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Quotes

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

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.

—R.D. Laing, 1967

Appearances often are deceiving.

—Aesop, c. 550 BC

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.

—Fr. Antonio Monserrate, 1590

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

—Plotinus, c. 255

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

—Derek Walcott, 1986

Men willingly believe what they wish.

—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BC

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, 1888

Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.

—Sophocles, c. 441 BC

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.

—Roald Dahl, 1990

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

—Gaston Bachelard, 1960

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

—Dai Vernon, 1994