"Miraculous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thoughts, how many elevated sentiments, found vent in these conversations which the Emperor was accustomed to open by saying, "Come, Messieurs, I close the door of my cabinet." This was the signal, and it was truly miraculous to see his Majesty's aptitude in putting his genius in communication with these great intellects with such diversities ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... malignity of her enemies. She fell on her knees, and expressed her thanks to Heaven for the deliverance which the Almighty had granted her from her bloody persecutors; a deliverance, she said, no less miraculous than that which Daniel had received from the den of lions. This act of pious gratitude seems to have been the last circumstance in which she remembered any past hardships and injuries. With a prudence and magnanimity truly laudable, she buried all offences ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... feelings when we again set foot on the soil of France I will not attempt to describe. Our escape from the dangers that threatened us seemed almost miraculous. We had lost twenty days at the beginning of our voyage, and at its close the had been almost taken by an English squadron. Under these circumstances, how rapturously we inhaled the balmy, air of Provence! Such was our joy, that we were scarcely sensible of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... purpose, of the air in my own room which surrounded me, I replaced it by an equal quantity of Venetian air, that marine atmosphere, indescribable and peculiar as the atmosphere of the dreams which my imagination had secreted in the name of Venice; I could feel at work within me a miraculous disincarnation; it was at once accompanied by that vague desire to vomit which one feels when one has a very sore throat; and they had to put me to bed with a fever so persistent that the doctor not only assured my parents that a visit, that spring, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... actually a making or creating of light; and that, while life obtained all around its precincts, could yet be thoroughly void of life, A local darkness so profound as to admit no ray of light seems to have fallen for a time on Egypt, as one of the ten plagues; but the event was evidently miraculous; and no student of natural science is entitled to have recourse, in order to extricate himself out of a difficulty, to supposititious, unrecorded miracle. Creation cannot take place without miracle; but it would be a ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... my pardon for. I am your confessor, your spiritual adviser, and you must tell everything to me; and it is my duty to tell you that you place too much reliance upon miracles. This is not the first time you have spoken to me about miraculous interposition." ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... of the contemptuous familiarity with which I had 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 efforts ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... be found, that the same teacher publishes rules of temperance and at the same time lessons in love and wantonness; Xenophon, in the very bosom of Clinias, wrote against the Aristippic virtue. 'Tis not that there is any miraculous conversion in it that makes them thus wavering; 'tis that Solon represents himself, sometimes in his own person, and sometimes in that of a legislator; one while he speaks for the crowd, and another for himself; taking the free ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... prodigy was seen in the palace, which was marvellous in its result. It is related that the head of a boy, called Servius Tullius, as he lay asleep, blazed with fire in the presence of several spectators: that, on a great noise being made at so miraculous a phenomenon, the king and queen were awakened: and when one of the servants was bringing water to put out the flame, that he was kept back by the queen, and after the disturbance was quieted, that she forbade the boy to be disturbed ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... The head was of flint, a sort of ragged cone set sideways into the handle, so that one end of the head was like a sledge-hammer and the other like a pick. Grasping this neat weapon nearly half-way up the handle, he made miraculous play with it, now smashing with the hammer front, now tapping with the pick, now suddenly swinging it out to the full length of the long handle to reach and drop an elusive adversary. The weapon was both club ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... done by Christ on earth were miracles and were not occasioned by magic, was lost upon them. It would take a long time to make one of them understand that la Durlindana, the sword of Orlando, was a magical sword and not a miraculous one. And yet this distinction between miracle and magic was the pivot of the plot as it was presented to them. If they had felt themselves lifted out of their ordinary routine I do not think they would have done what they did after the curtain had fallen on the section of the story ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... which hardly another minister than Laski would have contemplated, it was one also which he would have hardly found another than Hakem to undertake and accomplish. The bravery of this man was all but miraculous, and was only rescued from madness by the extreme skill and address by which it was supported. In battle, he rushed on danger as a bold and delighted swimmer plunges in the waves, which to him are as innocuous as the breeze that is freshening them. Yet, when the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... natural science, in so far as this is built on the false hypotheses that matter is its own lawgiver, that law is founded on material con- 128:1 ditions, and that these are final and overrule the might of divine Mind. Good is natural and primitive. It is not 128:3 miraculous ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Him to all about her. Both Joseph and Mary marveled at the things that were spoken of the Child; seemingly they were not yet able to comprehend the majesty of Him who had come to them through so miraculous a conception and so ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... on the river bank, he noticed something moving on Spirit Island, the small island below the falls. Going out in a boat he found the two calves running about seeking a way to reach the east bank. They had evidently become homesick and started to swim across above the falls, and in some miraculous manner had been carried over the falls and landed safely on the island. Father rescued them, bringing them to shore ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... of the day of the miraculous apparition of our Lady of Guadalupe, the cathedral and village will be crowded with Indians from all parts of the country. A—— and Mr. B—— have driven over there; but, from all accounts, the crowd will be so great, that we are not tempted to accompany them. We have ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... and at once he appealed to me with the most perfect confidence. She failed to see what I did, for I shyly gave her my back, but the effect on David was miraculous; he signed to her to go, for he was engaged ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Hendrik had by this time reloaded, and were advancing to Swartboy's rescue; but they were met right in the teeth by the swift-flying Bushman, as he returned from his miraculous escape. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... fought all sorts of wars and have never yet felt defeat. Washington, Jackson, Taylor, Grant, all lived to enjoy, after successful war, a triumphant peace. "These Americans," said a witty Frenchman, "are either enormously lucky, or possessed of miraculous vitality. You rarely kill them in battle, and if you wound them their wounds are never mortal. Their history is but a chain of impossibilities easily accomplished. Their undertakings have been without preparation, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to be changed. A hunch-backed, ogre-like medicine-man who claimed to be of miraculous birth came to Ossossane. The pest was still raging, and he laid the blame for it at the door of the missionaries. According to him their prayers and litanies were charms and incantations; their pictures were evil okies. It was, he declared, by the influence of these and other agencies that they ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... on. Half an hour later M. Mauperin was helping his daughter out of the carriage at the Maricourt church-door. Renee went to the little side-chapel, where the marble altar stood on which was the little miraculous black wooden Virgin to which she had prayed with great awe as a child. She sat down on a bench which was always there and murmured a prayer. Her mother stood near her, looking at the church and not praying at all. Renee then got up and, without taking ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... disease, and the old blind Saunders and the young Jeanie were left to fight alone a hard battle with poverty and grief. The truly deserving are never entirely forsaken. God may afflict them with many trials, but he watches over them still, and often provides for their wants in a manner truly miraculous. Sympathizing friends gathered round the orphan girl in her hour of need, and obtained for her sufficient employment to enable her to support her old grandfather and herself, and provide for them ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... water; and, in his way to Libberton parish, passing through Braid's craigs, he was taken without any resistance, (having only a small ordinary sword) by some of the countrymen who were sent out to view the fields[144].—And here it is observable, that his former escape was no more miraculous than his present taking was fatal; for the least caution might have prevented him this inconveniency; but God who gave him the full experience of his turning all things to the good of them that love him, did thus, by his simplicity, prepare the way for his own glory, and ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... supposed to be exploded ideas of the past, the writer may recall an incident of his youth, while spending a few days in the convent of the Passionists, near the Coliseum at Rome. These worthy monks, after using a variety of arguments for his conversion, expressed the hope that a miraculous interposition would be vouchsafed to that end, and that the Virgin would manifest herself to him in a nocturnal vision. To this end they gave him a small brass medal, stamped with her image, to be worn at his neck, while they were to repeat a certain number of Aves and Paters, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... faith of GOD'S chosen people, and at last found fulfilment in the person of CHRIST, or in the circumstances which attended the establishment of His Kingdom! O that glorious retinue of types and shadows which heralded MESSIAH'S approach!... And then,—O the miraculous evidence which attested to the reality of His Divinity[238]! O the confirmation, (to those who needed it,) when He walked the water, and stilled the storm, and cast out devils by His word, and by one strong cry broke the gates of Death, and caused ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... in the Commonwealth of Rome, whereof the empire of the world was not any miraculous, but a natural (nay, I may safely say a necessary) consequence, are contained in that part of her discipline which was domestic, and in that which she exercises in her provinces or conquest. Of the latter I shall have better occasion to ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... stone is placed about the centre of the building, surrounded by a low wooden railing, containing the prints of two feet side by side, impressed upon its surface, as if a person had stopped short on a journey. These are said to be the miraculous prints of the Saviour's feet on the pavement of the road when He appeared to Peter; but like the copy of Michael Angelo's statue, this slab is a facsimile, the original stone being preserved among the relics of the neighbouring ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... are marveling at their almost miraculous escape from a terrible death, time will be taken to introduce the Outdoor Girls to those readers who have not yet met them and also to review briefly a few of the exciting and interesting adventures they have had up to the time of ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... used the rivers wherever they could and traveled by canoe, by flatboat, by keelboat, and by ark; and there grew up on the rivers a wild life which had its adventures and heroes like the Indian warfare. The most famous of the boatmen was Mike Fink, who drank hard and fought hard, and was