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Quotes

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

—Abraham the Jew, c. 1400

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.

—Robert Wilson, 1991

Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.

—Sophocles, c. 441 BC

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

—John Locke, 1689

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

—Thomas Szasz, 1970

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

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952

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

—Italo Calvino, 1967

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.

—Thomas Malory, c. 1470

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

—Marlene Dietrich, 1962

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

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

—Dai Vernon, 1994

To 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 BC

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.

—Elias Canetti, 1960