"Miraculous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... going to tell you a thing, the most astonishing, the most surprizing, the most marvelous, the most miraculous, the most magnificent, the most confounding, the most unheard-of, the most singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most unforeseen, the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... as a single drop. All at once, however, he beheld a little white fountain, which gushed up from the bottom of the pitcher, and speedily filled it to the brim with foaming and deliciously fragrant milk. It was lucky that Philemon, in his surprise, did not drop the miraculous ...
— The Miraculous Pitcher - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the allegorical significance of Arthur's miraculous birth? of his training by Merlin? of the Lady of the Lake? of the ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... such an experiment rather dangerous; but two fell back into the barrel itself—which certainly was very surprising indeed. One might fairly challenge the most experienced gunner in the world to achieve one such vertical shot in a thousand trials; two in forty bordered on the miraculous. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Heathen Religions— Christianity not Fully Comprehended at the Beginning, Became More and More Clear to those who Accepted it from its Correspondence with Truth—Simultaneously with this Arose the Claim to Possession of the Authentic Meaning of the Doctrine Based on the Miraculous Nature of its Transmission—Assembly of Disciples as Described in the Acts—The Authoritative Claim to the Sole Possession of the True Meaning of Christ's Teaching Supported by Miraculous Evidence has Led by Logical Development ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... senses were exalted at that moment far above the level of ordinary mortals', it might have occurred to her to inquire whether the donkey would be endowed with the miraculous power of bearing her over the sea. No such common question ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... have laid a wilderness of charms on the floor, at his very feet, and he would have brushed them all away with indifference. His mind revolved around a weightier theme than any 'lady of fashion;' like a newly discovered moon, he flew around the earth, and with miraculous speed. He stopped in China to say 'Confucius;' in India, to say 'Brahma;' in Persia, to say 'Ormuzd;' and so on around. My dear Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the world, he would have retired ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how marvellous that this self-same ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... a celebrated Sabine city, Cures, from which the united Romans and Sabines called themselves Quirites. He was the son of Pomponius, an honourable citizen, and was the youngest of four brothers. By a miraculous coincidence he was born on the very day on which Romulus founded Rome; that is, the tenth day before the Calends of May. His naturally good disposition had been so educated by sorrow and philosophic pursuits, that he rose superior not merely to commonplace vices, but even ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... little incident at Kazan, on the Volga, amused me enormously. We were staying at a most indifferent hotel kept by a Frenchman. The French proprietor explained to us that July was the month during which the miraculous Ikon of the Kazan Madonna was carried from house to house by the priests. The fees for this varied from 25 roubles (then 2 pounds 10s.) for a short visit from the Ikon of five minutes, to 200 roubles (20 pounds) for the privilege of sheltering the miracle-working picture for an entire ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... of the Ammer. The great white temple, standing, surrounded by its little village, high up amid the mountain solitudes, is a famous place of pilgrimage among devout Catholics. Many hundreds of years ago, one of the early Bavarian kings built here a monastery as a shrine for a miraculous image of the Virgin that had been sent down to him from Heaven to help him when, in a foreign land, he had stood sore in need, encompassed by his enemies. Maybe the stout arms and hearts of his Bavarian friends were of some service in the crisis also; but the living helpers were ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... News of the miraculous way in which the Israelites had been brought across the Jordan spread rapidly among the Canaanites, and when they heard what God had done, they were very much afraid. We are told that "their heart ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... I then thought that in China there had been several instances of people benefiting the country by believing in dreams, so though this may not exactly be the case with mine, yet I thought it my duty, at all events, to inform you of the fact. With these thoughts I started in the boat, when a slight miraculous breeze, as it were, blew, and drove me to this coast. I can have no doubt that this was divine direction. Perhaps there might have been some inspiration in this place, too; and I wish to trouble you to transmit ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... when wandering in the desert wilderness, where no food was to be procured, were fed by a miraculous supply of manna, showered down from Heaven every morning on the ground in such quantities as to afford sufficient food ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... succeeded him in his office. Etienne Pasquier had become a learned and reverend old man, with silver hair. He was then composing his curious and interesting Recherches sur la France, and there related the almost miraculous discovery of a murder long since committed—of which discovery he had in his youth been an eye-witness. It is from his statement ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... as the night was senescent, And star-dials pointed to morn— As the star-dials hinted of morn— At the end of our path a liquescent And nebulous lustre was born, Out of which a miraculous crescent Arose with a duplicate horn— Astarte's bediamonded crescent, Distinct with its ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... may perhaps smile with contempt at the superstitious faith of Botello and companions in the connection between this happy land-fall and their ingenious compulsion of the saint's miraculous power; but it may be questioned whether there was not good ground for their belief—at least as good ground as there is for faith in any of the facts of animal magnetism, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the water was close up to the top of his chest. He could not lie down nor even lay his head back without choking, and to walk across the room completely exhausted him. At that critical moment a friend of his heard of Miss Kuenzel's miraculous cure, and told him of it. He at once sent for Mr. Ritter, who thought that a cure was in his reach, and on January 11 Thress commenced a fast that has been absolute up to yesterday, the only things passing ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... fugitive and is captured by English soldiers. With fettered hands she is compelled to witness a new battle, in which her countrymen, deprived of her aid, are about to be worsted. But through adversity she has been purged of her sin. Her self-confidence returns, and with it her miraculous power. By the efficacy of prayer she breaks her chains and rushes into the fray. Her reappearance brings victory to the French arms, but she herself is mortally wounded and dies in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... vivid only in the middle of the field. All about that centre the dead fibres and seeds were magnified and distorted by the curvature of the glass. But we could see enough! One after another all down the sunlit slope these miraculous little brown bodies burst and gaped apart, like seed-pods, like the husks of fruits; opened eager mouths. that drank in the heat and light pouring in a ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... devotion to her captive parent, shone out the more brightly from their contrast with the vice and degradation by which she was surrounded. With much interest did he endeavour to solve the problem, and explain what appeared almost miraculous, how so fair a creature—such a masterpiece of Heaven's handiwork—could have passed her childhood and youth amongst the refuse of humanity assembled on the island, and yet have retained the spotless purity which was apparent in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Engineer officer who had such a miraculous escape when he blew in the Kashmir gate at Delhi, for which act of gallantry he had been promised ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... studies were interrupted, his peace broken, his health impaired, and then came the noon of his night; a form of gigantic gloom, swaying an "ebon sceptre," stood over him in triumph, and it seemed as if nothing less than a miraculous intervention could rescue ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... great solemnity, at which this author had assisted, and of which he testifies that he had already wrote the history here quoted. F. Chifflet regrets the loss of this piece, and adds that the girdle of St. Eugendus, made of white leather, two fingers broad, has been the instrument of miraculous cures, and that in 1601 Petronilla Birod, a Calvinist woman in that neighborhood, was converted to the Catholic faith, with her husband and whole family, having been suddenly freed from imminent danger of death and child-bearing, and safely delivered by the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... is going to happen," she said. "Look at me, for instance. What could have been more miraculous than the thing that happened to me, Freddie? Who could have ever dreamed of Mr. Diggs falling in love with me? An important person like him falling heels over head in love with the likes of me! Can you beat it? Well, that's what I mean when I say you never can tell. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... love—I do not ask you whether you have or not—but you cannot have known personally of the sort of love that you have depicted in these pages. I call it little less than miraculous that you should draw the scene ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... rested upon some small masterpiece of art or workmanship. Now it was an antique portrait bust of the days of decadent Rome, black marble with a bronze tiara; now a framed page of a fourteenth-century version of "Li Quatres Filz d'Aymon," with an illuminated letter of miraculous workmanship; or a Renaissance gonfalon of silk once white but now brown with age, yet in the centre blazing with the escutcheon and quarterings of a dead queen. Between the windows stood an ivory statuette of the "Venus of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... expression through the snarl and sneer of his ambitious cynic. Monsters as they may seem of unnatural egotism and unallayed ferocity, the one who dies penitent, though his repentance be as sudden if not as suspicious as any ever wrought by miraculous conversion, dies as thoroughly in character as the one who takes leave of life in a passion of scorn and defiant irony which hardly passes off at last into a mood of mocking and triumphant resignation. There is a cross of heroism in almost ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... little in the way of enriching barren soils or of ensuring a heavy yield of crop. By the use of this very potent fertiliser, he quickly discovered that the most wonderful results ensued—results which must have seemed to him at first little short of miraculous. He found that by the application of a few hundredweights per acre, poor soils could be made to yield large returns, and that barren patches in a field could be brought up to the average of the surrounding ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... Milly to reply that although the fact in question doubtless had its importance she imagined they wouldn't find the importance overwhelming. It was odd that their one Englishman should so instantly fit; it wasn't, however, miraculous—they surely all had often seen that, as every one said, the world was extraordinarily "small." Undoubtedly, too, Susie had done just the plain thing in not letting his name pass. Why in the world should there be a mystery?