a miraculous shot with his rifle. He was captain of a keelboat, which was the craft mostly used in ascending the river. The flatboats were broken up and sold as lumber when they had drifted down to their points of destination on the lower rivers, but the keelboat could make a return trip by ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... however, to see that every one seemed better satisfied with our situation than myself. It was about eight o'clock at night on the 2nd May, when we bore away under a reefed lug-foresail; and having divided the people into watches, and got the boat into a little order, we returned thanks to God for our miraculous preservation, and, in full confidence of His gracious support, I found my mind more at ease than it had been ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... called his doctors about him in great sorrow, and said to them, "If it be possible, heal my elephant." Then they gave the elephant a purge, which cost five hundred crowns, but it did not avail, and so the beast departed; and the Pope grieves much for his elephant, for it was indeed a miraculous beast, with a long, long, prodigious long nose; and when it saw the Pope it kneeled down before him and said, with a terrible ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Tissott, and after him by Hufeland, and also by the innumerable quacks and swindlers who trade in the "cure" of "secret diseases"—these latter, preying upon the fears of humanity, declare that every possible affliction in both sexes may result from masturbation, and recommend innumerable miraculous remedies for these often imaginary ills. Disorders and displacements of the uterus, ulcers and cancer, gastralgia and gastric spasms, jaundice, pains in the nose, are supposed in women to result from masturbation, as well as fluor albus, nymphomania, &c. There ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... days, engaged in feasting with those whom it went out to fight; and returned at last, innocuous and replete. In this fortunate though undignified ending we may read the fact that the natives on Laupepa's side are sometimes more wise than their advisers. Indeed, for our last twelve months of miraculous peace under what seem to be two rival kings, the credit is due first of all to Mataafa, and second to the half-heartedness, or the forbearance, or both, of the natives in the other camp. The voice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they countervail the advantages of shelter. Consumptive patients far gone have been known to be cured by long journeys, which have required them to be day and night in the open air. Sleep under the open heaven, even though the person be exposed to the various accidents of weather, has often proved a miraculous restorer after everything else had failed. But surely, if simple fresh air is so healing and preserving a thing, some means might be found to keep the air in a house just as pure and vigorous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... fine,' I returned, satirically. 'But will the Lord provide while we are trying the case? Shall we find miraculous sustenance? We live by moving on, sir. One or two nights in a place; sometimes, a little longer! No, no; 'tis necessary to forget, if not to forgive. You'll have to fortify your issue ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the camp unprotected by works in any shape cannot be seen from the enemy's batteries, and though often searched for by shells thrown at haphazard, our Cavalry, Artillery, and Army Service lines have frequently escaped being hit by a good fortune that seems almost miraculous. One day three successive shells fell and burst between the guns of a battery, but the artillerymen, standing by their harnessed horses, did not move or seem to take any notice of the vicious visitors. Such is the etiquette of a service ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... and would persuade me that my illness has been wholly owing to my omission of drinking the waters these two years past. I dare not contradict him, and must own he deserves (from the various surprising cures I have seen) the name given to him in this country of the miraculous man. Both his character and practice are so singular, I cannot forbear giving you some account of them. He will not permit his patients to have either surgeon or apothecary: he performs all the operations of the first with great dexterity; and whatever compounds ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... borders, where late flowers, purple and white and gold, still bloomed. She was planning all sorts of things for her garden, a row of double-cherry-trees to stand at the edges of the woods and be symbols of paradise in spring, with their deep upon deep of miraculous white. Little almond-trees, too, frail sprays of pink on a spring sky, and quince-trees that would show in autumn among ample foliage the pale gold of their softly-furred fruit. She wanted spring flowers to run back ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... birth of the Saviour. And the red-faced rustic congregation hung on the good man's voice as he spoke of the Infant brought forth in a manger, of the shining angels that appeared in mid-air to the shepherds, of the miraculous star that took its station in the sky, and of the wise men who came from afar and laid their gifts of frankincense and myrrh at the feet of the child. With the story every one was familiar, but on that day, and backed by the persuasive melody of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... at this period that I think I may fix the establishment of a system, since adopted by those by whom my fate has been determined, and which has made such a progress as will seem miraculous to persons who know not with what facility everything which favors the malignity of man is established. I will endeavor to explain in a few words what to me appeared visible in this profound and ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... ask me why I so persistently followed an investigation, a successful outcome of which anyone must recognise would be little short of miraculous, I can only say that I felt impelled to do so. Perhaps the impulse was due to my habit of testing patiently and thoroughly each new theory which impresses me as having any degree of probability, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... supernatural and miraculous, and at the same time immediate, revelation of God, cannot be