and death are the conditions of our existence, and for that reason cannot be done away with. If a miracle could happen, and you could all be happy in the way you wish, namely, living your life without work, without suffering, and with a great deal of enjoyment, what would happen then? The race would increase so fast that after one or two generations there would hardly be elbow-room, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... the gentleman, turning to him with a bow and a smile. "That's the New York State Miracle; one of the wonders of ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... been nearly drowned, and on both occasions saved as by a miracle, or, in other words, by my attendant guardian spirit. Once, when I was bathing alone in a Scotch loch and had swum out some considerable distance, I suddenly became exhausted, and realised with terror that it was quite impossible for me to regain the shore. I was making a last futile effort to strike ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... the old workman, "heaven may perhaps work a miracle in your favor; show yourself grateful, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... later the news came that his father had, in fact, been swept off the deck of his smack by a billow. The widow then remembered how her son had woke up and spoken of his father's death. Everyone said it was a miracle, and the affair caused a great sensation. The dates were compared, and it was found that the accident and the dream were almost coincident, whence they concluded that they had happened on the same night and at the same hour. And there is a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... her most intimately it seemed a species of standing miracle that she contrived to exist at all, for she fed chiefly on toast and tea. Her dietary resulted in an attenuated frame and a thread-paper constitution. Occasionally she indulged in an egg, sometimes even in a sausage. But, morally speaking, Miss Lillycrop lived well, because she lived for others. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... ones never will give up if they can help it; I suppose it is because they can be held in the arms and rocked, and carried about. I have passed through some most anxious hours on account of M., and it seems little less than a miracle that she is still alive. The baby is well, and he is a nice little rosy fellow. It was a dreadful disappointment to us to be detained here instead of going to Paris. I felt that I couldn't live longer in such entire ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... She did not sway with the yielding grace of a young white birch; but she was slim and straight, and girlish angles round easily to curves. Though I felt a subtle and wondrous change, I could not trace or track the miracle. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals, because it BELIEVED in oppositions of moral values, and saw, read, and INTERPRETED these oppositions into the text and facts of the case? What? "Miracle" only an error of interpretation? A lack ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... made no such reply. Nothing less than a miracle could have made her answer Griselda otherwise than as she did. Like Dorcas, for an instant, she was utterly "flabbergasted," if you know what that means. For she was really quite an old lady, you know, and sensible as she ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... to be comparing or contrasting the secular form opera and the sacred oratorio, and it is interesting to know that the origin of both may be traced back to the same source—viz., early miracle plays and moralities. For some time after the introduction of Christianity into Eastern Europe, the new converts seem to have retained their fondness for the heathen practice used in religious, as in secular, celebrations of theatrical representations, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... Venice Academy, also by Gentile Bellini, who introduces her and her attendant ladies kneeling in the foreground, to the left, in his well-known "Miracle of the True Cross," ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... down the man's cheeks; he seized one of the hands of Alexis and pressed it to his lips, while the mother, sobbing with joy, did the same to the other. To them it seemed almost a miracle. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... impatient of the restraints, and unacquainted with the ordinary duties of a camp, without the aid of officers possessing those lights which the Commander-in-chief was yet to acquire, it would have been a miracle indeed had his conduct been absolutely faultless. But, possessing an energetic and distinguishing mind, on which the lessons of experience were never lost, his errors, if he committed any, were quickly repaired; and those measures which the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... They—sociable gentlemen—would stand on her door-step, one grimy hand resting against the white of her doorpost, exchanging the time of day with Blanche in the doorway—a tea towel in one hand, perhaps, and a plate in the other. Her little house was a miracle of cleanliness. It was no uncommon sight to see her down on her knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the rest of us. In canning and preserving time there floated out from her kitchen the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering smell that meant sweet pickles; ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... said turning to Oom Sam, "that old Monty is alive still. If so, it's little short of a miracle, for I left him with scarcely a gasp in his body, and I ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... simple and effective. The frontal itself is composed of children singing and playing music. In the centre is the Pieta, and on either side is an Evangelist's symbol flanked by two saints on the level of the top of the altar. The retable has two miracle reliefs, and between them a small bronze Christ, which has been put there in error. Above the retable is the Madonna