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

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.

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

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