Archive

Quotes

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

—Robertson Davies, 1985

On no other stage are the scenes shifted with a swiftness so like magic as on the great stage of history when once the hour strikes.

—Edward Bellamy, 1888

There are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.

—Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

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

—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939

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

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

—Robert Wilson, 1991

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

—Gaston Bachelard, 1960

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

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

—Derek Walcott, 1986

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

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

—Robert Southey, 1809

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

—Plato, c. 375 BC