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.

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

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

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.

Egypt was the mother of magicians.

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

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

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

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

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

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.

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