The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.
—Italo Calvino, 1967Quotes
Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.
—Derek Walcott, 1986Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.
—Robertson Davies, 1985Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
—Saint Augustine, c. 400Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939Men willingly believe what they wish.
—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BCThe 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, 1878The fact is certain because it is impossible.
—Tertullian, c. 200Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
—Pablo Picasso, 1929To 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 BCThere 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, 1960There 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, 1965Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962