Archive

Quotes

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

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

—Dai Vernon, 1994

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

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.

—William Shakespeare, 1592

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

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 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

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

—Italo Calvino, 1967

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.

—Demosthenes, 349 BC

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.

—Pablo Picasso, 1929

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

—Tom Robbins, 1976

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

—Robertson Davies, 1985