—and what an immense one they would appear to have made if ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... observe the "Baleine"; and the bark seemed to be giving chase to some big fish. This news greatly interested Coqueville. In the groups reunited on the shore there were Mahes and Floches, the former praying that the boat might come in with a miraculous catch, the others making vows that it might come ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... in the gray December morning in the small attic of a colored man, in Philadelphia, finishing his night-long task of drafting his immortal Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society; or, as I saw him in the jail of Leverett Street, after his almost miraculous escape from the mob, playfully inviting me to share the safe lodgings which the state had provided for him; and in all the varied scenes and situations where we acted together our parts in the great endeavor and success ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... became aware of this event that same evening. The neighbours crowded round Bertrande's door, Martin's friends and relations naturally wishing to see him after this miraculous reappearance, while those who had never known him desired no less to gratify their curiosity; so that the hero of the little drama, instead of remaining quietly at home with his wife, was obliged to exhibit himself publicly ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... from the bubonic plague alone. The officials explain that that isn't so high a rate as inexperienced people infer, considering that the population is nearly three hundred millions, and they declare it miraculous that it is not larger, because the Hindu portion of the population is packed so densely into insanitary dwellings, because only a small portion of the natives have sufficient nourishment to meet the demands ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Yon insect on the wall, Which moves this way and that its hundred limbs, Were it a toy of mere mechanic craft, It were an infinitely curious thing! 130 But it has life, Ordonio! life, enjoyment! And by the power of its miraculous will Wields all the complex movements of its frame Unerringly to pleasurable ends! Saw I that insect on this goblet's brim 135 I would remove it with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... first time Fred began to feel a trifle bothered. He had escaped injury in a way that seemed little short of miraculous; but if he had to stay there all night ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Amy with a sincerity of respect which had made him a favourite with her. To him, poor fellow, Reardon seemed supremely blessed. That a struggling man of letters should have been able to marry, and such a wife, was miraculous in Biffen's eyes. A woman's love was to him the unattainable ideal; already thirty-five years old, he had no prospect of ever being rich enough to assure himself a daily dinner; marriage was wildly out of the question. Sitting ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... of Nature, are amathematical. But there are no miracles in this sense. What we so term, is intelligible precisely by means of mathematics; for nothing is miraculous to mathematics. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... share. The wine-bags also fell to my lot to carry, and throughout the day, after each drink, I replenished them secretly with water, so that at the next halt they were found fuller than before! This was considered a good omen, and little short of miraculous. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... matter, and probably a much greater use will be made of sketch and diagram than at present. If the theory advanced in this book that democracy is a transitory confusion be sound, there will not be one world paper of this sort only—like Moses' serpent after its miraculous struggle—but several, and as the non-provincial segregation of society goes on, these various great papers will take on more and more decided specific characteristics, and lose more and more their local references. They will come to have not only a distinctive type of matter, a distinctive method ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... impressions of the day returned to her with all their revelations and tendencies, and filled the mind of Claudia with astonishment and consternation! That Ishmael Worth should be capable of loving her, seemed to Miss Merlin as miraculous as it would be for Fido to be capable of talking to her! And in the wonder of the affair she almost lost ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... before the Cambridge Divinity School, and it was at once made the object of attack by conservative Unitarians like Henry Ware and Andrews Norton. The latter, in an address before the same audience, on the Latest Form of Infidelity, said: "Nothing is left that can be called Christianity if its miraculous character be denied. . . . There can be no intuition, no direct perception, of the truth of Christianity." And in a pamphlet supporting the same side of the question he added: "It is not an intelligible error, but a mere absurdity, to maintain that we are conscious, or have an intuitive knowledge, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... smooth, deep water, the sunny, peaceful quay, where the women work while awaiting their husbands and fathers, though the wind howls and the sea rages. More than all else, although he did not realize that it was so, it was a network of steadfast affection, that miraculous love-kindness which makes another's love precious to us even when we ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... original number remained; they then laid down their weapons. Of the whole body, except the few horsemen who became fugitives after the first charge, not one escaped destruction or captivity. Lieutenant Merewether lost very few men; he himself had miraculous escapes, for he was foremost in every charge, exposing himself with the utmost audacity. This gallant little action drew upon the young soldier 'the attention and commendation not only of his superiors in authority, but