A Quote by Robert Green Ingersoll

We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Quote Topics

Belong Belongs Between Common Common Sense Counterfeit Difference Fact Falsehood Far Fiction Future Great Line Little Miracle Miracles Must Myth Natural Past Perjury Poetry Present Remember Same Sand Seas Sense

Quote Author

Robert Green Ingersoll
American - Lawyer
August 11, 1833 - July 21, 1899

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.

Mark Twain

As a child I became a confirmed believer in the ancient gods simply because as between the reality of fact and the reality f myth, I chose myth...Myth is the truth of fact, not fact the truth of myth.

Kathleen Raine

Mothers know the difference between a broth and a consommé. And the difference between damask and chintz. And the difference between vinyl and Naugahyde. And the difference between a house and a home. And the difference between a romantic and a stalker. And the difference between a rock and a hard place.

Patricia Marx

We create these walls between fact and fiction, but often the difference between the two is as little as that between a real name and a pseudonym. So I'm not sure about those walls - certainly not in the realm of visual arts.

Stuart Franklin

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.

C. S. Lewis

The difference between the Parthenon and the World Trade Center, between a French wine glass and a German beer mug, between Bach and John Philip Sousa, between Sophocles and Shakespeare, between a bicycle and a horse, though explicable by historical moment, necessity, and destiny, is before all a difference of imagination.

Guy Davenport

The difference between Pound and Whitman is not between the democrat who in deep distress could look hopefully toward the future and the fascist madly in love with the past. It is that between the woodsman and the woodcarver. It is that between the mystic harking back to his vision and the artist whose first allegiance is to his craft, and so to the reality it presents.

Babette Deutsch

It's the historian's job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality.

Norman Davies

As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.

Charles de Lint

The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy - how sad that I could not reinvent the trip as fiction.

Paul Theroux

There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.

Orison Swett Marden

I don't see much difference between prose poems and flash fiction (I've often taught the latter as the former), but then I also don't see that much difference between art and poetry.

Matthea Harvey

He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death.

George R. R. Martin

The decision must be made between Judaism and Christianity, between business and culture, between male and female, between the race and the individual, between unworhtiness and worth, between the earthly and the higher life, between negation and God-like. Mankind has the choice to make. There are only two poles, and there is no middle way.

Otto Weininger

In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.