Daily Inspiration Quote by Jean Anouilh

Anouilh’s “real miracles” aren’t the incense-and-choir kind. They’re the hard, human kind: acts of nerve and clarity that look impossible only because most people talk themselves out of them. The line carries his signature tension between lofty ideals and the shabby machinery of everyday life. In Anouilh’s theatre, the world is full of compromise dressed up as necessity; calling courage and intelligence “God-given” is less piety than provocation. If these tools are already in your hands, then cowardice and stupidity aren’t just flaws - they’re choices.

The phrase “Men create” deliberately yanks wonder away from institutions. Miracles don’t arrive via kings, committees, or priests; they’re manufactured by individuals who decide to act. That’s a pointed stance from a playwright whose most famous work, Antigone, stages the collision between private conscience and public order. Creon’s rational statecraft and Antigone’s moral insistence both claim legitimacy; Anouilh keeps the audience trapped in the discomfort of choosing. In that light, “courage and intelligence” reads as a two-part antidote: bravery without thought becomes martyrdom-as-spectacle, while intelligence without bravery becomes elegant surrender.

There’s also a subtle modernist rebuke here. In the 20th century - war, occupation, collaboration, resistance - the supernatural starts to feel like a distraction, even a cover story. Anouilh reframes “miracle” as ethical agency under pressure. The subtext is bracingly democratic and quietly cruel: if change is possible, you don’t get to wait for it.