This phrase is not a quotation at all. It is the title Quote Investigator gave its 20 April 2015 investigation ↗ into a whole family of sayings about chance, coincidence and God — a list of the article’s themes, not words anyone spoke. Blavatsky’s real link to the subject is a single sentence in The Secret Doctrine (1888), where she quotes “Chance is but the pseudonym of God (or Nature)…” and credits Coleridge; the saying is in fact Théophile Gautier’s, written in 1845.
“Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God” is not a quotation — it is the title of Quote Investigator's article of 20 April 2015. Helena Blavatsky never wrote it; in The Secret Doctrine (1888, vol. 1, p. 653) she quoted "Chance is but the pseudonym of God…" and credited Coleridge, an ascription first recorded in 1862 and never substantiated. The line is Théophile Gautier's, from La Croix de Berny (1845). — Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Le hasard, c’est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu, quand il ne veut pas signer.”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Helena Blavatsky. Use the credit shown above instead.
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In context
Evoking the world of Théophile Gautier — French poet, novelist and critic. Theme: "Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
What the words actually are
The phrase
Quote Origin: Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God
Published
Quote Investigator, 20 April 2015 — an article headline, not a quotation
Saying behind it
La Croix de Berny: Roman Steeple-Chase, Letter 3 (1845)
Blavatsky’s use
The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 653 (London, 1888) — quoted there, credited to Coleridge
Most certainly chance is “impossible.” There is no “chance” in Nature, wherein everything is mathematically co-ordinate and mutually related in its units. “Chance,” says Coleridge, “is but the pseudonym of God (or Nature), for those particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe openly with His sign manual.” Replace the word “God” by that of Karma and it will become an Eastern axiom.
The Secret Doctrine, 1888
This is the passage Blavatsky actually wrote — the only place in her work where the words of the headline overlap with hers. The string “Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God” appears nowhere in her writing; it is Quote Investigator’s own summary title for the tangle of sayings this sentence belongs to.
1888 — Helena Blavatsky quotes that English sentence in The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 653 ↗, attributing it to Coleridge and adding: “Replace the word ‘God’ by that of Karma and it will become an Eastern axiom.”
2015 — Quote Investigator maps the whole chain — Walpole, Chamfort, Gautier, De Quincey, Coleridge, Blavatsky, Anatole France, Doris Lessing, Einstein — under the headline “Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God” ↗. That headline is what later got circulated as a quotation.
The exact string on this page is the headline of a web article first published on 20 April 2015, so it is modern text and not a public-domain historical quotation. The period passages quoted here are a different matter: Gautier’s 1845 sentence, De Quincey’s 1847 rendering and Blavatsky’s 1888 Secret Doctrine are all long out of copyright in the United States.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Four wrong names, and one line that is real
This one is unusual. The string being passed around is not a misquotation of Blavatsky — it is not a quotation at all. Underneath it sits a genuine sentence, and that sentence has collected a remarkable run of wrong names.
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The headline itselfHelena Blavatsky Never wrote it
“Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God” is the title Quote Investigator ↗ put on its 2015 article — a list of the themes it examines. Blavatsky is one of a dozen names weighed inside it, alongside Walpole, Chamfort, Gautier, De Quincey, Coleridge, Anatole France, Doris Lessing and Einstein.
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The saying she quotedSamuel Taylor Coleridge Unsupported
Blavatsky credited Coleridge in The Secret Doctrine (1888). Quote Investigator ↗ reports that the Coleridge ascription first appears in Henry Southgate’s 1862 compilation Many Thoughts of Many Minds, p. 81, and that it has located no substantive support for it; Coleridge had died in 1834. English readers had already met the sentence in 1847 credited to nobody in particular.
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The French versionAnatole France Mixed up
From Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1923) onward — through Evan Esar’s dictionary (1949), F. P. Adams (1952) and the 1968 Bartlett’s — Gautier’s sentence was printed under Anatole France’s name, per Quote Investigator ↗. France did write a related but different line in Le Jardin d’Épicure: “Chance, in the last resort, is God.”
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The modern formAlbert Einstein Fabricated
“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous” was spoken by Charlotte Clemensen Taylor in a 1986 Associated Press story, credited to Doris Lessing in 1997, and only attached to Einstein in a book published in 2000. Quote Investigator ↗ notes it is absent from The Ultimate Quotable Einstein.
Quote sites scrape. When a researcher writes an article called “Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God” and fills it with famous names, a scraper that cannot tell a heading from a sentence will lift the heading and pin it to whichever name sits nearest. Blavatsky is a natural landing spot: she is a magnet for unsourced spiritual-sounding lines, and she really does appear in that article.
What she appears there for is worth knowing on its own. In The Secret Doctrine she uses the saying to argue something close to the opposite of what it sounds like — not that God hides behind coincidence, but that nothing is coincidental. “There is no ‘chance’ in Nature,” she writes, and then swaps the word: replace God with Karma, she says, and it becomes an Eastern axiom. She was borrowing a French epigram to make a point about universal law — and she got the borrowing wrong, crediting Coleridge for a line no one has shown Coleridge wrote.
Le hasard, c’est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu, quand il ne veut pas signer.
The full chain, in order
1777 Horace Walpole: “What is called chance is the instrument of Providence.” 1795 Chamfort plays with Providence as chance’s baptismal name. 1845 Gautier writes the pseudonym line. 1847 Alexis de Valon reprints it as the words of “someone”; De Quincey renders it in English as the words of “a Frenchman.”
1855–1856 It circulates anonymously in a footnote to Bacon’s Novum Organum and in an anthology of spare-moment reading. 1862 Southgate attaches Coleridge’s name. 1886–1888 The Coleridge credit spreads, and Blavatsky repeats it.
1923–1968 Reference works swap in Anatole France. 1976–1986 A separate American strand adds “miracle” and “anonymous,” ending in Charlotte Clemensen Taylor’s 1986 phrasing. 1997 Doris Lessing gets the credit. 2000 Einstein does. All of it is documented, with citations, at Quote Investigator ↗.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist and art critic, born at Tarbes in 1811 and died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1872. He was a central figure of French Romanticism and later a standard-bearer for l’art pour l’art, admired by Baudelaire and Flaubert. The line about chance comes from a piece of literary play: La Croix de Berny was a novel written in letters by four authors in rotation, and Gautier wrote the letters signed “Edgard de Meilhan” — which is part of why the sentence spent decades circulating with no name attached to it at all.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented instance of the saying
Théophile Gautier, Letter 3 (signed “Edgard de Meilhan”), in Mme. Émile de Girardin, Théophile Gautier, Jules Sandeau and Joseph Méry, La Croix de Berny: Roman Steeple-Chase (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1855; first published 1845), 28. Quoted in English by Thomas De Quincey, “The Nautico-Military Nun of Spain,” Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine 14 (May 1847): 328–29, and by H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1 (London: Theosophical Publishing Company, 1888), 653. The phrase “Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God” is the title of Quote Investigator’s article of 20 April 2015, not a quotation.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Chance, Coincidence, Miracles, Pseudonyms, and God’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/chance-coincidence-miracles-pseudonyms-and-god/