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.
—Edward Bellamy, 1888Quotes
Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.
—Derek Walcott, 1986Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?
—Aristophanes, 423 BCGod is alive. Magic is afoot.
—Leonard Cohen, 1966Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
—Tom Robbins, 1976Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.
—Dai Vernon, 1994The 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.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.
—Plato, c. 375 BCNothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.
—Woody Allen, 1979A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.
—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.
—Thomas Malory, c. 1470In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.
—Thomas Szasz, 1970