of the army of India. The exploit was recorded in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in America. So let us be constantly importing the best from Great Britain and the British provinces and from California, and all the extremes of our own country. Such wheats are worth more for seeds than others, but any extravagant prices for seed wheat, under the idea of almost miraculous powers of production, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... cool as winter. It is an old abandoned spring. It seems to have been a miraculous spring,—it opened the eyes of the blind,—they still call it ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... existence and its necessary efforts at expansion would have made it not only a constant menace to American Republics but a source of endless war and confusion between the great Powers of the world. The policy signally failed. But surely European statesmen, without miraculous foresight, might have anticipated that its success would have been more dangerous than its defeat, and that the conservative strength of the Union might be even to them an influence of good and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... all at one miraculous draught! It appeared to him wealth inexhaustible. It at once opened his heart and hand, and led him into all kinds of extravagance. The first symptom was ten guineas sent to Shuter for a box ticket for his benefit, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... wonder, then, that one like me, bred in that atmosphere of moral despair, should pass over with comparatively little attention the miraculous material achievements of this age, to study with ever-growing awe and wonder the secret of your just ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... soft creature throbbing against him was to have its freedom again. No one, at least since he could remember, had ever before smiled and asked Denny Bolton to "do it—for me." For one flashing instant he saw her eyes flare at his candid refusal; then they cleared again with that same miraculous swiftness. Once more the corners of her lips lifted pleadingly, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... way? Every hour seemed to bring some fresh proof of the madness that was in me—some proof that made resistance more and more futile and hopeless. A thousand times I have been tempted to kill myself—but always there was the dim, desperate hope that some miraculous twist of sanity might yet deliver me. I can't convey to you a tenth—a hundredth—part of the agony of that struggle. There were times when I shrank into the farthest corner of my darkest cellar, and prayed, as only a madman could pray, to be spared from ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... Below them lay the dense foliage of the almost impenetrable forests, from which they had just made this almost miraculous escape. And both young aviators, as if by common consent, started to sweep the horizon around ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... in his chair for a moment, and then stood up; the ropes were still tied, but he was free. I do not understand how this was done. It was certainly a miraculous power, because no man could have released himself by ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... had been long under the care of a regular physician, and who were just at the turning point of receiving benefit therefrom, took an "Eddy sitting" and jumped to the conclusion that said mummery affected a miraculous cure. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the sky a mass of blackened ruins. One result was that a fiendish cheer arose from the robbers' camp, filling the night air with discord. Another result was that the happy-go-lucky little boy and his horses came to an almost miraculous halt and remained so for some time, gazing straight before them in a ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... not have given at that moment to have been by his side. The feat he had just accomplished seemed little less than miraculous, and I could hardly credit the evidence of my senses when I saw the wide distance that a single daring act had so ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Guingalais, whose Phallic symbol consisted of a long wooden beam which passed right through the body of the saint, and the fore-part of which was strikingly characteristic. The devotees of this place, like those of Puy-en-Velay, most devoutly rasped the extremity of this miraculous symbol for the purpose of drinking the scrapings mixed with water as an antidote against sterility, and when by the frequent repetition of this operation, the beam was worn away, a blow with a mallet in the rear of the saint propelled ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... to become the poet pre-eminent in English literature. But this question is not to be decided by a priori reasoning. The genius displayed in the dramatic works under consideration is little less than miraculous. This all concede. Now, history has shown that to genius there is a sense in which "all things are possible." Genius can cross the Alps, can conquer Europe, can dumfound the world. Genius knows no rules. Once allow genius, and the problem is solved. It is conceded that for a common ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... priesthood, and they ONLY WHILE PERFORMING THEIR SACRED OFFICES. An angel of the Lord did command the barren Manoah to stay sober awhile and she should conceive and bear a son; and I imagine that something equally as miraculous might happen to Luther Benson under similar circumstances. David recounts as one of God's mercies that he giveth water to the wild ass and wine to make glad the heart of man. Solomon sings to the wine cup with all the ardor of Anacreon, while the prophets kept the morals of ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... also which has lessened our perception of the miraculous good fortune which we enjoy. Let us suppose that we were suddenly to learn that Shakespeare had returned to earth, and that he would favour any of us with an hour of his wit and his fancy. How eagerly we would seek him out! And yet we have him—the very best of him—at our elbows from week to ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to wait. I've a theory about some of this. We know blamed well that, except for the most miraculous luck, you couldn't have set the plane down on this field without it slipping off again. Well there's only one answer to that: the rubbery resilience of the surface. It must have given a little to hold the plane—and us when we walked on it. What does that mean? Simply that ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... to the shafts and trailed at the tailboard; the cart stopped by an influx of traffic, men stood on the hubs of the wheels staring back at the swelling smoke clouds. Mutual experiences flashed back and forth, someone's death dully recounted, a miraculous escape, tales of falling chimneys and desperate chances boldly taken. Some were bent under heavy loads, which they cast down despairingly by the way; some carried nothing. Those who had had time and clearness of head ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... intellect. This year the women of Indiana can place themselves in the van of human progress and dictate the policy which mankind must recognize as just and true for ages to come. The public mind is not unprepared for this measure. The spread and the acceptance of great ideas is almost miraculous in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... same time, order prevails throughout, for as the main shaft gives no respite to the carding, roving, and spinning machines, so every attendant diligently and silently watches the lines of bobbins which are performing their miraculous evolutions, while the other apparatus are correcting and regulating the stages and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... in the gardened spaces which so abound, the leaves have grown perceptibly, and the grass thickened so that you can smell it, if you cannot hear it, growing. The birds insist, and in the air is that miraculous lift, as if nature, having had this banquet of the year long simmering, had suddenly taken the lid off, to let you perceive with every gladdening sense what a feast you were going to have presently ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... utility. The Cerfs, the Curries, the Lamerts, the Ruspinis, the Coopers, and Munroes, are all equally entitled to public approbation, particularly if we may credit the letters from the various persons who authenticate the miraculous cures they have performed in the most inveterate, we hail almost said, the most impossible, cases. If those persons are really in existence (and who can doubt it?) they certainly have occasion to be thankful for their ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... have the Indian Rounceval, or Miraculous Pease, so call'd from their long Pods, and great Increase. These are latter Pease, and require a pretty long Summer to ripen in. {Pease and Beans.} They are very good; and so are the Bonavis, Calavancies, Nanticokes, and abundance of other Pulse, too tedious ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... stupefying rule that the good Fathers of the Republic relieved their children from the necessity of vigorous, independent, or consistent thinking in political matters,—that it is the duty of their loyal children to repeat the sacred words and then await a miraculous consummation of individual and social prosperity. Accordingly, all the leading reformers begin by piously reiterating certain phrases about equal rights for all and special privileges for none, and of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Having in this way proved ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... resort of pilgrims. In Japan, the shrines and statues of Kwannon are to be met with everywhere: many of her images being of enormous size, richly gilt and beautifully wrought. Sometimes the statues are kept concealed from view, either on account of alleged miraculous properties, or for some other reason of special sanctity. The highly-venerated image, for instance, at the Asakusa temple, Tokio, is never shown; it is only two inches high, and is accredited with supernatural qualities. But of all the shrines of Kwannon, it may be doubted whether ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... all seamen feel as I do; but I have witnessed so many miraculous escapes, so many sudden reverses, so much, beyond all hope and conception, achieved by a reliance upon Providence and your own exertions, that, under the most critical circumstances, I never should despair. If struggling in the centre of the Atlantic, with no vessel ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... smoke-choked engines of the A.T. & Santa Fe R.R. carry no provision for yelling Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, etc. They lose no time treating and trading with the Indians, and are never out of sight of the miraculous changes exhibited by the ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... which set forth an extraordinary being, it is necessary to introduce an ordinary character to serve as a standard by which the unusual capabilities of the central figure may be measured. Furthermore, in stories which treat of the miraculous, it is necessary to have at least one eye-witness to the extraordinary circumstances beside the person primarily concerned in them. Hence another character was absolutely needed in the tale. This second person, moreover, had ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... deeper and more bewildering. Some people really are throwing their medicine bottles out of the window; and some of them at least are working purely psychological cures of a sort that would once have been called miraculous healing. I do not say we know how far this could go; it is my whole point that we do not know, that we are in contact with numbers of new things of which we know uncommonly little. But the vital point is, not that science deals ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... Enthusiastic frenzy had become the habitual state of these people, whose overheated imaginations were nourished on legendary tales, and foolish hopes of imminent reprisals. They welcomed with unfailing credulity the wildest prophecies, announcing terrible impending