Archive

Quotes

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

—Leonard Cohen, 1966

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

—Italo Calvino, 1967

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

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

—Plotinus, c. 255

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

—Thomas Szasz, 1970

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

—Derek Walcott, 1986

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

There are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.

—Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

—Woody Allen, 1979

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

—Gaston Bachelard, 1960

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

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952

Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?

—Aristophanes, 423 BC

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

—Marlene Dietrich, 1962