"Miraculous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what he intended. No sooner had he led her back into the garden, but he ran back, and pulled out one of the children in the same manner; upon which she ordered them all to leave the school immediately, and they had not been out five minutes before the top of the house fell in. What a miraculous deliverance was here! How gracious! How good was God Almighty to save all these children from destruction, and to make use of such an instrument as a little sagacious animal to accomplish his divine will! I should have observed that, as soon as they were all in the garden, the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... Clan Macgregor wallowed. Other ships passed her, hooting as they went. Small craft began to loom up under her massive bows, and slide away from beneath her towering stern, always eluding Fate, as it seemed, by miraculous inches. And slower and ever slower moved the sea-mammoth, lugubriously trumpeting her distress and dismay at the plight in ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... magic, of course. To these poor foreigners, Catholics most of them, he did not suggest a moving picture actor on location; he suggested something serious and miraculous. He called to the crowd, stretching out his arms, and they gave way before him, and he walked into them, and when he got to the struggling group he held his arms over them, and that was all there was ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... time at this marvel. It's unusual enough anywhere, but aboard a California hooker it is little short of miraculous. The crew had all turned up, apparently, and a swarm of stevedores were hustling every sort of provisions, supplies, stock, spars, lines and canvas down into the hold. It was a rush job, and that mate was having his hands full. I didn't wonder at ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... terrible severity and arbitrary subversion. According to the present view, the relation of Christ to human redemption is as simple and rational as it is divinely appointed and perfectly fulfilled. Accredited with miraculous seals, presenting the most pathetic and inspiring motives, he reveals the truths and exemplifies the virtues which, when adopted, regenerate the springs of faith and character, rectify the lines of conduct, and change men from sinful and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... doubtful-curious look came into Thomas Jefferson's gray eyes, and he would not commit himself. Nevertheless, one point was safely established, and it was a point gained: the miraculous thing called conversion was beyond question real in Scrap's case. He turned to lead the way between the wagons. The lamps were lighted in the church and the people were filling the benches, while the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... miraculous escape did you very little good, Ready," observed Mrs. Seagrave, "if you got over it ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... various masculine inhabitants of Colina who had joyously proffered their assistance—welcoming anything that promised a little excitement after the wearing monotony of the winter—were still seeking Jose, who seemed to have vanished in some manner only to be explained as miraculous. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... 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 ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... and waking; and the mental tablet which a second before was covered so thickly with the transcripts of ideas and images, all far more vivid, or imagined to be so, than those of waking life, and all apprehended with a miraculous simultaneity by the mind, is converted into a tabula rasa in the twinkling of a half-opened eye. The wonder in Coleridge's case was that his brain retained the word-impressions sufficiently long to enable him to commit them, to the extent at least of some fifty ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... its invisible guides. Its pause above the Pyramids was brief—and almost before any of the observers had time to realise its departure it had floated away with an easy grace, silence and swiftness, miraculous to all who saw it vanish into space towards the Libyan desert and beyond. The Pyramids, even the Sphinx—lost interest for the time being, every eye being strained to watch the strange aerial visitant till ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... whiz through the doorway, and pull up "all standing" on the level stretch beyond, it was to draw a deep breath, and regard the successful performance of the feat as an escape from catastrophe which was nothing short of miraculous. The unevenness of the ground made it almost impossible to steer a straight course. A boy might be half-way down the path, when suddenly he felt himself beginning to turn round; an agonized look spread over his face; he made one frantic attempt to keep, as ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... indescribable reverence and joy filled my mind. In the purity of the morning light, it seemed the most lovely and wonderful thing I had ever beheld. And I, Richard Harden, consulting physician who had hitherto looked on life through a microscope, remained kneeling on my miraculous carpet, gazing upwards at the miraculous heavens. Acting on some strange impulse I stretched out my hands, and then I saw something which turned me into a ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... till they might go on shore. But there were so many chances against them in all these cases, such as storms, to overset and founder them; rains and cold, to benumb and perish their limbs; contrary winds, to keep them out and starve them; that it must have been next to miraculous ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... cross-examination had revealed, was Vinegar. In star-spangled tights they would give some real "acrobatics," then some "aerial globe dancing," equally star-spangled and even more up-side-down, and finally a bit of "miraculous walking" on champagne bottles set upright on the dining-table. This proposition was accepted without audible dissent, only the parson's wife not voting. Then the Californian spoke for a self-styled "young gent" ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... deity extended to all animal nature —the fish that swim in the rivers, the birds that fly in the air, and all the beasts which roam over the prairie were believed by the Pawnee to possess intelligence, knowledge, and power far beyond that of man. They were not, however, considered as gods; their miraculous attributes were given to them by their ruler, whose servants they were, and who often made them the medium of his communications to man. They were his messengers, his angels, and their powers were always used for good. Prayers were ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... one on which a man of ordinary 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 upright ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... that there may be saints that are not progressively virtuous. St. Mael was not of that kind. He was industrious. He evangelised the heathen. He erected two hundred and eighteen chapels and seventy-four abbeys. Indefatigable navigator of the faith, he drifted casually in the miraculous trough of stone from coast to coast and from island to island along the northern seas. At the age of eighty-four his high stature was bowed by his long labours, but his sinewy arms preserved their vigour and his rude eloquence had ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... two in the early morning this part of Fifth Avenue was unusually empty. There was not a pedestrian, and only a rare motor car. When one of the latter flashed by she shrank into the shadow of a great house, lest some eye of miraculous discernment should light on her. It seemed to her that all New York must be ready to read her secret, and be on the watch ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... started—because he had pledged himself—because he was carrying maps which might enable a "botteree" to win the war! Did he really care that much about this infernal capitalist war? So cried out the proletarian demons in the soul of Jimmie Higgins; and meantime the engine hammered and chugged, and a miraculous power in the depths of his subconsciousness moved the handle-bars so that he dodged shell-holes and ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... that Menelek himself was coming, and the pitch of excitement to which this announcement raised the troops was little short of miraculous—at least, to one of my race and nationality whose rulers for centuries had been but ordinary men, holding office at the will of the people ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... poet. mannie, diminutive of man. mells, mallets, mauls. menners, manners. middenheid, top of the dunghill. miracklous, miraculous, very drunk. mirk, darkness. mischanters, misfortunes. mischeef, mischief. morn's morn, to-morrow morning. mou, mouth. mows, jest; nae mows, no ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... cattle industry in the district with complete crippling, here was a man who could lead them to the raiders' hiding-place, could show them how the hanging they all so cordially desired could be brought about. It was stupendous. It was—yes, it was miraculous. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... sure, I'm a turtle, and you are a belle, And my language is not your fine lingo; But smile on me, tall one, and be my bright flame, You miraculous, wondrous flamingo! You blazingly beauteous flamingo! You turtle-absorbing ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... when the plentiful repast was set before her, "God hath, indeed, spread a table for us here in the wilderness;" so miraculous did this ample supply of delicious food seem in the eyes of this simple ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed the thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings towards the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... beat of the storm on the roof ceased with miraculous suddenness, leaving the outside world empty of sound save for the DRIP, DRIP, DRIP of eaves. Nobody ventured to fill in the pause that followed the stranger's last words, so in a ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... ancient story of the atoms; each part and each function endowing the same inorganic chemicals with their own spiritual, magnetic, and physical life-qualities, by what appears, to the uninitiated observer, a miraculous transmutation of matter, but which is, in reality, the evolution of organic form from inorganic materials, in obedience to the Divine law of spiritual progression. Who could stop with exact science? For, when we come to consider the apparent mysteries of life and growth ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... denied to the sculptor, who is necessitated to diminish the size of those things which are of least importance, in order to give dignity to the predominant figures. Raphael, in making the boat so small in the miraculous draught of fishes, is thought to have injudiciously applied this rule of antient sculpture; for he ought to have accomplished, by foreshortening, the same effect which he meant to produce by diminishing the size. It should, however, be observed, that great doubts are entertained if the ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... in round tops of exotic or wild aspect, stalks of sugar-cane, the graceful rigidity of palms, slender cups holding a drop of water, girandoles bearing little yellow lights which flicker in the passing breeze. And the miraculous feature of it all is that beneath those slender stalks live miniature plants and myriads of insects whose existence, seen at such close quarters, reveals all its mysteries to you. An ant, staggering like a woodcutter under his burden, drags a piece ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... he had made many important prophecies. This was a bond between him and Hello, who claimed the same extraordinary power, and had foretold all sorts of singular events. He performed miraculous cures; this appealed to Hello, who was suspicious of all rational Science and ready to believe any mortal thing. He could read everybody's characters in their faces. This was a pretext for the most barefaced flattery of Hello, his wife, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... no extraction, and a favorite aversion of the old gentleman's. "Journel himself? You think he is above it, he? You think Journel would not do such a thing? Ha! your simplicity, Honorine—your simplicity is incredible. It is miraculous. I tell you, I have known the Journels, from father to son, for—yes, for seventy-five years. Was not his grandfather the overseer on my father's plantation? I was not five years old when I began to know the Journels. And this fellow, I know him better than he knows himself. ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... Diverses Affections de Minerve (Paris, 1625) of the above-mentioned Audiguier, where the heroine is not the goddess, and all sorts of places and personages, mythological, classical, historic, and modern, compose a miraculous macedoine, Brasidas jostling Gracchus, and Chabrias living in the Faubourg Saint-Martin. This is a sort of story, but the greatest part of the volume as it lies before me is composed of Lettres Espagnoles, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... 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 of Pere Lemercier predicted ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... taken from him, and their home made desolate by the hand of death, Ruez, in the gentleness and tenderness of his heart, had been brought so low by grief, that it was almost miraculous that he had survived. The influence of that sorrow, as we have before observed, had never left him. His father's assiduous care and kindness, and Isabella's gentle and sisterly love for him, had in part healed the wound, ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... 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 ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... else was to blame—June not at all. He had taken her from her own life—had swerved her from the way to which God pointed when she was born. He had given her everything she wanted, had allowed her to do what she pleased and had let her think that, through his miraculous handling of her resources, she was doing it all herself. And the result was natural. For the past two years he had been harassed with debt, racked with worries, writhing this way and that, concerned only with the soul-tormenting catastrophe that had overtaken him. About all else he had grown careless. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... had he written an Ode to the Fall, would have produced quite such a miraculous poem as that ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... to the ship to which the Department had assigned me, and for which it doubtless had its reasons. So my classmate was ordered to her instead, and on board her was killed in the passage of the Mobile forts the following August. I can scarcely claim a miraculous escape, as it does not appear that I should have got in the way of the ball which finished him; but for him, poor fellow, who had not been long married, the commodore's refusal to me was a sentence ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... as not to vary so much as in a single tittle,—that every part of the country, every province, every district, men of every caste and of every religion, should all unite in expressing their sentiments in the very same words and in the very same phrases. I must fairly say it is a kind of miraculous concurrence, a miraculous gratitude. Mr. Hastings says that gratitude is lost in this part of the world. There it blooms and flourishes in a way not to be described. In proportion as you hear of the miseries and distresses of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... affairs was not unwelcome; for through the burlesque extravagances of Spontini, and notwithstanding his extraordinary eccentricities, which, however, I learned in time to understand, I could perceive the miraculous energy with which he pursued and attained an ideal of theatrical art such as in our ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... thought our troubles at an end. The carpenter and myself were in view of our habitations; our families had long given us over for lost, and on the news of our safety, our relatives look'd upon us as sons, husbands, and fathers, restor'd to them in a miraculous manner. Our being detain'd on board gave them great anxiety; we endeavour'd to console 'em as well as we could, being assured, that we had done nothing to offend their l——s; that if things were not carried on with that order and regularity which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... human in the sense in which all men are human. I took him as my model man, and regarded him as a moral and social reformer, who sought, by teaching the truth under a religious envelope, and practising the highest and purest morality, to meliorate the earthly condition of mankind; but I saw nothing miraculous in his conception or birth, nothing supernatural in his person or character, in his life or doctrine. He came to redeem the world, as does every great and good man, and deserved to be held in universal honor and esteem as one who remained firm to the truth amid every trial, and finally ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... exaggerated sensibility. The 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... in which we left the poor prisoner after Polemo had departed. She was neither a Christian, nor was she not. She was in the midway region of inquiry, which as surely takes time to pass over, except there be some almost miraculous interference, as it takes time to walk from place to place. You see a person coming towards you, and you say, impatiently, "Why don't you come faster?—why are you not here already?" Why?—because it ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... his dear friend! Dupont was instantly drawn from the water, and M. L'Heureux obtained for his unfortunate comrade again a place upon the raft. Those who had been most inveterate against him, touched at what Providence had done for him in so miraculous a manner, decided with one accord to allow him ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... 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 for some ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... explaining that they took their fair hire for their labor.[4] And after describing the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea—which Moses celebrates with a thanksgiving song in hexameter verse[5]—he apologizes for the strangeness of the narrative and its miraculous incidents. He explains that he has recounted every part of the history as he found it in the sacred books, and people are not to wonder "if such things happened, whether by God's will or by chance, to the men of old, who were free from the ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... as one of the great religions of the world, owes its rise to Jesus of Nazareth, in ancient Galilee. (See JESUS CHRIST.) By reverent disciples his ancestry was traced to the royal family of David, and his birth is ascribed by the church to the miraculous act of God. His life was spent, until the beginning of his public ministry, in humble circumstances as the son of a carpenter and his wife, Joseph and Mary. Of Joseph we hear nothing after the boyhood of Jesus, who followed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... anything material ventured to move at that forbidden speed, it would be so flattened that it would cease to exist. Indeed, matter is now hardly needed at all; its place has been taken by radio-activity, and by electrons which dart and whirl with such miraculous swiftness, that occasionally, for no known reason, they can skip from orbit to orbit without traversing the intervening positions—an evident proof of free-will in them. Or if solids should still seem to be material, there are astral ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... forces are already, in counter array, eager for the fray on the battle-field of Kuruchetra. The call to battle has already been blown upon the miraculous conchs of the leaders of both sides, who are seated in their chariots drawn by white horses. Over each one waves his personal ensign. Arjuna, the noblest of the five brave Pandava leaders, is a man of heroic traits of character; and yet within him breathes the tenderest sentiment of humanity. He ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger," certainly took part in the first celebration of the Nativity. And the Wise Men, who came afterwards with presents from the East, being led to Bethlehem by the appearance of the miraculous star, may also be regarded as taking part in the first celebration of the Nativity, for the name Epiphany (now used to commemorate the manifestation of the Saviour) did not come into use till long afterwards, and when it was first adopted among the Oriental Churches ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... told to this Fisherman by a certain Grand Old Voice, vague but sonorous, and voluble exceedingly, that if he would only make a complete change in his nets, and in the fashion of his fishing, miraculous draughts would become as common as minnows in a brook. This Voice visited our Fisherman often in his visions. And, behold, the Fisherman essayed the schemes suggested by the Voice. Not at first, it must be admitted, with supreme success, or entire satisfaction to the Fisherman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... lived on the prairie, because I had never seen her under a roof. Her yellow hair was burned to a ruddy thatch on her head; but her legs and arms, curiously enough, in spite of constant exposure to the sun, kept a miraculous whiteness which somehow made her seem more undressed than other girls who went scantily clad. The first time I stopped to talk to her, I was astonished at her soft voice and easy, gentle ways. The girls out there usually got rough and mannish after ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... it had refused to pour forth its murderous fire against the inhabitants of a town that was so friendly to the King. It was decidedly a royalist cannon; it had very plainly declared the side it meant to take; nothing but miraculous interference on its own part could have prevented its having been discharged on he people, when it stood ready pointed on the town, with the torch absolutely glimmering at the touch-hole. It had been brought to St. Florent by republican soldiers, dragged by republican horses, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... youth and child; and it was miraculous how each escaped being dashed to pieces against the rocks. Twice the boy went out of sight, and a suppressed shriek escaped the mother's lips; but twice he reappeared, and with great anxiety she followed his progress, as his tiny form was ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... roof was gilded; and yet the general effect of severe and noble simplicity triumphed over all the ornament. I should have taken it for a Roman temple, retaining nearly its pristine aspect; but Murray tells us that it was founded A. D. 342 by Pope Liberius, on the spot precisely marked out by a miraculous fall of snow, in the month of August, and it has undergone many alterations since his time. But it is very fine, and gives the beholder the idea of vastness, which seems harder to attain than anything else. On the right hand, approaching the high altar, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Gwendolen, summoning desperately her almost miraculous power of self-control, and speaking in a high hard tone. "Only a little less of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Copacabana, opposite the sacred islands, a great annual pageant is still staged every August. Although at present connected with a pious pilgrimage to the shrine of the miraculous image of the "Virgin of Copacabana," this vivid spectacle, the most celebrated fair in all South America, has its origin in the dim past. It comes after the maize is harvested and corresponds to our Thanksgiving festival. The scene is laid in the plaza in front of a large, bizarre ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... Chamants, &c. is filled by others of equal notoriety, and no doubt of equal 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 escapes, and we congratulate them; for in our ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Virgin occupied a niche in the Chapel wall, and before it burned the silver lamp of Repentigny which had been hung there two generations before, in memory of the miraculous call of Madelaine de Repentigny and her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... infernal powers out of such men as Zoroaster, Democritus, Empedocles, Apollonius, Virgil, Albertus Magnus, Merlin, and Paracelsus. In the sixth century Theophilus of Syracuse was said to have sold himself to the devil and to have been saved from damnation only by the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary, who visited hell and bore away the damnable compact. So far as his bond was concerned, Theophilus was said to have had eight successors ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... shrewd, intelligent eyes they were, when the expressive eyelids were duly tucked up out of the way. He commenced by reading over a part of the will and certain notes—which he appeared to have made in some miraculous fashion with his eyes shut—and then proceeded to review the evidence and the counsels' arguments for the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... much he could not paint it so as to please himself or the Jesuit. At last his pious zeal overcame all obstacles, and his picture was hung above the altar of the Immaculate in the convent of the Jesuits. It was very beautiful—the artists praised it, the monks believed that it had a miraculous power, and it was known as "La Purisima," or ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... plenary inspiration, the writer does not suppose to have superintended his own thoughts while engaged in the composition of these pages. He would deem it unwarrantable presumption to look for such miraculous effusion of the Spirit in the ordinary condition of the Church. But he confidently believes, that, to those who seek it in humble faith, such grace is given as may purify the dispositions of the heart, and thus guard it from all predilection ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... new cords, the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords which were on his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and fell from off his hands. And, for God's sake, do not give in to that miserable fancy that because these stories are what you call miraculous, therefore they have nothing to do with you—that Samson's strength came to him miraculously by God's Spirit, and yet yours comes to you a different way. The Bible is written to tell you how all that happens really happens—what all things really are; God is working among us always, but we ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Conceding them to be prodigies, they are far below those of Moses and Elijah. Christ did not work miracles in attestation of his power. He performed them in connection with his own words or expressions of other persons. When he gave miraculous power to his disciples, he simply did it as a means of beneficence. Miracles, in their true sense, are opposed to both the Jewish and Christian notions of them. Those of Christ are not the attestation and recommendation of his ministry; they are acts of that ministry; acts which ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... and our Edisons. In a rank of life just above the last, we find the fixed and immobile farmer caste, which only rarely blossoms out, under favourable circumstances on both sides, into a stray Cobbett or an almost miraculous miller Constable. The shopkeepers are a tribe of more varied interests and more diversified lives. An immense variety of brain elements are called into play by their diverse functions in diverse lines; and when we take them in ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... The miraculous agencies which had brought him and Major Waring and Mrs. Boulby to the farm, that exalted woman was relating to Mrs. Sumfit in another part ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wishes to impugn a doctrine which touches so closely the life of the Redeemer as the account of His miraculous conception, which appears, in our texts, in two books of the New Testament. If the tradition is as old as the Church, which is very doubtful, it must, from the nature of the case, rest on the unsupported assertion of Mary, the mother of Jesus; for ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... smile was bland and simple, beneath it lay a complicated maze of speculation; and the old man endeavored to read in the young man's face the answers to those questions which so greatly concerned him. Uriah Grey's eyesight was famous for two things: for its miraculous, almost chemical ability to detect the metals in ore and the gold in men. He sighed; but not so that David could hear. The magnate detected happiness where less than two weeks before he had read doubt, hesitation, and ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... to thirty feet high, and bound together by a long coarse grass; immediately beyond which we came upon a small lake of fresh water, where all the luxuriant growth of tropical vegetation was starting into life, and presenting an almost miraculous contrast to the barren sterility, that stamped an aspect of changeless desolation upon the rest of this inhospitable shore. Indeed, so far as our experience extended, upon the coasts, and within the interior of this in many respects ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... when we heard a whirr overhead, followed by a volley of mitrailleuse. High up in the blue, over the centre of the dead city, flew a German aeroplane; and all about it hundreds of white shrapnel tufts burst out in the summer sky like the miraculous snow-fall of Italian legend. Up and up they flew, on the trail of the Taube, and on flew the Taube, faster still, till quarry and pack were lost in mist, and the barking of the mitrailleuse died out. So we left Ypres to the death-silence in which ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... means "immortal,'' and prefers to explain it as "fragrant,'' a sense which is always suitable; cf. W. Leaf, Iliad (2nd ed.), on the phrase ambrosios upuos (ii. 18). If so, the word may be derived from the Semitic ambar (ambergris) to which Eastern nations attribute miraculous properties. W. H. Roscher thinks that both nectar and ambrosia were kinds of honey, in which case their power of conferring immortality would be due to the supposed healing and cleansing power of honey (see further NECTAR). ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the word, the best scene in the play. I am quite certain it was the most innocent: and the steady, quiet uprightness of the flame of the wax-candles, which the monks held over the roaring billows amid the storm of wind and rain, was really miraculous. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... be no pleasure like the pleasure derived from reading a good book. Emerson, expressing our debt to a book says: 'Let us not forget the genial, miraculous, we have known to proceed from a book. We go musing into the vaults of day and night; no constellation shines, no muse descends, the stars are white points, the roses brick-colored leaves; and frogs ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... clear case of puerperal (which he pronounced "puerp[e]rial") fever complicated with symptoms of cholera infantum, and ordered him to hospital at once! I loaned the patient my overcoat, which he sent back directly. His recovery seemed miraculous. In a week or two he returned from his delightful outing. This was in ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... great difficulty yet remains: How to explain the seemingly miraculous powers of the supposed engineers? Here recourse is had once more to the relative smallness of the planet. We have remarked that the force of gravity on Mars is only thirty-eight per cent of that on the earth. A steam-shovel driven by a certain horse-power ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... the religionist does not mean that they are beyond the reach of human appraisal or unrelated by their nature to the rest of our understanding. By the intuitive he does not mean the uncritical nor by the supersensuous the supernatural in the old and discredited sense of an arbitrary and miraculous revelation. Mysticism is not superstition, nor are the insights of the poet the whimsies of the mere impressionist. But he insists that the humanist, in his ordinary definition of experience, ignores or denies ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... of the Rosary is celebrated in their convent, the eighth day is devoted to thanksgiving to Mary for the victories won by the Spaniards over the Dutch in 1646 (see our VOL. XXXV), which were attributed by the people to her miraculous aid. That fiesta of eight days was apparently instituted in 1637, to celebrate the dissolution of Collado's new congregation in Filipinas (see Santa Cruz, ut supra, p. 4; and our ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... 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
... shadow of evidence, contradicted by the words of Papias himself, and absolutely incapable of proof. My object was the much more practical and direct one of ascertaining whether Papias affords any evidence with regard to our Gospels which could warrant our believing in the occurrence of miraculous events for which they are the principal testimony. Even if it could be proved, which it cannot be, that Papias actually had "written documents" before him, the cause of our Gospels would not be one jot advanced, ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... this central spirit, the only abiding Reality; and so, in turn, everything we know and see is but an envelope or clothing encasing something more vital which is invisible within. Just as books are the most miraculous things men can make, because a book "is the purest embodiment a Thought of man can have," so great men are the highest embodiment of Divine Thought visible to us here. Great men are, as it were, separate phrases, "inspired texts" of the great book of revelation, ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... very moment of triumph, just as the stubborn Southern line reeled back from the fence in isolated clusters, that the miraculous impunity of Waldron terminated, and he received his death wound. A quarter of an hour later Fitz Hugh found a sorrowful group of officers gazing from a little ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... frightened Liddon by his tremulous adventure towards the mere fringe of modernism became the declared enemy, the implacable foe, of the least of his clergy who questioned even the most questionable clauses of the creeds. He demanded of them all a categorical assent to the literal truth of the miraculous, in exactly the same sense in which physical facts are true. Every word of the creeds had to be uttered ex animo. "It is very hard to be a good Christian." Yes; but did Dr. Gore make it harder than it need be? There was something not very ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... a navvy working in Sussex came upon a round object like a cocoa-nut which he flung carelessly out of the way. It would soon have disappeared for ever. But by an almost miraculous chance a man of science passed that way and secured the object, easily discernible as a portion of a human skull. Now that, with all that appertains to it, the fragment has been investigated, the Sussex navvy's unconscious find is ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... though;—no,—that is from the "Fighting Gladiator," the "Jeune Heros combattant" of the Louvre;—there is the broad ring of the shield. From a cast, doubtless. [The separate casts of the "Gladiator's" arm look immense; but in its place the limb looks light, almost slender,—such is the perfection of that miraculous marble. I never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until I looked on that statue.]—Here is something very odd, to be sure. An Eden of all the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in her head when she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... think, Isabel, ought I to make a gift to the cross at Tunasan, or that at Matahong?" asks the unhappy father. "The cross at Tunasan grows, but that at Matahong perspires. Which do you call the more miraculous?" ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... bread. Flour, yeast, water, molasses, sunflower seeds, and oil aren't layered, they're thoroughly blended and then kneaded and worked together so that the yeast can interact with the other materials and bring about a miraculous chemistry that we call ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... these friends of ours, those whom we have named, and not less those whom we have silently remembered, we send our grateful acknowledgments. They have never allowed the interest we have long taken in the miraculous art of photography to slacken. Though not one of them may learn anything from this simple account we have given, they will perhaps allow that it has a certain value for less instructed readers, in consequence of its numerous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sort served with bread from the Emperor as the rest of the guests. Last of all, dinner being ended, and candles brought in (for by this time night was come), the Emperor calleth all his guests and noblemen by their names, in such sort that it seems miraculous that a prince, otherwise occupied in great matters of estate, should so well remember so many and sundry particular names. The Russians told our men that the reason thereof, as also of the bestowing of ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... exaggerated terms some commonplace intrigue of his young days in Italy, or more likely was a pure fiction based on romantic episodes he had read in novels, was accepted by Jean as authentic and vastly impressive. The effect was startling, amazing. In an instant he beheld, with all the miraculous clearness of a vision, there, standing between the tables, the queen of tragedy he adored; he saw the locks braided in antique fashion, the long gold pendants drooping from either ear, the bare arms and the white face with scarlet lips. And he ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... all very 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 ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... family; and, to say the truth, considering what a savage and stealthy tribe the London lodging-house keepers actually are, the honest kindness of this man and his household appeared to have been little less than miraculous. Evidently, too, she thought that Providence had brought me forward——a man somewhat connected with literature—at the critical juncture when she needed a negotiator with the booksellers; and, on my part, though little accustomed to regard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... shall be involved other difficulties as to the story of the Church. Mr. F. C. Conybeare, an Oxford scholar avowedly not in allegiance to the Christian Church, has characterized some of the reconstructions made by contemporary anti-Christian writers as more miraculous than the history they are ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... and venturesome boy, and soon began to develop a very decided taste for field sports of all kinds, becoming a ready pupil and prime favorite of Captain Martin Scott, widely known as the veritable Nimrod of those days. He was constantly running risks even in his plays, and had some miraculous escapes. But his fortitude and endurance of pain were very remarkable, and his great ambition was to bear himself under all ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... great a change took place in me that I concluded it was the immediate stroke of death, and all my children were informed of it and have been here to see me. I have since that revived in an almost miraculous manner, or I could not have written this. But I cannot expect it to continue. The will of the Lord be done. Adieu, till I meet you in a better world.—Your affectionate brother, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... the cottage chimney up the mountainside. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but gone forth to view the devastation of the slide and would shortly return to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens by which those who had known the family were made to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? The story has been told far and wide, and will forever be a legend of these mountains. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... oar! Whence it had come Heaven alone knew, for Heaven alone could have sent it. Leaning my chin lightly on it and propelling myself gently with my limbs, I had no difficulty in keeping afloat, and eventually reached the land in safety. The scene of my next miraculous rescue from drowning was a river. In diving into the water off a boat, I got my legs entangled in a thick undergrowth of weeds. Frantically struggling to get free and realising only too acutely the seriousness of my position, for my lungs were on the verge of bursting, I fervently solicited ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... more than a boy, and I have grown old in the House of Commons, and in the long space of years which have passed since then I have witnessed the most extraordinary transformation of the whole public life of this country, and I have witnessed an almost miraculous change in the position and the prospects of the Irish National Cause. When I came to this House, Irish Nationalist members, in a sense, were almost outcasts. Both the great British parties—there was no Labour ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... next year gives us 'La Recherche de l'absolu' (Search for the Absolute) and 'Le Pere Goriot' (Old Goriot) and during the next six there were no less than a dozen masterpieces. Such a decade of accomplishment is little short of miraculous, and the work was done under stress of anxieties that would have crushed any ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... that served no 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 ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... storm and hurricane he seasoned our little meal of potatoes. Some curious enough, as illustrating the precautionary habits of a peasantry, who, on land, experience many of the vicissitudes supposed peculiar to the sea; others too miraculous for easy credence, but yet vouched for by him with every affirmative of truth. He displayed all his powers of agreeability and amusement, but his tales fell on unwilling ears, and when our meal was over I started up and began to prepare ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... "that he has a handsome leg?" It is a far more serious claim that we have to put forward in behalf of Villon. Beside that of his contemporaries, his writing, so full of colour, so eloquent, so picturesque, stands out in an almost miraculous isolation. If only one or two of the chroniclers could have taken a leaf out of his book, history would have been a pastime, and the fifteenth century as present to our minds as the age of Charles Second. This gallows-bird was the one great writer of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... any particular object used for this purpose, as such object acts merely to focus the psychic power of the person, as has been said. Certainly the student should not fall into the error of supposing that the crystal, or similar object, has any miraculous or supernatural power whatsoever, it is simply an instrument, like the microscope or telescope, nothing more or less. But, at the same time, it must be admitted that there is much truth in the claim of certain crystal gazers, to ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... ends well, and certainly this was a most surprisingly happy ending to a very serious episode. We felt we must have refreshment, so camped and had a meal, congratulating ourselves on a really miraculous escape. If the sledge had gone down Meares and I must have been badly injured, if not killed outright. The dogs are wonderful, but have had a terrible shaking—three of them are passing blood and have more or less serious internal injuries. Many were held up by ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... intermingled. Of human things the understanding can judge, of divine things it cannot;—and thus, where the two are mixed together, its inability to judge of the one part makes it derange the proportions of both, and the judgment of the whole is vitiated. For example, the understanding examines a miraculous history; it judges truly of what I may call the human part of the case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,—of the fallibility of human testimony,—of the proneness of most minds to exaggeration,—and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness or the date of the ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... among the Indians of Guacheta in Colombia, it is said, a report once ran that the sun would impregnate one of their maidens, who should bear a child and yet remain a virgin. The chief had two daughters, and was very desirous that one of them should conceive in this miraculous manner. So every day he made them climb a hill to the east of his house in order to be touched by the first beams of the rising sun. His wishes were fulfilled, for one of the damsels conceived and after nine months gave birth to an emerald. So she wrapped it in cotton and placed it in ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... at arm's length, and at the same time is subject to visions and false memories, is swayed by the eloquence of private passion, and raises confidently to heaven the cry of the poor, the bereaved, and the distressed. Its daily bread, from the beginning, was hope for a miraculous change of scene, for prison-walls falling to the ground about it, for a heart inwardly comforted, and a shower of good things from ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... things which recalled the vulgar herd; moreover, a furiously literary temper with a mad devotion to Dante and Petrarch: Alfieri must have found in this love, which fate in the Pretender's person ordained to be platonic, the crowning characteristic of his present personality, the almost miraculous confirmation of his mystic relationship to the lover of Beatrice and the lover of Laura. And, in the knowledge of what he was to this poor, tormented young wife; in the consciousness of being the only ray of light in this close-shuttered prison—nay, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy events would be necessary. A whole nation, cured of the delirium of superstition, must be inaccessible to the impulse of fanaticism. Freed from the yoke of false doctrine, a whole people ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... of religion lies precisely in that which is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion in proportion as it demands more faith,—that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Waster, &c, ab. 1360, lately issued for the Roxburghe Club; Dr. Norman Moore's re-edition of The Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, from the unique MS. ab. 1425, which gives an account of the Founder, Rahere, and the miraculous cures wrought at the Hospital; The Craft of Nombrynge, with other of the earliest englisht Treatises on Arithmetic, edited byR. Steele, B.A.; and Miss Warren's two-text edition of The Dance of Death from the Ellesmere and ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various |