with two saints on either side: the crucifix surmounts the whole composition. The back of the altar has the remaining Miracle reliefs and Evangelist symbols, together ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... side by side, followed by a dozen men. A glance told Nathaniel that nothing much less than a miracle could turn the tide of battle. Half of the mainlanders were fighting in the water. Others were struggling desperately to get away in the boats. Foot by foot the Mormons were crushing them back, their battle cries now turned into ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... to doubt him. He had sinned, and he had reaped the reward of his sin. Those rewards were great and splendid, but he had come to renounce them all. The dreams of ambition were fulfilled, the miracle of life was realised, the world was conquered and at his feet, yet he was there to give up all. The quiet of the court had warmed to a hush of awe. He turned to the bench, but every face was down. Then his ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... not disclosed it—that induced such a man as he to roam aimlessly, as it seemed, in deserted streets at such chill and dangerous hours. "What does he want with me?" The thought was so natural that it was no miracle ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... appeared rather disconcerted by this reply. "You are a miracle of chivalry, my dear Mr. Ware," she said dryly. "But is it not rather a large heart you have to love two women at ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... books, and take her walk (which was my lord's orders), sometimes by herself, sometimes with Archie, the only child of that scarce natural union. The child was her next bond to life. Her frosted sentiment bloomed again, she breathed deep of life, she let loose her heart, in that society. The miracle of her motherhood was ever new to her. The sight of the little man at her skirt intoxicated her with the sense of power, and froze her with the consciousness of her responsibility. She looked forward, and, seeing him in fancy grow up and play ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Goodland, recent candidate for Congress, is author of two books: "The Miracle on the Smoky and Other Stories," and "Lois ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... and begin marching. The miraculous Convention Ship has got to land;—and is there, shall we figuratively say, changed, as Epic Ships are wont, into a kind of Sea Nymph, never to sail more; to roam the waste Azure, a Miracle ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the War changed and purified. What one could not foresee was that, under the awakening of the people, Russia could pass, in a day, through a Revolution as profound in its character and consequences as the great explosion in France. It would be almost a miracle if so complete a Revolution, in such a vast, benighted empire, were not followed by decades of recurrent chaos and anarchy. If Russia avoids this fate, she will present a unique experience in history. The tendency to abrogate all authority, ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... the first whisper assaulted my ear, When the first pressure astonish'd my hand, When I first fancied that I might be dear— Life was a miracle ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... familiar a substance as common potash into a metal which was not only so light that it floated on water, but possessed the seemingly miraculous property of bursting into flames as soon as it came in contact with that fire-quenching liquid. If this were not a miracle, it had for the popular eye all the appearance ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... it would be a miracle if the craft did not founder. Twice it could have been all over with her if the crew had not been constantly on the watch. Aouda was exhausted, but did not utter a complaint. More than once Mr. Fogg rushed to protect her from the violence ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... and the burning of an image of a saint, 'They insulted the poor image so,' he said, 'it is a marvel there was no miracle. The saint worked so many in the good ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... If by a happy miracle the fertility of all arable lands were to be increased, it would not be the agriculturist, but the consumer, who would profit by this phenomenon; for the result of it would be, abundance and cheapness. There would be less labor incorporated into an acre of grain, and the agriculturist ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... the ball entered, and then she made a drawing "intment," as she called it, and applied it daily, and in about four weeks, to our great delight, the ball came out. Ben had the receipt for that wonderful "intment," and he calls it "Aunt Hildy's miracle." ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... feet of Lotta Crabtree. But it has been pointed out by one musical critic that the Franciscan padres were chanting Gregorian measures in the Mission Dolores when the battles of Lexington and Concord were being fought, and that the Indians were intoning hymns and staging miracle-plays for their sun-god in California before the landing of ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... stooping over it to see it better, had attracted the lightning, which, falling partly on the hand in which he held it, had caused the misfortune. There were traces on his arm of the electric fire, and his hair was burnt on one side. By what miracle the electric fluid had been diverted, and how we, dwelling in a tree, had been preserved from a sudden and general conflagration, I knew not. My son assured me he had seen the fire run along the instrument he held, and from thence fall perpendicularly to the earth, where ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... of wild duck, heading for the Camargue, see far off the town's steeples, the whole flight veers away. In short there is nothing left by way of game in this part of the country but an old rascal of a hare, who has escaped by some miracle the guns of Tarascon and appears determined to stay there. This hare is well known. He has been given a name. He is called "Speedy". He is known to live on land belonging to M. Bompard... which, by the way, has doubled or even tripled its value. No one has yet been able to catch him, and at the present ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... laid down their lives for the cause that commanded their faith and loyalty, they found their real lives—larger, more beautiful, stronger.... Not once, but many thousands of times, has this miracle happened! Their graves are strewn, singly and in groups, over every field of eastern France. They paid the debt, did their part little or great, unknown or glorified by men. Literally they have given their blood for the soil of ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... taking age with any sense of egotistical rebellion; but it irked him like an unfamiliar weight patiently borne and for no reward. The sense of the morning of life was upon him; yet here he was fettered to his traitorous body which was surely going to betray him in the end. No miracle could save him from atomic downfall. However exultantly he might live again, here he should live no more, and though there was in him no fervency either of rebellion or belief, he did look gravely now at the pack of mortality he carried. It was carefully poised and handled. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... below. Then the cutter, along with all her wealth of hoop-iron, tobacco, knives and calico, had gone up into the air and fallen back into the sea in scattered and fragmented nothingness. It had been dynamite—the MYSTERY. And he, who had been hurled uninjured through the air by a miracle of fortune, had divined that white men in themselves were truly dynamite, compounded of the same mystery as the substance with which they shot the swift-darting schools of mullet, or blow up, in extremity, themselves and the ships ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... burning heretics, trying causes by red hot ploughshares, or offering up human sacrifices to wicker idols. I no more expect a reaction in favour of Gatton and Old Sarum, than a reaction in favour of Thor and Odin. I should think such a reaction almost as much a miracle as that the shadow should go back upon the dial. Revolutions produced by violence are often followed by reactions; the victories of reason once gained, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... belongs to God. None of us can turn the earth around; all we can ever hope to do is to hit it a few whacks on the right side. We belong to a great system; a system which can convince even the dullest of us of its greatness. Think of the miracle of night and day enacted before our eyes every twenty-four hours. Right on the dot comes the sun up over the saucer-like rim of the earth, never a minute late. Think of the journey the earth makes around the sun every year—a matter of 360,000,000 ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... was very memorable, and God turned it to good account for higher ends. I often tell it as "the miracle of the speaking bit of wood"; and it has happened to other Missionaries exactly as to myself. While working at the house, I required some nails and tools. Lifting a piece of planed wood, I penciled a few words on it, and requested ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... is that the event should have been for a moment doubtful, and that the rebels should have resisted so long. That five or six thousand colliers and ploughmen should contend during an hour with half that number of regular cavalry and infantry would now be thought a miracle. Our wonder will, perhaps, be diminished when we remember that, in the time of James the Second, the discipline of the regular army was extremely lax, and that, on the other hand, the peasantry ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tastes. One evening his mood became blander, and he dropped his crystals from the sky in large, damp flakes, which clung tenaciously to the branches and twigs; then during the night his breath became chilled and froze the snowy cylinders, and when morning broke the woods were a miracle of loveliness, every leaf and twig bearing a ridge of gleaming pearls, while the sylvan floor was pure white. Soon the sun was shining from an unmarred sky, and the snow-clad earth smiled back in shimmering recognition. It was a day for worship ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... roots to the underlying stratum of isolation. Unless Sanskrit and Greek and Hebrew had passed through the combinatory stratum, nay, unless, at some time or other, they had been no better than Chinese, their present form would be as great a miracle as the existence of chalk (and the strata associated withit) without an underlying stratum of oolite (and the strata associated withit;) or a stratum of oolite unsupported by the trias or system of new red sandstone. Bunsen's dictum, that ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... call three years, and if by lease of strength they pass on toward an age of four years, it is but an evidence of their exceptional vitality. It seems to be true that the experiences of a long life of sixty or eighty years is crowded into a narrow compass of four years by a miracle of spheres not ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... environment and experience. But these do not obliterate the marks of his descent, nor are they so numerous or powerful as to give support to the old myth of the "rustic phenomenon," the isolated poetical miracle appearing in defiance of the ordinary laws of literary dependence ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... FRIEND: Could you have seen the boat leave the ship, I am sure your heart would have sunk within you. I would not have given sixpence for the lives of the men: a tremendous wave broke and missed upsetting the boat by a miracle. O God, how my heart thumped to see them safe! Then they got safe on shore, and I had