massacres, to which the miraculous return of the Bourbon lilies would put an end, and as illusions of this kind are strengthened by their own deceptions, the house in the Rue de Valasse soon heard mysterious voices, and became the scene "of celestial apparitions," which, on the invitation ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... beautiful than usual. A woman, standing there, pressed up nearer to her to view her more closely, and, seeing how beautiful she was, asked her if she was not an angel. In those days, however, people believed in what is miraculous and supernatural more easily than now, so that it was not very surprising that one should think, in such a case, that an angel from Heaven had come down to join in ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the science of breeding is so new as to seem a mass of contradictions to all except those familiar with the maze of mathematics and biology by which the barn-yard facts must find their ultimate explanation. The science of breeding may in the future bring about that which would now seem miraculous, but it is the ancient art of breeding that is and will for years continue to be the means by which the poultry ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... power of tuberculosis through knowledge,—wide-spread, universal knowledge,—rather than through any miraculous discoveries other than that of the cause and the possibility of cure. We shall in time obliterate cancer by the same means. Make a disease a household word, and its power is gone. We are still far from that day with syphilis. The third great plague is just dawning upon us—a ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... we should recommence vigilantly with the concrete facts, ignoring all the merely aesthetic and metaphysic syntheses. Where Coleridge and Schlegel more or less ingeniously invite us to acknowledge a miraculous artistic perfection, where Lamb more movingly gives forth the intense vibration aroused in his spirit by Shakspere's ripest work, we must turn back to track down the youth from Stratford; son of a burgess once prosperous, but destined to sink steadily in the world; ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... more Use for them, return again after the same manner. Scaliger has rallied Homer very severely upon this Point, as M. Dacier has endeavoured to defend it. I will not pretend to determine, whether in this particular of Homer the Marvellous does not lose sight of the Probable. As the miraculous Workmanship of Milton's Gates is not so extraordinary as this of the Tripodes, so I am persuaded he would not have mentioned it, had not he been supported in it by a Passage in the Scripture, which speaks of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... not help asking himself what his friend had done to be made a Cabinet Minister. Little as he, Phineas, himself had done in the House in his two sessions and a half, Mr. Kennedy had hardly done more in his fifteen or twenty. But then Mr. Kennedy was possessed of almost miraculous wealth, and owned half a county, whereas he, Phineas, owned almost nothing at all. Of course no Prime Minister would offer a junior lordship at the Treasury to a man with L30,000 a year. Soon after this Phineas took his ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... all," she replied. "You fell in love with a nun. You were imprisoned under the Leads, and I heard of your almost miraculous flight at Vienna. I had a false presentiment that I should see you in that town. Afterwards I heard of you in Paris and Holland, but after you left Paris nobody could tell me any more about you. You will hear some fine tales when I tell you all that has happened to me during the past ten years. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... or any appearance of scoriae that I could anywhere observe. It was riddled with holes, some wide and deep—a very honeycomb; and that I did not break my neck or a limb in staggering walk from the beach in the darkness, I must ever account the most miraculous ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... as a heavenly food during his occupation of the place. The abode was afterward demolished, but the delectable plant, and a few other luxuries, were "spread all over the land of mortals as a permanent memorial of Vishva Mitra's miraculous deeds." In the time of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) there appear tales of "a reed growing in India which produced honey ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... religion—teach him merely his moral duty—till he is of age; then put the Bible into his hands. There would be, of course, a great deal—the 'purely mythological or Herodotean element,' as Strauss calls it—and the miraculous element generally, that he would probably at first reject; but if he was of an appreciative nature—and I am presupposing that, because I don't think the theory of education is for the apathetic and unsensitive—he would see, I believe, not only the ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... leader was an English gentleman who had become fascinated with the doctrine of Buddhism. Taking a few of his followers to India, they have been prosecuting their studies there, certain individuals attracting considerable attention by a claim to miraculous powers. It need hardly be said that the revelations they have claimed to receive have been, thus far, without element of ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... decided that half a loaf was better than none and tried a field-goal. She ought never to have got it, for the left side of her line was torn to ribbons by the desperate defenders. But she did, nevertheless, the ball in some miraculous manner slipping through the upstretched hands and leaping bodies and ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... are we becoming inefficient?" a year or two ago, and from that starting point it is I came to this. . . . I do not believe therefore that upon this dusty threshold I shall stand long alone. We take most calmly the most miraculous of things, and it is only quite recently that I have come to see as amazing this fact, that while the greater mass of our English- speaking people is