reconciled with the idea of God eternal, always consistent with himself, omnipotent, omniscient, and most wise, by whose power, operative through ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... nineteenth-century nationalists, selected this moment of profound despair to publish an essay, entitled Europe, Its Condition and Prospects, which, burning with the passion of an inextinguishable faith, pierced the veil of the future and foreshadowed in an almost miraculous fashion the situation which faces Europe and England to-day. Nothing printed in this country since the war broke out expresses more clearly the real issues of the mighty conflict and the part our country is called to ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... "Your vinegar is miraculous! what brightness it gives to the lips, and how white one's teeth look. It is true ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "Then in a most miraculous way I found Master Ned. I had gone to sleep, worn out and discouraged, not caring much whether I got back or not, the way I felt then. Along toward morning I woke up. I thought I had heard something. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... alleged in explanation, scil.:—that the "Lives" are uncritical and romantic, that they abound in wild legends, chronological impossibilities and all sorts of incredible stories, and, finally, that miracles are multiplied till the miraculous becomes the ordinary, and that marvels are magnified till the narrative borders on the ludicrous. The Saint as he is sketched is sometimes a positively repulsive being—arrogant, venomous, and cruel; he demands two eyes or ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... ago an eminently Christian writer observed: 'The creationist theory does not necessitate the perpetual search after manifestations of miraculous power and perpetual "catastrophes." Creation is not a miraculous interference with the laws of nature, but the very institution of those laws. Law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, was the patristic ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... descended from other species. As Darwin says, Lamarck first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. He saw the difficulty of distinguishing between species and varieties, the almost perfect gradation of form in some groups, and the great similarity of domestic breeds of animals to such species. He believed ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... duchess, but happily none of them were severe, and he was on horseback on the following morning. It seemed miraculous to us all that he should so escape, for he rode ever ahead of us in the charges ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... play with fatal effect upon our troops below; upon Chancellorsville; and upon the crest occupied by Slocum, which it enfiladed, and as McLaws' batteries also enfiladed Slocum's line from the opposite side, it seems almost miraculous that he was able to hold it ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... as black as it likes, the spark is still there. However low you go there is light. Light in the vagabond, light in the mendicant, light in the thief, light in the street-walker. The deeper you go the more the miraculous light ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... slid until he came to a sudden stop as his outstretched hands grasped the lower bar. There he hung suspended a moment, while the audience sat thrilled, thinking it had been an accidental fall and a most miraculous escape. But Joe had planned it all out in advance, and knew it was safe, especially as the life net ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... always punctiliously printed by the Intelligencer. They ranged from disregarding the existence of the weed and carrying on ordinary life as though it presented no threat, through Holding the Correct Thought, praying daily for its miraculous disappearance, preferably at a simultaneous moment, to reorganizing the spiritual ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... when they had labored back up again, when they had sat smiling at each other with comfortable weariness, made her see the canyon not as a freak, but as the miraculous work of a stream rolling grains of sand for millions of years, till it had cut this Jovian intaglio. He seemed to have read—whether in books, or in paragraphs in mechanical magazines—a good deal about geology. He made it real. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... and avow my belief that they were enabled to forgive sin, and at the same time other miraculous powers were conferred on the 'Twelve.' 'Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases.' We know that they cast out devils, restored the blind, and raised the dead. Power to forgive ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... a strong position at Charasia, held by 13 regular regiments of the enemy and some 10,000 irregulars. The charges of Highlanders (the 72nd and 92nd), Gurkhas, and Punjabis proved to be irresistible, and drove the Afghans from two ridges in succession. This feat of arms, which bordered on the miraculous, served to reveal the feelings of the Ameer in a manner equally ludicrous and sinister. Sitting in the British camp, he watched the fight with great eagerness, then with growing concern, until he finally needed all his oriental composure for the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Strowd, Governor of Dover Castle, which sags that the Prince come thither the night before with his fleet; but that for the guns which we writ that we heard, it is only a mistake for thunder; and so far as to yesterday it is a miraculous thing that we all Friday, and Saturday and yesterday, did hear every where most plainly the guns go off, and yet at Deal and Dover to last night they did not hear one word of a fight, nor think they heard one gun. This, added to what ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... fortress, I also had the pleasure of enjoying an intimate acquaintance. Captain Ricketts has served many years on this coast, and was engaged with the Ashantees at the battle of Essamacow, where Sir Charles McCarthy lost his life. On that occasion he had a most miraculous escape, both in, and after the battle, particularly on his return to the coast, where he was obliged to follow the course of rivers, traverse the jungle and forests alone, to evade the murderous Ashantees. ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... 5. By a miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea, Israel escaped from Egyptian bondage; and sinners are saved by the ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... 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 ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... the Portuguese possessions were added to the already overgrown empire of Spain. Worse still, this annexation gave Philip what he wanted in the way of ships; for Portugal had more than Spain. The Great Armada was now expected to be formed against England, unless Elizabeth's miraculous diplomacy could once more get her clear of the fast-entangling coils. To add to the general confusion, this was also the year in which the Pope sent his picked Jesuits to England, and in which Elizabeth was carrying on her last great international flirtation with ugly, dissipated Francis ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... long and persistently educated, or to protect those who have ceased to believe in them from the pitfalls to which, as an alternative, they may be exposed amongst the numberless unscientific, quasi-miraculous, healing cults, or the equally pernicious nostrums of the spectacular advertising medicine vendor, both of whom reap golden harvests among the ranks of the so ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... realised all at once how the eyes of the whole world might be fixed upon a single ship, a few cannon, and some scores of men. The general of a great army leading tens of thousands into the clash of battle—that had been always within her comprehension; but this was almost miraculous, this sudden projection of one ship and her commander upon the canvas of fame. Philip had left her, unknown save to a few. With the nations turned to see, he had made a gallant and splendid fight, and now he was a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was ordered to attend Mass under the penalty of fine and imprisonment. Supposing he refused, because he did not believe that the priest had the miraculous power of converting bread and wine into something the very opposite. The priest insisted that he did possess this power, and that he was supported by the State in demanding that the Huguenot must come and worship his transubstantiation of bread into flesh and wine into blood. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... rites of their ancient and—according to the Arabs—detestable religion; of the marabouts, or sacred men, revered by the Mohammedans, who rode on white horses through the public ways, followed by adoring fanatics who sought to touch their garments and amulets, and demanded importunately miraculous blessings at their hands—the hedgehog's foot to protect their women in the peril of childbirth; the scroll, covered with verses of the Koran and enclosed in a sheaf of leather, that banishes ill dreams at night and stays the uncertain feet of the sleep-walker; the camel's skull that brings fruit ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... higher notions of religion—that he might make them live by faith, and not merely by sight; and obey him of their own hearty free will, and not merely from fear or wonder. And therefore, in these days, when miraculous appearances have, as far as we know, entirely ceased, yet God is not changed. He is still as near as ever to men; still caring for them, still teaching them; and his very stopping of all miracles, so far from being a sign of God's anger or neglect, is a part of his gracious ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... foreseen how Sekeletu would receive him, but to his great relief and satisfaction he found him actuated by the most kindly feelings. He found him, boy as he was, full of vague expectations of benefits, marvelous and miraculous, which the missionaries were to bring. It was Livingstone's first work to disabuse his mind of these expectations, and let him understand that his supreme object was to teach them the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. To a certain extent Sekeletu ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... grievance. He lived alone. At his work—which he obtained readily, for he was strong and efficient, and gave double value for his wages—he had no mates. Girls he had seen grow up from babyhood developed into beautiful creatures, with miraculous eyes, round limbs, and cheeks so red, so tender, that their soft ripeness haunted his dreams. Under cover and in secret he would watch them pass or at play with a throbbing heart and a passionate hunger for companionship, and discover himself ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Shelby said, and Benjamin Crane looked happily contemplative of the seances in the future when Madame would utilize this miraculous gift of ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... miraculous chance, one of the finest horticultural establishments in Paris had also, in this out-of-the-way passage, an exit not much used. The mysterious visitors of Saint Remy, in case of a surprise or unlooked-for renconter, were armed with a pretext ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... unfrequented parts of the vessel. We clung together as a matter of safety. And yet the most intimate acquaintances were estranged by a mutual feeling of distrust. Arsene Lupin was, now, anybody and everybody. Our excited imaginations attributed to him miraculous and unlimited power. We supposed him capable of assuming the most unexpected disguises; of being, by turns, the highly respectable Major Rawson or the noble Marquis de Raverdan, or even—for we no longer stopped with the accusing letter of R—or even such ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... later religious consciousness a denial of miracle seems to deny the divine Omnipotence. Jewish theology from the Rabbinic age sought to evade the difficulty by the mystic notion that all miracles were latent in ordered nature at the creation. And so the miraculous becomes interconnected with Providence as revealed in history. But the belief in special miracles recurs again and again in Judaism, and though discarded by most reformed theologies, must be admitted as a prevailing concept of the ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... with a cup of China tea, they watched while their debtor drank it. The feat was tremulous. Would he get through without spilling it all down his front, or choking? To those unaccustomed to his private life it was slightly miraculous. He put the cup down empty, tremblingly removed some yellow drops from the little white tuft below his lip, refit his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... could carry through such reforms at all in so old a body politic is remarkable: that they carried them through amid the events of his reign is almost miraculous. One affront after another was put on the Sultan, one blow after another was struck at his empire. Inspired by echoes of the French Revolution and by Napoleon's recognition of the rights of nationalities, first the Serbs and then the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... found awaiting him a gold throne encircled by kneeling elephants he could have been no more amazed. Not a word had been said about the purpose of his visit, and not a word to the warden; there was simply this miraculous opening of the barred door. St. George breathlessly footed across the rotunda and down the dim opposite hall. There was a mistake, that was evident; but for the moment St. George was going to propose no reform. Their steps echoed in the empty corridor that extended the entire length of the great ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... most curious and precious remains of antique art. In other respects, the immediate result was naturally enough a reaction, which not only reinstated pictures in the veneration of the people, but greatly increased their influence over the imagination; for it is at this time that we first hear of a miraculous picture. Among those who most strongly defended the use of sacred images in the churches, was St. John Damascene, one of the great lights of the Oriental Church. According to the Greek legend, he was condemned to lose his right hand, which was accordingly ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... to thank But me for that. I knew the way was long, But knew strength would be given. So I came. Soon the stars failed; the late moon faded too: I think my heart had sucked their beams from them To build more blue amid the murky night Its own miraculous day. From creeks and fields The fog climbed slowly, blotted out the road; And hid the signposts telling of the town; After a while rain fell, with sleet and snow. What did I care? Baby was snug and dry. Some day, when I was telling him of this, He would but hug me closer, hearing how The night ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... his bohio. Rosa and Evangelina, already frantic at the delay, heard him crying to them while he was still hidden in the woods, and knew that the worst had happened. There was little need for him to tell his story, for he was weaponless, stained, and bloody. He had crossed the hills on foot after a miraculous escape from that ravine of death. Of his companions he knew nothing whatever; the mention of Esteban's name caused him to beat his breast and cry aloud. He was weak and feverish, and his incoherent story of the midnight encounter ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... "Such a miraculous piece of happiness!" the young fellow ejaculated; and his joy was so evident that Cornelia could not bear to spoil it with any reluctances, or with half-way graciousness. She fell into his joyous mood, and as star to star vibrates ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the proceedings of a man are strictly miraculous. To plant corn, reap it, thresh it, grind it, and bake bread out of it, is exactly as much a miracle to the dog, as the multiplication of loaves, or turning water into wine, by Christ, is a miracle to us. But no law of nature was violated in either case. Reason in ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine, Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float, Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine, These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with sobs from the throat? Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation, Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past; ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... 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
... valley of Oberhasli to Brientz. This he would have deemed a miracle, and he did not come to ask the Creator to perform miracles, but to do something which he manifestly thought lay quite within the bounds of the natural and non-miraculous. A Protestant gentleman who was present at the time smiled at this recital. He had no faith in the priest's blessing; still, he deemed his prayer different in kind from a request to open a new river-cut, or to cause the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... so much painted as alive, and so well wrought and coloured by him, that among all the beautiful pictures that he painted while he lived, although they are all miraculous, it could well be called most rare. Wherefore Francia, half dead with terror at the beauty of the picture, which lay before his eyes challenging comparison with those by his own hand that he saw around him, felt all confounded, and ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... the father and son whose backs were turned to the girl and who were absorbed in contemplation of the show window. It was a gun store. The two Ivizans were examining the weapons exposed with ardent eyes and gestures of adoration, as if worshipping miraculous idols. The boy pressed his eager, Moorish face against the glass as if he would thrust it ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... man was my sole motive for entering the infected city, and subjecting my own life to the hazards from which my escape may almost be esteemed miraculous. Was not the end disproportioned to the means? Was there arrogance in believing my life a price too great to ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... have made 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
