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.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

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

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

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

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

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.

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

The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.

The Mughal’s nature is such that they demand miracles, but if a miracle were to be performed by some upright follower of our religion, they would say that it had been brought about by magic and sorcery. They would strike him down with spears or would stone him to death.

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.

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.