Archive

Quotes

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

—Robert Southey, 1809

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

One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

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

—Aristophanes, 423 BC

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

Egypt was the mother of magicians.

—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200

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

—Dai Vernon, 1994

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

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

—Plotinus, c. 255

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

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

—Leonard Cohen, 1966

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

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952

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

—Robert Wilson, 1991