MAGIC QUOTES III

quotations about magic

When you're touched by magic, nothing's ever quite the same again. What really makes me sad is all those people who never have the chance to know that touch. They're too busy, or they just don't hold with make-believe, so they shut the door without really knowing it was there to be opened in the first place.

CHARLES DE LINT

What the Mouse Found and Other Stories

Tags: Charles de Lint


Magic is often lampooned, usually by those who know little about those who practice it, how it works, how its successes and failures can be explained, and how it relateds to religion or science. Apart from those Christians who associate magic with their devil, this denigration is a hangover from when magic was considered a primitive phase of human cultural evolution. According to this prejudice, a primitive belief in magic was followed by the growth of religions and then, quite recently, by progress towards proper scientific experimentation and rationality. In this context, saying that you work magic is like admitting to superstition.

GRAHAM HARVEY

What Do Pagans Believe?

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I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man's way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you've got an act.

STEVE MARTIN

Time Magazine, August 24, 1987

Tags: Steve Martin


Natural Magick is taken to be nothing else, but the chief power of all the natural Sciences; which therefore they call the top and perfection of Natural Philosophy, and which is indeed the active part of the same; which by the assistance of natural forces and faculties, through their mutual & opportune application, performs those things that are above Human Reason.

HEINRICH CORNELIUS AGRIPPA

The Vanity of Arts and Sciences

Tags: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa


True Magic is the greatest of all natural sciences, because it includes a knowledge of visible and invisible nature. It is not only a science but an art, because it cannot be learned out of books and must be acquired by practical experience.

L. W. DE LAURENCE

Great Book of Magical Art


You have to believe we are magic, nothin' can stand in our way
You have to believe we are magic, don't let your aim ever stray
And if all your hopes survive, destiny will arrive
I'll bring all your dreams alive, for you.

JOHN FARRAR

"Magic", Xanadu


Magic is not done, it's not performed. Like any performance art, it withers away to nothing if it's not presented in the grand style. Moving your feet around is not dancing, reading the lyrics is not singing, and pulling a rabbit out of a hat is not magic.

JOHN CASSIDY & MICHAEL STROUD

The Klutz Book of Magic


True magic is the art and science of changing states of mind at will.

DOUGLAS MONROE

The 21 Lessons of Merlyn


That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.

CHARLES DE LINT

"Ghosts of Wind and Shadow", Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection

Tags: Charles de Lint


The magician must expect the exposure of his tricks sooner or later, and see what it has required long months of study and time to perfect dissolved in an hour. The very best illusions of the best magicians of a few years ago are now the common property of traveling showmen at country fairs.

ALEXANDER HERRMANN

Cosmopolitan, December 1892


Natural Magick therefore is that, which considering well the strength and force of Natural and Celestial beings, and with great curiosity labouring to discover their affections, produces into open Act the hidden and concealed powers of Nature.

HEINRICH CORNELIUS AGRIPPA

The Vanity of Arts and Sciences

Tags: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa


Magic is the ancestor of technology, the ancestor of what we call applied science. Medicine springs from it. The individual medicine man or Big Medicine among the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent was a man who, by reason of special ability and training, was able to do things that the ordinary individual could not do in the way of controlling mysterious forces of nature. The word "medicine" was applied not merely to what we call medicine, but to rain making, cloud making, wind making, getting strength into the war party, harming their enemies, etc. When we want anything done in what we call the arts of technology, we go to a special individual, e.g., physician, engineer, carpenter, plumber, who has a special training. The medicine man was a man technically trained and able to control mysterious forces. Of course, the ordinary member of the tribe as a hunter, fisher, etc., had his training, and he could do the ordinary things in the ordinary way. But if he wanted anything special done, he went to the medicine man--the Shaman.

JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON

The Field of Philosophy

Tags: Joseph Alexander Leighton


Major magical artifacts are big business and valuable as hell. Even the express courier companies won't insure them for full value. They're just too likely to be stolen.

CAT ADAMS

The Eldritch Conspiracy

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Where magic is concerned, there is always an initial decision, an initial willingness to let it enter your life. If that is not there neither is magic.

NEIL GAIMAN

The Books of Magic: The Road to Nowhere

Tags: Neil Gaiman


Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore.

NEIL GAIMAN

The Books of Magic: The Invisible Labyrinth

Tags: Neil Gaiman


Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Essays

Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson


When magic creates man it may aspire to control him.

R. CASTLETON

attributed, Day's Collacon


Believe in your heart that you're meant to live a life full of passion, purpose, magic and miracles.

ROY T. BENNETT

The Light in the Heart


I don't know what holds the bloody world together. Unless it's Magic.

JOHN NEY RIEBER

The Books of Magic: Bindings


There is nothing special in the world. Nothing magic. Just physics.

CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Diary

Tags: Chuck Palahniuk