quotations about miracles
Miracles are like stakes supporting the young tree; when grown, trained, established, of what use are stakes or miracles?
ROBERT ASKWITH TAYLOR
The Bulwark, January 1874
Miracles are like winning the lottery, they always happen to other people.
YUNGSI ERNEST KIYAH
To Immigrate or To Live Happily Ever After?
Miracles don't occur when I want what I haven't got or pray for neon letters in the sky. I can only perceive the miraculous by appreciating and being open to each moment. I tend, as I think many of us do, to think that miracles are only those things that bring great joy, happiness, clarity, or relief. But miracles often, at first, seem a mixed blessing at best or even quite painful.
MARILYN LANCELOT
Switching Addictions
The narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
WALT WHITMAN
"Song of Myself", Leaves of Grass
A miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned.
MARK HELPRIN
Winter's Tale
For we cannot listen to those who maintain that the invisible God works no visible miracles; for even they believe that He made the world, which surely they will not deny to be visible. Whatever marvel happens in this world, it is certainly less marvelous than this whole world itself.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Growing up closes so many doors. The modern world doesn't allow for miracles, so we don't see them. It's a very precious gift, an open mind, but it's not passive. You've got to nurture it like a bed of roses; otherwise it will wither and die. Make sure you don't close off your mind to things you find strange. Sometimes they may be the only truth.
TIM LEBBON
Fears Unnamed
How grateful I am that the day of faith and the age of miracles are not past history but continue with us even now.
THOMAS S. MONSON
LDS Church News, January 3, 2018
Miracles, when considered in a general, abstract manner--that is, when divested of all circumstances, and supposed to occur as disconnected facts, to stand alone in history, to have no explanations or reasons in preceding events, and no influence on those which follow--are indeed open to great objection, as wanton and useless violations of nature's order; and it is accordingly against miracles, considered in this naked, general form, that the arguments of infidelity are chiefly urged. But it is great disingenuity to class under this head the miracles of Christianity. They are palpably different. They do not stand alone in history, but are most intimately incorporated with it. They were demanded by the state of the world which preceded them, and they have left deep traces on all subsequent ages. In fact, the history of the whole civilized world, since their alleged occurrence, has been swayed and colored by them, and is wholly inexplicable without them.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
We can become inspired to shape a higher, more ideal future, and when we do, miracles happen.
JAMES REDFIELD
The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision
In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in such parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue; which is of itself a strong presumption that in the infancy of letters, learning and science, or in the world's non-age, those who confided in miracles, as a proof of the divine mission of the first promulgators of revelation, were imposed upon by fictitious appearances instead of miracles.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Miracles are like sign language. To those blessed with an unexplainable cure, they are the means by which God communicates.
MAURA POSTON ZAGRANS
Miracles Every Day
Miracles don't happen. You make them happen. They're not wishes or dreams or candles on a cake.
JULIE ANNE PETERS
Far from Xanadu
Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
The Brothers Karamazov
You have to see the miracles for there to be miracles.
JANDY NELSON
I'll Give You the Sun
Miracles are like the credentials of an ambassador. They are proof of his authority. Because we accept the miracles of Jesus we can trust the truth of his teachings about God.
TIM DOWLEY
introduction, History of Christianity
Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
introduction, The Ethics of Spinoza
Miracles don't have to be huge and dramatic. They can be small and beautiful like flowers blooming in March, right after a snowfall. They can be a snowflake falling during a summer rain storm. It could be a lost cat finding refuge at your home.
STEPHEN J. NAPOLITANO
Bob Frost
The spirit which in the modern Church has sometimes sought to found Christian faith on signs and wonders appears to me to be almost as much one of unbelief as the spirit which outside the Church denies the miraculous altogether.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
However portentous a fact may be, or even supernatural--if such facts exist--however solemnly a miracle may be done in sight of all, the lightning of that fact, the thunderbolt of that miracle is quickly swallowed up in the ocean of life, whose surface, scarcely stirred by the brief convulsion, returns to the level of its habitual flow.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita