#miracles

I don't believe in miracles because it's been a long time since we've had any. ↗

— Joseph Heller

#because #been #believe #had #i

And yet you see the weakness of external evidence-and outward miracles; they were not sufficient to make true believers, or to make the Israelites believe that Jesus was their promised Messiah. ↗

— Elias Hicks

#believers #external #israelites #jesus #make

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#ancient-greeks #atheism #boredom #brotherhood #cana

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#mysteries #necessarily

The truth of the matter was something much more subtle and tremendous than any plain physical miracle could ever be. But never mind that. The important thing was that, when I did see the stars (riotously darting in all directions according to the caprice of their own wild natures, yet in every movement confirming the law), the whole tangled horror that had tormented me finally presented itself to me in its truth and beautiful shape. And I knew that the first, blind stage of my childhood had ended. ↗

— Olaf Stapledon

#childhood #horror #law #miracles #stars

Don't believe in miracles - depend on them. ↗

— Laurence J. Peter

#depend #miracles #them

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#every #explain #hand #itself #life

Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles. ↗

— Samuel Smiles

#gift #him #hope #hopes #miracles

Christ's miracles were not the suspension of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. They were a reminder of what once was prior to the fall and a preview of what will eventually be a universal reality once again--a world of peace and justice, without death, disease, or conflict. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#death

What makes movies magical is not that incredible things happen in them. Incredible things happen in real life. No, what makes movies magical is they end right after the incredible thing happens. ↗

— Matteson Perry

#love #miracles #movies #relationships #love