quotations about magic
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
When magic creates man it may aspire to control him.
R. CASTLETON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
First rule of magic: Don't let anyone know your real name. Names have power.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Books of Magic: The Invisible Labyrinth
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?
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
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
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
Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn't good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Sourcery
We do not need magic to change the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
J. K. ROWLING
speech to Harvard Alumni Association, 2008
It is not so much by any power inherent in himself that the magician works, as by the ductility of that material of gaping credulity upon which he operates.
ROBERT BELL
The Ladder of Gold
Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.
NORA ROBERTS
Charmed
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
It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician--but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
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
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