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

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.

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

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

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

The fact is certain because it is impossible.