quotations about magic
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
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
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
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
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?
There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.
GENE WOLFE
The Claw of the Conciliator
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
Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Little Country
First rule of magic: Don't let anyone know your real name. Names have power.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Books of Magic: The Invisible Labyrinth
Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
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
The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
True magic is the art and science of changing states of mind at will.
DOUGLAS MONROE
The 21 Lessons of Merlyn
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
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
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
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
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?
Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Books of Magic: The Invisible Labyrinth
Ninety per cent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Night Watch