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.

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.

Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

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

Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

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

Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

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

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

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