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.

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.

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

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

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

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.

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.

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

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

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.

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