quotations about magic
There is magic, but you have to be the magician. You have to make the magic happen.
SIDNEY SHELDON
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
The old spelling MAGICK has been adopted throughout in order to distinguish the Science of the Magi from all its counterfeits.
ALEISTER CROWLEY
Magick Book IV
Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.
ROGER BACON
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
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
There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.
GENE WOLFE
The Claw of the Conciliator
Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take unrelenting and unabating practice.
NORA ROBERTS
Honest Illusions
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?
First rule of magic: Don't let anyone know your real name. Names have power.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Books of Magic: The Invisible Labyrinth
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
Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Little Country
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
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
A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The Light Fantastic
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
You either have the magic or you don't. There's no way you can work up to it.
FREDDY MERCURY
Circus Magazine, April 1975
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
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
When magic creates man it may aspire to control him.
R. CASTLETON
attributed, Day's Collacon
We can choose to function at a lower level of awareness and simply exist, caring for our possessions, eating, drinking, sleeping and managing in the world as pawns of the elements, or we can soar to new and higher levels of awareness allowing ourselves to transcend our environment and literally create a world of our own -- a world of real magic.
WAYNE W. DYER
Real Magic
There is nothing special in the world. Nothing magic. Just physics.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Diary