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

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

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

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

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

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.

The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

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.

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.