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 BCQuotes
The Mughal’s nature is such that they demand miracles, but if a miracle were to be performed by some upright follower of our religion, they would say that it had been brought about by magic and sorcery. They would strike him down with spears or would stone him to death.
—Fr. Antonio Monserrate, 1590Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.
—Demosthenes, 349 BCNothing from nothing ever yet was born.
—Lucretius, c. 58 BCOne thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCBid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
—William Shakespeare, 1592God is alive. Magic is afoot.
—Leonard Cohen, 1966Men willingly believe what they wish.
—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BCThere 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, 1965Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
—Pablo Picasso, 1929Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCIn 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, 1967Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962