OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# A Course in Miracles/Workbook for Students/What Is a Miracle?
### What Is a Miracle?

A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time's limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.
A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one. And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways. A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified.
Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless. Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God, upon the universal altar to Creator and creation in the light of perfect purity and endless joy.
The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there.
Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality.
# A Course in Miracles/Workbook for Students/What Is Forgiveness?
### What Is Forgiveness?
#### Introduction to Lessons 221 - 230

Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.
An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed, and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?
An unforgiving thought does many things. In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.
Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.
Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God.
# A Course in Miracles/Workbook for Students/What Is Sin?

What is Sin?
Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where the truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all? To sense is not to know. And truth can be but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else.
The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. Its purpose is to strive. Yet can the goal of striving change. And now the body serves a different aim for striving. What it seeks for now is chosen by the aim the mind has taken as replacement for the goal of self-deception. Truth can be its aim as well as lies. The senses then will seek instead for witnesses to what is true.
Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts that are untrue. They are the "proof" that what has no reality is real. Sin "proves" God's Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; eternal life must die. And God Himself has lost the Son He loves, with but corruption to complete Himself, His Will forever overcome by death, love slain by hate, and peace to be no more.
A madman's dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game. The Son of God may play he has become a body, prey to evil and to guilt, with but a little life that ends in death. But all the while his Father shines on him, and loves him with an everlasting Love which his pretenses cannot change at all.
How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will you be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would you still hold return to Heaven back? How long, O holy Son of God, how long?
# A Course in Miracles/Workbook for Students/What Is the Second Coming?
### What Is the Second Coming?

Christ's Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes, and the return of sanity. It is a part of the condition that restores the never lost, and re-establishes what is forever and forever true. It is the invitation to God's Word to take illusion's place; the willingness to let forgiveness rest upon all things without exception and without reserve.
It is the all-inclusive nature of Christ's Second Coming that permits it to embrace the world and hold you safe within its gentle advent, which encompasses all living things with you. There is no end to the release the Second Coming brings, as God's creation must be limitless. Forgiveness lights the Second Coming's way, because it shines on everything as one. And thus is oneness recognized at last.
The Second Coming ends the lessons that the Holy Spirit teaches, making way for the Last Judgment, in which learning ends in one last summary that will extend beyond itself, and reaches up to God. The Second Coming is the time in which all minds are given to the hands of Christ, to be returned to spirit in the name of true creation and the Will of God.
The Second Coming is the one event in time which time itself can not affect. For every one who ever came to die, or yet will come or who is present now, is equally released from what he made. In this equality is Christ restored as one Identity, in which the Sons of God acknowledge that they all are one. And God the Father smiles upon His Son, His one creation and His only joy.
Pray that the Second Coming will be soon, but do not rest with that. It needs your eyes and ears and hands and feet. It needs your voice. And most of all it needs your willingness. Let us rejoice that we can do God's Will, and join together in its holy light. Behold, the Son of God is one in us, and we can reach our Father's Love through Him.
# A Course in Miracles/Workbook for Students/What Is the World?

What is the World?
The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well.
The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone.
The mechanisms of illusion have been born instead. And now they go to find what has been given them to seek. Their aim is to fulfill the purpose which the world was made to witness and make real. They see in its illusions but a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies. Yet everything that they report is but illusion which is kept apart from truth.
As sight was made to lead away from truth, it can be redirected. Sounds become the call for God, and all perception can be given a new purpose by the One Whom God appointed Savior to the world. Follow His light, and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.
Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete. And let us not attempt to change our function. We must save the world. For we who made it must behold it through the eyes of Christ, that what was made to die can be restored to everlasting life.
# A Course in Miracles/Workbook for Students/What Is Creation?
### What Is Creation?

Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only love creates, and only like itself. There was no time when all that it created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that it created suffers any loss. Forever and forever are God's Thoughts exactly as they were and as they are, unchanged through time and after time is done.
God's Thoughts are given all the power that their own Creator has. For He would add to love by its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create. What God has willed to be forever One will still be One when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.
Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will, beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness.
We are creation; we the Sons of God. We seem to be discrete, and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For love remains with all its Thoughts, its sureness being theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God's Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.
Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose Holiness His Own creation shares; Whose Holiness is still a part of us.
# A Course in Miracles/Workbook for Students/What Is the Last Judgment?
### What Is the Last Judgment?

Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God this gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.
You who believed that God's Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God's Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God's saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.
God's Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.
This is God's Final Judgment: "You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son."
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vendôme, Louis Joseph, Duc de

See also Louis Joseph, Duke of Vendôme on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VENDÔME, LOUIS JOSEPH, Duc de (1654–1712), marshal of France, was the son of Louis, 2nd duke of Vendôme, and the great-grandson of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrées. Entering the army at the age of eighteen he soon distinguished himself by his vigour and personal courage in the Dutch wars; and by 1688 he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-general. In the war of the Grand Alliance he rendered conspicuous service under Luxemburg at Steinkirk and under Catinat at Marsaglia, and in 1695 he was placed in command of the army operating in Catalonia where he took Barcelona. Soon afterwards he received the marshalate. In 1702, after the first unsuccessful campaign of Catinat and Villeroi, he was placed in command of the Franco-Spanish army in Italy (see Spanish Succession War). During three campaigns in that country he proved himself a worthy antagonist to Prince Eugene, whom at last he defeated at Cassano by his magnificent courage and command over his troops, converting the defeat that his indolent brother, the Grand Prior, had incurred into a glorious success. Next year, after holding his own as before, he was sent to Flanders to repair the disaster of Ramillies with the result that his successors Marsin and Philip of Orleans were totally defeated, while in the new sphere Vendôme was merely the mentor of the pious and unenterprising duke of Burgundy, and was unable to prevent the defeat of Oudenarde. He therefore retired in disgust to his estates, but it was not long before he was summoned to take command of the army of Philip in Spain, and there he won his last victories, crowning his work with the battle of Villaviciosa. Before the end of the war he died suddenly at Vinaros on the 11th of June 1712. Vendôme was one of the most remarkable soldiers in the history of the French army, and second only to Villars amongst the generals of France of the 18th century. He had, besides the skill and the fertile imagination of the true army leader, the brilliant courage of a soldier. But the real secret of his uniform success was his extraordinary influence over his men.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vengurla

See also Vengurla on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VENGURLA, a seaport on the west coast of India in Ratnagiri district, Bombay. Pop. (1901) 10,018. It was an early site of both Dutch and English factories, and was formerly the port for communication with the garrisons in the Southern Mahratta country. In the neighbourhood are the "Burnt Islands," with the Vengurla Rock lighthouse.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Venette, Jean de

See also Jean de Venette on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VENETTE, JEAN DE (c. 1307–c. 1370), French chronicler, was born at Venette, near Compiegne. He became prior of the Carmelite convent in the Place Maubert, Paris, in 1339, and was provincial of France from 1341 to 1366. In 1368 he was still living, but probably died within a year or two of that date. His Latin Chronicle, covering the years 1340 to 1368, was published by Achery (Spicilegium, vol. iii.) with the continuations of the chronicle of William of Nangis, though it has every claim to be considered as an independent work. During the years 1358 and 1359 the entries were contemporary with the events recorded; the earlier portion of the work, if it was begun as early as 1340, was subjected to revision later. Jean de Venette was a child of the people, and his sympathies were entirely with the peasants. His point of view is thus directly ​opposed to that of Froissart. His democratic sympathies led him to support Étienne Marcel, and though he returned to his allegiance to the kings of France he remained a severe critic, Jean de Venette also wrote a long French poem, La Vie des trois Maries, about 1347.
See Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye in Memoires de l’Académie, vols. viii. and xiii. ; Géraud and Déprez in Mélanges de l’ecole de Rome (1899), vol. xix. ; and A. Molinier, Les Sources de l’histoire de France (1904), tome iv.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Veneer

See also Veneer on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VENEER, a thin layer of wood, ivory, pearl or other material of high decorative value fixed to a poorer surface by glue or other adhesive to improve, its appearance. Wood veneers are exceedingly common: only the best woods are used and the layer may be as thin as paper—a circumstance due to improvements in the machinery for cutting the logs. The surface to which the veneer is to be attached is prepared perfectly smooth, a film of glue applied, and then the veneer laid on. It is now ironed perfectly flat, all superfluous glue being pressed out, and then allowed to dry in a press. The surface is now ready for polishing.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vener

See also Vener on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VENER [Wener or Väner; often written with the addition of the definite article, Venern], the largest lake in Sweden and the third largest in Europe. It has an area of 2149 sq. m.; a maximum length of 87 m.; an extreme breadth of 44 m.; a maximum depth of 292 ft.; and an altitude above sea-level of 144 ft., though the surface sometimes rises as much as 10 ft. or more, for the lake is the recipient of the waters of numerous streams, the largest being the Klar, which drains the forests of Vermland and Kopparberg to the north. It is drained by the Göta river southward to the Cattegat. It is divided into two basins by two peninsulas and a group of islands, the western half being known as Lake Dalbo. The northern shores are high, rocky and in part wooded, the southern open and low, though isolated hills occur, such as the Kinnekulle (988 ft.), an abrupt hill exhibiting a remarkable series of geological strata. Several islands fringe this shore; of these Leckö has a fine medieval castle. This lake and Lake Vetter contain degenerate species of marine fauna, left after the retreat of the sea in which both were formerly included.
By means of the Dalsland Canal from Köpmannabro, midway on the west shore of Dalbo, the lake, which is the scene of a busy traffic in timber, iron and agricultural produce, has communication with Fredrikshald in Norway; and it is traversed from Venersborg on the south to Sjötorp on the east by the Göta (q.v.) Canal route. The principal lake-ports are—on the north Karlstad (q.v.) and Kristinehamn, with iron-works and tobacco factory; on the east Mariestad, chief town of the district of Skaraborg, taking its name from the queen of Charles IX (1599–1611); on the south Lidköping, near the Kinnekulle, and Venersborg at the outflow of the Göta, ​with its old bridge and canal of the 17th century, a museum, and iron foundries, tanneries and match and paper factories.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Venerable

See also Venerable on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VENERABLE (Lat. venerabilis, worthy of reverence, venerari, to reverence, to worship, allied to Venus, love; the Indo-Germ. root is wen-, to desire, whence Eng. “win,” properly to struggle for, hence to gain), worthy of honour, respect and reverence, especially a term applied to dignined or honourable age. It is specifically used as a title of address given to archdeacons in the Anglican Church. It was naturally a term of respectful address from early times; thus St Augustine (Epist. 76, 88, 139) cites it of bishops, and Philip I. of France was styled venerabilis and venerandus (see Du Cange, Gloss. s.v. Venerabilitas). In the Roman Church the granting of the title “venerable” is the first step in the long process of the canonization of saints (see Canonization).
# A Comparison of the Life of Man

Published in Poems in divers humors (1598).
* "A Comparison of the Life of Man" in The Complete Poems of Richard Barnfield (ed.) by Alexander B. Grosart (1876).
* "A Comparison of the Life of Man" in Barnfield's Poems (ed.) by Edward Arber (1878).
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Menéndez y Pelayo, Marcelino

See also Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo on Wikipedia, and the disclaimer.
​MENÉNDEZ Y PELAYO, MARCELINO (1856-1912), Spanish scholar and critic (see 18.128), was at the time of his death working at the second edition of his Historia de los heterodoxos espanoles. He died at Santander May 19 1912, and bequeathed his valuable Library of 40,000 volumes to that town.
See A. Donoso, Menéndez y Pelayo y su Obra (1913) ; Bonilla y San Martin, Menéndez y Pelayo, 1856-1912 (1914); and A. G. de Amezua y Mayo, Nota bibliografica de Menéndez y Pelayo (1918).