The 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.

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

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

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

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.

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.

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Appearances often are deceiving.

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

To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.

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

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