Archive

Quotes

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.

—Thomas Malory, c. 1470

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

—Robert Wilson, 1991

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

—Saint Augustine, c. 400

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

—Tom Robbins, 1976

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

—Marlene Dietrich, 1962

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.

—Demosthenes, 349 BC

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

Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939

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 is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.

—Pablo Picasso, 1929

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

—Woody Allen, 1979

In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.

—Thomas Szasz, 1970

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

—Leonard Cohen, 1966