given a two-pound note to cheer up the poor fellows when they landed; but I was so anxious to send a letter for you. I knew it was impossible for any boat to come off to us since ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... is the offspring of remorse. Newton was a Calvinist of course, though it seems not an extreme one, otherwise he would probably have confirmed Cowper in the darkest of hallucinations. His religion was one of mystery and miracle, full of sudden conversions, special providences and satanic visitations. He himself says that "his name was up about the country for preaching people mad:" it is true that in the eyes of the profane ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... found a becoming excuse which placed a few hours at her disposal. She went her way with the fairy cap in her bosom, ascended the green summit of the Sun's hill, now glimmering in the moonlight, and drew from its hiding-place the pledge that had been entrusted to her. As if by a miracle, the little flower, touched by the moon's silvery glow, expanded in an instant. Almost spontaneously it began to oscillate in her hand, and shrill and clear the little bell rang, so that it resounded into the adjacent wood, whence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... been fulfilled, and that she had achieved the conquest of a man upon whom all others had smiled in vain. But how immeasurably different were her emotions from those which she had once anticipated! Not her beauty, not her consummate skill in fascination had wrought this miracle, but her woman's heart, awakened at last; and it thrilled with such unspeakable joy that she turned away to hide its reflex in her face. He was misled by the act into believing that she could not forgive ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... resounds on the stone with irritating irregularity. Nobody speaks, nobody stays there, all hurry about their business with bent heads, stepping out rapidly, without taking a single glance at the shops. The tradesmen observe with an air of alarm, the passers-by who by a miracle stop before their windows. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... told their privileged joy at helping to build The Mother Church. There was no urging, begging, or borrowing; only the need made known, and forth came the money, or diamonds, which served to erect this "miracle in stone." ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... decisive contradiction between Matt. and the other Gospels, and it is therefore unreasonable to pass an unfavourable verdict on any of them. The story in Matt. cannot be discredited as containing an apocryphal miracle, and the mere fact that it is so independent of the other Gospels suggests ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... old Falcone that first I heard of Marozzo, that miracle-worker in weapons, that master at whose academy in Bologna the craft of swordsmanship was to be acquired, so that from fighting with his irons as a beast with its claws, by sheer brute strength and brute instinct, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... attempt to explain to my little girl the awe I feel when I contemplate the miracle of maternity, she would probably change the subject by prattling to me about a kitten she saw lapping milk from a blue saucer. If I should attempt to explain to some men what I feel when I contemplate the miracle of maternity, they would smile ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... no order maintained after the first onset. Every man seemed to fight for his own hand. Crossing and re-crossing and firing recklessly in all directions, it seemed a very miracle that no fatal accidents occurred. Minor ones there were. Archie and his nautical comrade witnessed ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the glow of pleasure and amazement with which I saw your remembrance of me lying on my dressing-table here last Monday night. Whosoever undertook that commission accomplished it to a miracle. But you must go away four thousand miles, and have such a token conveyed to you, before you can quite appreciate the feeling of receiving it. Ten ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... case, and however awkward a document as nephew to a girlish aunt, I believe I really tasted of the joy of life in its highest intensity when, at the end of twenty minutes of the Park, I suddenly saw my absurd presentiment of a miracle justified. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... day and night, moderate wood-fires in the parlor and library, cheering to the eye, and making of the chimneys excellent ventilators, and the air pure; and this summer house seated down amidst surrounding cold, and boundless fields of snow,—it seems a miracle of comfort. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... among the many mansions of our Father above, among the houses not made with hands, aught purer and fairer, it must be the work of those grand spirits who inspired and presided over the erection of this celestial miracle of beauty. In the great, vain, wicked city, all alive with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, it seemed to stand as much apart and alone as if it were in the solemn desolation of the Campagna, or in one of the wide deserts of Africa,—so little part or lot did ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... madness of the Phrygian boy. The pious emperor condescends to relate, without a blush, and without a smile, the voyage of the goddess from the shores of Pergamus to the mouth of the Tyber, and the stupendous miracle, which convinced the senate and people of Rome that the lump of clay, which their ambassadors had transported over the seas, was endowed with life, and sentiment, and divine power. [13] For the truth of this prodigy he appeals to the public monuments of the city; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the miraculous circumstances connected with the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood, 'the feast of St. Gennaro was coming on, and the Jesuits were eager for us to stop—they have the utmost confidence in the miracle—and were the more eager because many Catholics, till they have seen it, doubt it. Our father director here tells us that before he went to Naples he did not believe it. That is, they have vague ideas of natural means, exaggeration, etc., not of ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... the child? 