Archive

Quotes

Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?

—Aristophanes, 423 BC

The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.

—Italo Calvino, 1967

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

—Roald Dahl, 1990

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

—Saint Augustine, c. 400

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

—Albert Camus, 1951

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

—Leonard Cohen, 1966

There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

—John Locke, 1689

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.

—Robert Wilson, 1991

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200

The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.

—Dai Vernon, 1994

A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

—Marlene Dietrich, 1962

Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.

—Sophocles, c. 441 BC