Archive

Quotes

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

—Robert Wilson, 1991

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

—Derek Walcott, 1986

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

—Thomas Szasz, 1970

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

—Italo Calvino, 1967

Men willingly believe what they wish.

—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BC

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

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200

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

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Egypt was the mother of magicians.

—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

—Robertson Davies, 1985

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

—Leonard Cohen, 1966