'Tis well; Nor would I any miracle Might stir my sleeper's tranquil trance, Or plague his painless countenance: I would not any seer might place His staff on my immortal's face, Or lip to lip, and eye to eye, Charm back his pale mortality. No, Shunamite! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the miracle happened. Far away, it seemed, a sound like the faintest echo of his own voice came back to him, but it came from a direction all utterly unexpected. For a moment he hesitated, bewildered, uncertain. Then he sent up another shout, and waited listening. Yes. There it was. Again came the faintly ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... for you to say that, John. But it is reverence, and not fear. That I should have lived to see this day is a miracle. Shall I ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... only a sense of weakness. And what we call masculinity is only the sense of strength, which may belong to women as well as to men under the same conditions. The men on the square had just witnessed a miracle, never seen before in this world—the rise of egotism in the feminine portion of the community, which caused every one of them to enter that zone of man on an equal footing with men in consciousness. And naturally the men did not understand that. They were so dazed that they could not even ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... a litany, and a long string of nuns bringing up the rear. Saint Frideswide was on her way to the bedside of a paralysed rich man, who had paid an immense sum for her visit, in the hope that he might be restored to the use of his faculties by a touch of her miracle-working relics. As the procession passed up the street, a door opened in the Jewry, and out came a young Jew named Dieulecresse [Note 4], who at once set himself to make fun of Saint Frideswide. Limping up the street as though he could scarcely stir, he suddenly drew himself erect and walked ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... cried. "That is how it comes that, in the words of the Aneroid, the works of evangelization on Nonconformist principles is likely to be retarded for some time? The missionaries are quite right too. And what about his miracles—they suggested a miracle, didn't they?" ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... a cause, there was a reason for the miracle of disorder, or it would not have happened. The hour had called forth the man; but the man had been there awaiting the strokes, listening, listening, with his ear to the wind. It had been a triumph of personality, one of those rare ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... prayers for the dead; in the afternoon at vespers, the same prayers, and the holy matins, and the prayers to the Virgin; in the early evening we had the Salve [i.e., "Hail, Mary"], with the public litany; and at night prayers for the souls in purgatory, usually relating some miracle, which was of great profit to many. Nor need your Reverence think that we lost any time because of the contrariety of the winds at Point Nasso that I mentioned; for orders were despatched to the Pintados Islands ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... can seem a miracle and a mystery to those only who do not understand the grand reality that Mind controls the body. They acknowledge an erring or mortal mind, but believe it to be brain mat- [25] ter. That man is the idea of infinite Mind, always perfect in God, in Truth, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... from me, and so go to my Grave a Beggar. For that I not only believe, but am well assured, that not with out much Spilling of Blood and Loss of Human Life shall they be enjoyed, I myself having looked in the Face of Death thrice before ever I might set Hand upon them, escaping each time by a Miracle and by forfeit of my Soul's Peace. Yet, considering that the Anger of Heaven is quick and not revengeful unduly, I have determined not to do so wholly, but in part, abandoning myself the Treasure unrighteously ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... us will meet with watery graves before many minutes are over," said the boatswain, "unless Providence works a miracle to ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... that was to come afterwards into the world? (Deut 18:18). Nay, have not all the prophets from Samuel, with all those that follow after, prophesied, and foretold these things? Therefore what need have they that I should work such a miracle, as to send one from the dead unto them? 'They have Moses and the prophets, let them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... structures of stone and marble. This is according to all past history: and do not, therefore, count upon an exception in your favour, that would be little short of the miraculous. But," he good-naturedly added, "such a miracle may take place in your system; and, although I do not expect it, I ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... judge of the effect that has! I am yours entirely (TOUT A VOUS). I wait in great impatience to hear your news upon all this: for I inform you accurately how the land lies here; so that it only depends upon yourself to shine, and to pass for a miracle of just insight,'—"SORCIER," or witch at guessing mysteries, Grumkow calls it again. ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... than a foot from the edge, but it failed, and nearly caused his instant destruction. Desisting from further effort, he hung motionless, his hands convulsively cramped to the ledge of rock, which afforded so slippery and difficult a hold, that his sustaining himself by it at all seemed a miracle, and could only be the result of uncommon muscular power. It was evident that no human strength could possibly maintain him for more than a minute or two in that position; below was an abyss, a hundred or more feet deep—to all appearance ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... sparkling eyes of her beautiful ride through the night, through the beautiful brooding night, her courage and her innocence seemed to him like a fair, beneficent miracle. But he made no comment upon her story. He only sat in the doorway, looking down the road where he had watched her approach a few weeks ago, and when she said, noting his abstraction, "A penny for ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... written here the story of my life, or of that portion of it which means everything to me, for the rest means nothing. Now that it is done, I too have done, so I sit me down and wait. For what am I waiting? A divine miracle perhaps. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the battle of Reichshoffen reached Paris. You will remember in what form that news reached us first. Until evening we all believed that we had won a great victory, with 20,000 Prussians killed and the Crown Prince captured. Through some miracle, some magnetic current, an echo of this national rejoicing must have reached the sufferer, deaf and speechless and unable to move though he was. That evening when I went to his bedside, I found a different man. His eye was clear, his ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... And miracle of the East! She has known the man a long time and they are in love! I am so glad I am going to be here for the wedding. It comes off ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... and admired her very much, but she herself loved teaching. She had had a hard fight to secure this position a few years ago; it meant comfort to her and her children, and it still seemed to her a miracle of God's working, after her years of struggle and worry. She could not understand why Margaret wanted anything better; what better thing indeed could life hold! Sometimes, looking admiringly at her associate's ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... one, with unbounded vitality. Compare it with your Protestantism, and you will see the difference. Popery is ever at work, whilst Protestantism is supine. A pretty church, indeed, the Protestant! Why, it can't even work a miracle." ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... shameful to see the way papa grew quiet and submissive when Uncle Paolo gave him the order for the crucifix! If it had been anybody but papa, I should have said that a miracle had been performed. But poor papa! No—the miracle of the soldi—that is the truth. I would like to catch sight of the saint who could work a miracle on papa! Capers, what a saint he ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... through the window and called softly into the blackness: "Come here!" I had the scared, shamed, unreal feeling of a child playing at conjurer who hopes, yet knows no miracle can happen. The shock was the greater then when, after a moment's interval, a formless bulk shadowed my window. I shrank back in the surprise and joy and ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... or prodigies foretold the ruin of Greece, signs which heaven must by another miracle enable us to understand, yet might it be foreshewn, by tokens no less certain, by the vices ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... inhabitants of Kygpton employed every invention they knew to accomplish an engineering miracle that makes your bridges and mines seem but the puny efforts of a gnat. They blasted all the remaining ores of Sthalreh from the surface and interior of Kygpton and refined them. Then they created a gigantic vacuum, a dead-field in space a hundred million miles away from ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... and waited half an hour. It seemed to produce no effect. He then poured out a treble dose, swallowed it, leant back upon his pillow, and waited. The miracle he anticipated had been worked at last. It seemed as though the second draught had not only operated with its own strength, but had kindled into power the latent forces of the first. He put away the ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... taken to places of safety; you raise your eye to the summit of the tower of Ivan and you learn that the cross had been removed by the invaders and found in the baggage of the Grand Army. The door of St. Nicholas has an inscription recalling the miracle by which this door was saved in 1812. The tower surmounting it was split by an explosion from above downward, but the fissure ended at the very point where the icon is found; the explosion of 500 pounds of powder did not break even the glass which covers the image or the crystal of the lamp which ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... discussed her fate and decided between them what her course should be. Now, all at once, there was no pilot at the wheel. The directing of the ship fell to her guidance. In the space of those few moments, as if by a miracle, Jean Cabot ceased to be a child ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... good-fellowship and happiness. "And she actually loves father!" Polly would smilingly tell herself, secretly rejoicing in the fact; but she rarely spoke of the change even to Patricia. It was enough that the miracle had been wrought. It did not need to be passed ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... that his work was done, he thought it was time that he should receive his payment. For, although he had seen the great miracle, he had no mind to ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... are fallen to paste. In all the season there is scarcely a single demand for a diamond garter. If there were now a Rout, the only dancers would be stiff shadows from the past. The healing waters still trickle from the ground and an old woman serves you for a penny, but the miracle has gone. The old ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks |
