quotations about magic
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
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
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
ROALD DAHL
The Minpins
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
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 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?
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
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
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
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
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
Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Books of Magic: The Invisible Labyrinth
Children see magic because they look for it.
CHRISTOPHER MOORE
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff
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
Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
There is nothing special in the world. Nothing magic. Just physics.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Diary
I don't know what holds the bloody world together. Unless it's Magic.
JOHN NEY RIEBER
The Books of Magic: Bindings
It always seemed to me they're sort of alike ... magic and music. Spells and tunes. For one thing, you have to get them just exactly right.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Tales from Earthsea
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
True magic is the art and science of changing states of mind at will.
DOUGLAS MONROE
The 21 Lessons of Merlyn