... and immediately the soldiers began to scramble out of the captured position. The second line of German trenches ran through a little wood on one border of which appeared the tower of a chateau which had so far escaped destruction in some miraculous way. ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... with equal want of skill and coolness by both parties, can form a just estimate of the danger incurred by one who ventured to encounter a duellist of the old school. Perfect coolness in the field, and a steadiness and accuracy (which to the unpractised appeared almost miraculous) in the use of the pistol, formed the characteristics of this class; and in addition to this there generally existed a kind of professional pride, which prompted the duellist, in default of any more malignant feeling, from motives ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... colonel's mind of the interruption to his stroke, followed by the sudden information that his veracity had been impeached, was miraculous and sudden as the slap on the side of the face that sent the butterfly hunter flying. The attack on Barstowe, who seemed to fight well, the cries, the shouts, the imprecations, the fact that half a dozen people, inmates and attendants, joined ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... ship and from the cliffs above, sweeping here, there, and everywhere, lighting up the fleet, the cliffs, the channel leading to the harbour, the lighthouse, everything, in fact, except our destroyers, which they all seemed to miss in the most miraculous way. Excited shouts came pealing across the water to us from the decks of the various ships, boatswains' whistles shrilled, order after order was hoarsely bellowed, and with a rattling crash of gun-fire a perfect tempest of projectiles was sent hurtling out to sea from the now thoroughly ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... 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 simple 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. 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 the "triumph" of Cimabue. But his work was less with the saints ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... of historical information, that the old lady with the profile sometimes lost patience with us. We laid ourselves open to the charge of preferring it even to the little chapel of Saint Hubert, which stands on the edge of the great terrace and has, over the portal, a wonderful sculpture of the miraculous hunt of that holy man. In the way of plastic art this elaborate scene is the gem of Amboise. It seemed to us that we had never been in a place where there are so many points of vantage to look down from. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... of these houses a woman came to the door bearing a lamp, shielding her face from its rays with her hands. Across the cropped grass the avenue represented to her a kind of black torrent, upon which, nevertheless, fled numerous miraculous figures upon bicycles. She did not know that the towering light at the corner was ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... fault. But at the time when we first heard of Wolfe's glorious deeds upon the Plains of Abraham—of that army marshalled in darkness and carried silently up the midnight river—of those rocks scaled by the intrepid leader and his troops—of that miraculous security of the enemy, of his present acceptance of our challenge to battle, and of his defeat on the open plain by the sheer valour of his conqueror—we were all intoxicated in England by the news. The whole nation rose up and felt itself the stronger for Wolfe's victory. Not merely ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... New Testament, was it not instituted (the seventh day being changed to the first day of the week) by the acts of Christ, having now perfected the spiritual creation of the new world? viz: by his resurrection and apparitions to his disciples on that day, and miraculous blessing and sanctifying of that day, by pouring forth the gifts of the Holy Ghost, Acts ii., all which were seconded with the apostolical practice in the primitive churches, Acts xx. 7, &c.; 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2. And do not the churches of Christ generally conclude upon these ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... the miraculous growth of the society were at first amusing; then the announcement of its housing excited loud laughter; but when its votaries attached the high sounding term Temple to their place of meeting, the clergy and all the devoutly inclined looked sober. In their view the word savored ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... service to the stability of the State. Of the Miscellaneous Works which were published after his death in five volumes, the most elaborate and the most provocative of disputation is A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church through several successive centuries (1749). Middleton was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... so very unreasonable, for, after all, you must have performed a sleight-of-hand trick which strikes me also as being little less than miraculous." ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... doings and characters of men, the workings of society, the fortunes of Italy, were watched and thought of with as deep an interest as the courses of the stars, and read in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion as in the miraculous page of Vergil; and no scholar ever read Vergil with such feeling—no astronomer ever watched the stars with more eager inquisitiveness. The whole man opens to the world around him; all affections and powers, soul and sense, diligently and thoughtfully directed and trained, with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... a prominent place in the legends. This hero of Argos submitted to serve a cruel tyrant, but, by prodigious labors (twelve in number), delivered men from dangerous beasts,—the Lernaean hydra, the Nemean lion, etc.,—and performed other miraculous services. Theseus, the national hero of Attica, cleared the roads of savage robbers, and delivered his country from bondage. Minos, the mythical legislator of Crete, cleared the sea of pirates, and founded a maritime state. Of the legendary stories, three of the most famous are ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... saint first landed on his voyage out of Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had some claim to be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to make so rough a passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not far short of the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his monkish underlings who had a cell there, that the islet owes its holy and beautiful name, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the candles, and making such a terrible smell of brimstone in the house. I was now all anxiety to get to bed, not because I was sleepy, but because it seemed to me as if going to bed would bring me nearer to the time of getting