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

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

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.

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.

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

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

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

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

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

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

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.

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

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