living under the profession of democratic Republicanism, there is no party, no sect, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... infinite expectation. Bets were laid on the amount of our bag. The general impression was that we should get some of them, but that the main body would, somehow or other, escape. We had so often toiled and taken nothing, that this sudden miraculous draught quite flabbergasted us. And what must have been the feelings of the poor Boers? They tried Naawpoort Nek: no exit. They knocked at the Golden Gate: it was locked. Then back they turned and ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... in Defence of the Miraculous Element in our Lord's Ministry on earth, both as against Rationalistic Impugners and certain Orthodox Defenders. Written under the pseudonym of JOHN PICKARD OWEN, with a Memoir by his supposed ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... immediate. It became gradually impossible for me to talk about subjects which had not some genuine connection with me, or to desire to hear others talk about them. The artificial, the merely miraculous, the event which had no inner meaning, no matter how large externally it might be, I did not care for. A little Greek mythological story was of more importance to me than a war which filled the newspapers. What, then, could I do with ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... in inviting himself. During dinner, conversation, of course, turned upon one all-engrossing subject, the war, and the Colonel proceeded to give us his experiences of former wars, including his adventures in the Crimea, and the miraculous escape ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... he could not believe. It seemed too securely intrenched in a great fame and an assured popularity. The very vastness of the attendance in and about the city brought with it a seeming guaranty of safety. And yet, to say truth, Ben-Hur's confidence rested most certainly upon the miraculous power of the Christ. Pondering the subject in the purely human view, that the master of such authority over life and death, used so frequently for the good of others, would not exert it in care of himself was simply as much past belief ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the shells bursting with a continuous roar all about them. It was the sight of a lifetime, and whenever they came past our men would spring out of the trenches and cheer as though mad. Time after time they made the trip and the escapes of some were miraculous. A few were hit, wagons smashed and horses and men killed or wounded, but not many, considering the number of chances ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... skin, to fetch back your goats from Phelleus."[481] Alas! he never listened to me and his madness for horses has shattered my fortune. But by dint of thinking the livelong night, I have discovered a road to salvation, both miraculous and divine. If he will but follow it, I shall be out of my trouble! First, however, he must be awakened, but let it be done as gently as possible. How shall I manage it? Phidippides! ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... undertook; unanimous for ransom,—high, but humanly possible. Markgraf Otto gets out on parole. But now, How raise such a ransom, our very jewels being sold? Old Johann von Buch again indicates ways and means,—miraculous old gentleman:—Markgraf Otto returns, money in hand; pays, and is solemnly discharged. The title of the sum I could give exact; but as none will in the least tell me what the value is, I ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... just to my own view, but I was not called upon to reduce them to practice. I had not to struggle with the consciousness of having been rescued, by some miraculous contingency, from imbruing my hands in the blood of her whom I adored; of having drawn upon myself suspicions of ingratitude and murder too deep to be ever effaced; of having bereft myself of love, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... partly averted, as though listening to something heard by him alone. He believed perhaps that he was listening to the voice of Fate again, and it may have been so, for already, for the third time, all his plans were changing to suit this new ally of his—this miraculous Fate which was shaping matters for him as he waited. Sylvia had started up-stairs like a fragrant whirlwind, but her flying feet halted at Leila's constrained voice from the drawing-room, and she spun around and came into the darkened room ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... then in its development age after age, down to our own day: from Peter to Gregory, from Gregory to Leo, and from Leo to Pius X., now gloriously reigning. We refer to the mystical (and one might almost say the miraculous) path trodden by the Popes, each Pontiff carrying in turn, and then handing on to his successor, the glorious torch of divine truth. Though clouds may gather and thunders may roll, and tempests may rage, and though the surrounding darkness may grow deeper and deeper, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... came there straight from the cabinet of Francis the First, at Fontainebleau. One picture of his, the Saint Anne—not the Saint Anne of the Louvre, but a mere cartoon now in London—revived for a moment a sort of appreciation more common in an earlier time, when good pictures had still seemed miraculous; and for two days a crowd of people of all qualities passed in naive excitement through the chamber where it hung, and gave Leonardo a taste of Cimabue's triumph. But his work was less with the saints than with the living women of Florence; for he lived still in the polished society ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... was evidently a small cache some one had placed near the trail for a short time, and had Billy been in his normal senses he would never have touched it. But the drink was still benumbing his brain, and quickly digging out the miraculous find he loaded it upon his ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... Antwerp, the most spacious church in the Netherlands, originated in a chapel built for a miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin. This chapel was reconstructed in 1124, when the canons of St. Michel, having ceded their church to the Praemonstratensians, removed hither. Two centuries later, the canons of St. Michel, animated by the prevailing spirit, determined on rebuilding ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... of the word Christ?