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

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

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.

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.

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.

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.