Archive

Quotes

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.

—Albert Einstein, 1930

To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.

—Plautus, c. 200 BC

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

—Dai Vernon, 1994

Men willingly believe what they wish.

—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BC

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching toward him and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

—Elias Canetti, 1960

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

—Marlene Dietrich, 1962

In the society of men, the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth, and beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.

—R.D. Laing, 1967

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.

—William Shakespeare, 1592

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

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952

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

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.

—Thomas Malory, c. 1470