The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.
—Dai Vernon, 1994Quotes
Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson, 1991Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?
—Aristophanes, 423 BCDisbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
—Tom Robbins, 1976Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
—Lucretius, c. 58 BCThe fear of the Lord is true wisdom, and he who hath it not can in no way penetrate the true secrets of magic.
—Abraham the Jew, c. 1400The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.
—Italo Calvino, 1967Egypt was the mother of magicians.
—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.
—Derek Walcott, 1986There 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, 1960Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.
—Woody Allen, 1979Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.
—Albert Einstein, 1930