I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

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

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.

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.

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.

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 fear of the Lord is true wisdom, and he who hath it not can in no way penetrate the true secrets of magic.

Egypt was the mother of magicians.

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.

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.

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.