God is alive. Magic is afoot.
—Leonard Cohen, 1966Quotes
Appearances often are deceiving.
—Aesop, c. 550 BCEgypt was the mother of magicians.
—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCAll things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.
—Plotinus, c. 255There 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, 1965Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.
—Italo Calvino, 1967The 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.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCIn the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.
—Thomas Szasz, 1970Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.
—Dai Vernon, 1994