up, when I should be master of the miraculous power which had been promised me. I rang the bell; my servant was still out; it was unusual for him to be absent at so late an hour. I waited until the clock struck eleven, but he came not; and resolving to reprimand him in the morning, I retired to rest. Contrary ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... Dominic, and died in 1617. She was canonized by Clement X. According to the Peruvian legend, the Pope, when entreated to canonize her, absolutely refused, exclaiming, 'India y santa! asi como llueven rosas!' (India and saint! as much so as that it rains roses!') Whereupon, a miraculous shower of roses began to fall in the Vatican, and ceased not till the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... genius would have done something, could hardly have failed to have done something, that would have been picturesque. But such is the perversity of this unfortunate man's talent that he has erected a structure on the limestone crag, of almost miraculous hideousness. It is also in so-called Byzantine architecture. There is a dish-cover which serves as a dome, and a tower which would be comical if it were not irritating. It resembles the handle of a renaissance knife or fork stuck into a sheath and standing ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... that doth hedge a king. In fact, when he asked his mother about his real father, she hid the truth that his father was a rogue—perhaps to shield herself, for it is only a very great person who can tell the truth—and led him to believe his paternal parent was a god, and his birth miraculous. Now, let such an idea get into the head of the average freshman and what will be the result? A woman can tell a full-grown man that he is the greatest thing that ever happened, and it does no special harm, for the man knows better than to go ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... who smiled up at him from her deck-chair through an enhancing mystery of veils; and presently he found himself sitting beside her. He could not help trembling slightly at first, but he would have giving a great deal if, by some miraculous vision, Mary Kramer and other friends of his in Cranston could have seen him engaged in what he thought of as "conversational badinage" with ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... and sea, and the dashing of the waves and ice against the rocks, filled the travellers with sensations of awe and horror, so as almost to deprive them of the power of utterance. They stood overwhelmed with astonishment at their miraculous escape, and even the heathen Esquimaux expressed gratitude ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... shackles of the dead and done with. The contrapuntal formulas and prosaic melodic contours, to be used so magnificently by Handel, were never allowed to harden and fossilise in Purcell's music. Even where a phrase threatens us with the dry and commonplace, he gives it a miraculous twist, or adds a touch of harmony that transforms it from a dead into a living thing, from something prosaic into something poetic, rare and enchanting. Let me instance at once how he could do this in the smallest things. This is ordinary enough; it might be ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... doctrines, superstitions and idolatries, into the church, which were incompatible with a pure worship, and swept all who yielded to their impulse to the gulf of apostasy. Such were the veneration of the cross, and ascription to it of miraculous powers, the homage of relics, the invocation of saints, the conversion of religion into gorgeous ceremonies, the encouragement of celibacy, and the arrogation of the throne and prerogatives of God by civil and ecclesiastical ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... became deadly white, and apparently fixed to the ground, so that he was more like a marble statue than a human being. The prince had expected some surprise, but Rogojin evidently considered his visit an impossible and miraculous event. He stared with an expression almost of terror, and his lips twisted into ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... being entrapped between two ice-fields coming into contact with each other is one of the perils which the navigator has frequently to encounter in the northern seas; and fatal to his vessel and his life has the occurrence often been, while in a vast number of instances escape has seemed almost miraculous. ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... passage of the sun across the celestial equator. In ultra-Catholic countries the descent of the sacred fire is represented by some secretly arranged pyrotechny, and the credulous laity, believing they have witnessed a miraculous display, eagerly solicit Paschal candles lit from it; and in imitation of the ancient festivities in honor of the return of spring, all Catholic churches, and most of Protestant ones, are adorned with flowers, the bells ring out their merriest ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... H——, to hurry to his lawyer's with the recovered document, it was but for an hour. He returned, and did not quit her for several days. And in that time he became sensible of her astonishing, and, to him, it seemed miraculous, improvement in all that renders Mind the equal to Mind; miraculous, for he guessed not the Influence that makes miracles its commonplace. And now he listened attentively to her when she conversed; he read with her (though reading ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... longer silent in an affair on which depended the life of her dear child. That she had seen enough to believe he had mistaken the case of poor Biddy, and he could not justly blame her for recalling Doctor Fathom, whose prescription had operated in a miraculous manner. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... lectures against what he calls Infidelity, and glad that he has been working for years with the missionaries and evangelists of the United States. He is a man of small brain, badly balanced. He believes the Bible to be the word of God. He believes in the reality of heaven and hell. He believes in the miraculous. He is surrounded by the supernatural, and when a man throws away his reason, of course no one can tell what he will do. He is liable to become a devotee or an assassin, a saint or a murderer; he may die in a monastery or ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll |
