Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Miracles

"The highest part of the art of life is the expectation of miracles." - William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall

"What a man accomplishes in a day depends upon the way in which he approaches his tasks. When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm miracles can happen. When we do our work with a dynamic conquering spirit we get things done." - Arland Gilbert

"We are here for communion with God who is Love, the One in whose image and likeness each one of us is made. We find this communion by loving as God loves us... The miracle of all miracles is the ability to transform through love the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail of the routine drudgery of everyday existence into paradise; the ability to become ourselves, at each moment, a fresh paradise to those around us, thereby becoming “gods by grace” for those who are “gods” to us. Each person accepts or rejects communion with God in his or her own unique manner... The act of communion comes always as grace. For those who know it, it is not life’s meaning, purpose or goal. It is life itself: God with us making us what God is." - Thomas Hopko

"All the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen." - G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"Miracles are for those who have little faith." - Isaac Friedman, fully Jerome Isaac Friedman

"The children who go to bed hungry in a Harlem slum or a West Virginia mining town are not being deprived because no food can be found to give them; they are going to bed hungry because, despite all our miracles of invention and production, we have not yet found a way to make necessities of life available to all of our citizens - including those whose failure is not lack of personal industry or initiative, but only an unwise choice of parents." - James William Fulbright

"Mysteries are not necessarily miracles." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The civilization malaise, in a word, reflects the inability of a civilization directed to material improvement - higher incomes, better diets, miracles of medicine, triumphs of applied physics and chemistry - to satisfy the human spirit." - Robert Heilbroner, fully Robert Louis Heilbroner

"I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"Dreamers are the architects of greatness. Their brains have wrought all human miracles... only cowardice and lack of faith can keep the seeker from his chosen goal; but if his heart be strong and if he dream enough and dream it hard enough, he can attain, no matter where men failed before." - Herbert Kaufman

"The miracles of earth are the laws of heaven." -

"Where there is great love there are always miracles." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"Miracles are not proofs, but the necessary results, of revelation." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"The more we know of the fixed laws of nature, the more incredible do miracles become." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

"How can the divine Oneness be seen? In beautiful forms, breathtaking wonders, awe-inspiring miracles? The Tao is not obliged to present itself in this way. If you are willing to be lived by it, you will see it everywhere, even in the most ordinary things." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

"To the reverent scientist… the simplest features of the world about us are in themselves so awe-inspiring that there seems no need to seek new and greater miracles as evidences of God’s care." - Carl Wallace Miller

"Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature." -

"All things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any." -

"There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining eternal. This is the thought of identity – yours for you, whoever you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most spiritual and vaguest of earth’s dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the significant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because of the Me in the center), creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated and look’d upon, it expands over the whole earth, and spreads to the roof of heaven." -

"The world is full of wonders and miracles but man takes his little hand and covers his eyes and sees nothing." -

"The world is full of wonders and miracles but man takes his little hand and covers his eyes and sees nothing." - Baal Shem Tov, given name Yisroel ben Eliezer

"Miracles happen to those who believe in them. Otherwise, why does the Virgin Mary not appear to Lamaists, Mohammedans, or Hindus?" - Bernard Berenson

"God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, but His ordinary works convince it." - Francis Bacon

"There are no miracles for those that have no faith in them." - French Proverbs

"A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. that is the purpose and nature of miracles... Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle." - George Bernard Shaw

"Knowledge has is boundary line, where it abuts on ignorance; on the outside of that boundary line are ignorance and miracles; on the inside of it are science and no miracles." - Horace Mann

"The money, technology, and human energy now devoted to the military could perform miracles in cleaning up the earth we live on. But the cost of the arms race is not only the enormous waste of resources. There is a psychic cost - the creation of an atmosphere of fear all over the world." - Howard Zinn

"There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains." - James Bryant Conant

"Depend upon it, it is not the want of greater miracles but of the soul to perceive such as are allowed us still, that makes us push all the sanctities into the far spaces we cannot reach. The devout feel that wherever God’s hand is, there is miracle." - James Martineau

"Real miracles are created by men when they use their God-given courage and intelligence." - Jean Anouilh, fully Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh

"Admiration is a very short-lived passion that decays on growing familiar with its object unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by perpetual miracles rising up into its view." - Joseph Addison

"I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL

"Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all reported miracles grow." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Miracles are not the proofs, but the necessary results, of revelation." -

"All is miracle. The stupendous order of nature, the revolution of a hundred millions of worlds around a million of suns, the activity of light, the life of animals, all are grand and perpetual miracles." -

"Violence ever defeats its own ends. Where you cannot drive you can always persuade. A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles. There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you." - William Hazlitt

"The most astonishing thing about miracles is that they happen." -

"The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen." - Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron

"The moral principle inherent in evolution, that nothing can be gained in this world without an effort; the ethical principle inherent in evolution is that only the best has the right to survive; the spiritual principle in evolution is the evidence of beauty, of order, and of design in the daily myriad of miracles to which we owe our existence. " - Henry Fairfield Osborn

"The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation… Repentance is an absolute, spiritual decision made in truthfulness. Its motivations are remorse for the past and responsibility for the future." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"He who proclaims the existence of the Infinite, and none can avoid it — accumulates in that affirmation more of the supernatural than is to be found in all the miracles of all the religions; for the notion of the Infinite presents that double character that forces itself upon us and yet is incomprehensible. When this notion seizes upon our understanding we can but kneel ... I see everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world; through it the supernatural is at the bottom of every heart. The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of the infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah, or Jesus; and on the pavement of these temples, men will be seen kneeling, prostrated, annihilated by the thought of the Infinite." - Louis Pasteur

"Love is a flower that grows in any soil, works its sweet miracles undaunted by autumn frost or winter snow, blooming fair and fragrant all the year, and blessing those who give and those who receive." - Louisa May Alcott

"Love works in miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy." - Marguerite De Valois, or Margaret of Valois, Marguerite de France

"We must, however, not deceive ourselves – this naive belief does not exist nowadays even among common people, and it cannot be revived by backwards oriented (rückwärts gerichtete) considerations and measures. Since to believe means to consider something true (fürwahrhalten), and the growing knowledge of the nature, proceeding forwards incessantly along incontestably reliable path, had led to the result that for a man educated at least slightly in natural sciences it is entirely (schlechterdings) impossible to consider as reliable many reports about extraordinary events contradicting natural laws, about miracles (Naturwunder) which used to be generally accepted as essential support and confirmation (Bekräftigung) of religious teachings and which people considered formerly as facts without critical examination (Bedenken). The one who takes his religion really seriously and cannot tolerate that it gets into contradiction with his knowledge (Wissen), is facing the question of conscience whether he can still honestly consider himself to be a member of religious community which in its confession (Bekenntnis) contains belief in miracles. For a certain period of time many a believer could find a kind of reconciliation in an effort to take the middle way and to restrict his belief to acceptance (Anerkennung) of few miracles, considered to be extremely important. However, such a position is not tenable for a long time. The belief in miracles must retreat step by step before relentlessly and reliably progressing science and we cannot doubt that sooner or later it must vanish completely (zu Ende gehen muss). " - Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

"God's nature as the ocean of love cannot be grasped by the mind. God has to be known through love and not through the intellectual search after miracles. That is the reason why, for those who are closest and dearest to me, I do not perform miracles. I would rather have no following than use miracles for convincing others of my Divinity." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani