Archive

Quotes

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

—Woody Allen, 1979

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

—Italo Calvino, 1967

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.

—William Shakespeare, 1592

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 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

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

—Albert Camus, 1951

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

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

—Roald Dahl, 1990

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 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

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

—Robert Wilson, 1991

Appearances often are deceiving.

—Aesop, c. 550 BC