—'Tis not, as generally supposed, the Son of the Creator of all things. Any just and perfect being is Christ. The crucifixion of Christ is nothing more than the crucifixion of the spirit, which all have to contend with before becoming perfect and righteous. The miraculous conception of Christ is merely a fabulous ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... on, J.W. could understand something which had been a closed book to him before. No one could stand by and see this abjectness of need, this helplessness, this pathetic faith which was almost fatalistic in the foreign doctor's miraculous powers—it recalled that beseeching cry in the New Testament story, "Lord, if thou wilt thou canst"—without being deeply, poignantly glad that there were such men as Joe Carbrook. It was all very well to talk at ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... that my old captain and sickly useless mate, and several others, fainted; and death stared us in the face on every side. All the swearers on board now began to call on the God of Heaven to assist them: and, sure enough, beyond our comprehension he did assist us, and in a miraculous manner delivered us! In the very height of our extremity the wind lulled for a few minutes; and, although the swell was high beyond expression, two men, who were expert swimmers, attempted to go to the buoy of the anchor, which we still saw on the water, at some distance, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... very sorry that this letter must necessarily be so short, as I should have great pleasure if there was time to state to you the particulars of our triumph, and of the effect which it has produced, and which is indeed little less than miraculous. It certainly exceeded my expectations; but it was so infinitely beyond what our opponents had thought possible, that they are beat down by it beyond all description. I hope you will hear all this more particularly from others. I write now only for the purpose of sending you the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... his wreckage, but leaving the merchantman providentially unharmed. Capt. Dansays, of H.M.S. the Fubbs yacht, who happened to be out for men at the time in the chops of the Channel, brought the news to England. Meeting with the trader a few days after her miraculous escape, he had boarded her and pressed nine of her crew. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... treated him; for I found that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most powerful magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, (*19) which, no doubt, served to stimulate them by their painful writhings and wrigglings to the most miraculous ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... measured; and, under the honourable leadership of Ruskin, we may all well do penance if we have failed "in the respect due to their great powers of thought, or in the admiration due to the far scope of their discovery." ("Queen of the Air", Preface, page vii. London, 1906.) With what miraculous mental energy and divine good fortune—as Romans said of their soldiers—did our men of curiosity face the apparently impenetrable mysteries of nature! And how natural it was that immense accessions of knowledge, unrelated to the spiritual facts of life, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... on their dialogue severely. "See how you all treat an event that is wonderful enough to convulse the National Academy of Science. I do not believe the psychic's hands have moved an inch, and yet, unless some one of you is false to his trust, the miraculous has happened—Are you there, 'Wilbur?'" I queried of the ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... credited to the earliest belief, but there certainly is nothing in harmony with Buddha's usual attitude in the extraordinary discourse called [A]kankheyya, wherein Buddha is represented as ascribing to monks miraculous powers only hinted at in a vague 'shaking of the earth' in more sober speech.[47] From the following let the 'Esoteric Buddhists' of to-day take comfort, for it shows at least that they share an ancient folly, although Buddha can scarcely be held responsible for ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... to the vessel, and stretched upon the poop in safety, and felt more truly thankful for this miraculous escape than words can tell. It is only after a deliverance of this kind one fully values or can properly appreciate the gift of life. My companions seemed downcast and full of sorrow for the sad misfortune which had so disastrously terminated our long-cherished ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... concomitant of the CHANGE OF FORM'? Does not Science here almost unwittingly verify the words of St. Paul:—"It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body"? There is nothing impossible or 'miraculous' in such a consummation, even according to modern material science,—it is merely the natural action of PURE radio- activity or that etherical composition for which we have no name, but which we have vaguely called the SOUL for ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... perceive that Christ's healing was not miraculous, but was simply a natural fulfilment of divine law—a law as operative in the world to-day as it was nineteen hundred years ago. "Divine Science is begotten of spirituality," she says, "since only the 'pure in heart' ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... prayer From the dry ground to spring, thy thirst to allay After the brunt of battel, can as easie Cause light again within thy eies to spring, Wherewith to serve him better then thou hast; And I perswade me so; why else this strength Miraculous yet remaining in those locks? His might continues in thee not for naught, Nor shall his wondrous gifts be ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton |
