Archive

Quotes

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

—Robertson Davies, 1985

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

—Leonard Cohen, 1966

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

—Robert Southey, 1809

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

—Italo Calvino, 1967

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

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

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

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.

—Edward Bellamy, 1888

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

—Robert Wilson, 1991

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

—Woody Allen, 1979

Men willingly believe what they wish.

—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BC

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

—Sophocles, c. 441 BC