Best 3503 quotes in «magic quotes» category

...that witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits, or magic wands. Language upon a silver tongue affords enchantment enough.

That which you call magic is simply not allowing the world to be other than as you will it.

That will teach me to meddle with magic meant for kings! Norrell is right. Some magic is not meant for ordinary magicians. Presumably John Uskglass knew what to do with this horrible knowledge. I do not.

The air was full of salt and secrets.

The archetype of the witch is long overdue for celebration. Daughters, mothers, queens, virgins, wives, et al. derive meaning from their relation to another person. Witches, on the other hand, have power on their own terms. They have agency. They create. They praise. They commune with nature/ Spirit/God/dess/Choose-your-own-semantics, freely, and free of any mediator. But most importantly: they make things happen. The best definition of magic I’ve been able to come up with is “symbolic action with intent" — “action" being the operative word. Witches are midwives to metamorphosis. They are magical women, and they, quite literally, change the world.

The art of a Talismanist is to let you experience the Mysterious.

The best teacher you'll ever have is yourself. I'm not your teacher! I'm here only to show you the way towards what you already know, and also, show you a way to find out what you don't know but feel that it exists.

The bet comes to the place it knows, It does not miss its former path, No kind of magic holds it back It comes to those who give it water.

The best writing speaks when the heart whispers.

The big difference between my mom and me-- besides the fact that she is dead normal and I'm a magic-handling freak-- is that she's the real thing. She may have a slight problem seeing other people's points of view, but she's honest about it. She's a brass-bound bitch because she believes she knows best. I'm a brass-bound bitch because I don't want anyone getting close enough to find out what a whiny little knot of naked nerve endings I really am.

The boy was twelve, reveling in the strange dust-smelling murk of a New Orleans library, watching motes flash gold in a beam of sun. He loved the ceiling lights on chains and the table lamps with their green glass shades. The room was as beautiful as another world.

The Boy looked at him for a long time before responding. “Well, as long as you’re my friend, I’ll never ignore you,” he said with conviction. “I know what it’s like to be invisible to other people.

The cards give you images and symbols to focus your vague intentions and transform them into action. Your will is the magic. In other words, you are the magic. If you can create something in your heart and then act on it to make it happen, that is magic. Very simple, very straightforward—no witches, no spells, and no broomsticks.

The city had fallen, his parents had died, no shred of their old lives would be left by the shape-shifters, but there were still lords galloping around on horses that could uphold the old rules. The destruction and desperation had afforded Alistair a few moments of freedom to practice magic, but now he would go back to the life of poverty and misery and powerlessness that he had been born to.

The child might fear to be born and the mother to give birth, yet neither can choose otherwise when the time is come. Neither have I a choice. This is my only path.

The circus had been unlike anything I could ever imagine and I could not walk away. I wanted to be a part of the magic, create it and wield it with such skill that it looked effortless. I wanted to fly.

The cracks grew over him like vines, faster and faster. At first he bucked, whinnying metallic screeches. Then he gradually stilled, looking up at me with frightened glass eyes. He was growing. New, molten glass leeched out between his fissures, cooled and hardened only to crack again and make room for more liquid glass. The gears inside him moaned and creaked, and metal filings gathered at the base of his transparent stomach, only to fly up again and form more joints and chains and gears. Black smoke poured from his nostrils. Soon he was the size of a large dog, then a man, and still he grew and grew until he towered over my bed, as big as any plow horse I’d ever seen. Glass dripped down his flanks like sweat, a few rivulets still glowing with molten heat.

The colours of the world had faded; not even the sun could make it past the death cloud surrounding the two armies.

The corner of his mouth curled up. “Two mages, saving the world with a telephone. Not quite how the stories usually go.

The clouds behind the castle darkened and rolled, embracing the mountain and the white towers. And as the princess became more animated, the clouds rolled faster and faster. They twisted and deepened in color until a deafening crack sliced through the air.

The darkness offered no comfort. It only shrouded the true nature of that place. It hid the mocking and gloating eyes of the unseen. The cold, dank air chilled everything in the room and had long since seeped into the very marrow of the girl’s bones. It gave no relief and only aggravated the already sore skin around her wrists and ankles. The skin that had been rubbed raw by the manacles that bit into them. The manacles that kept her chained to the stone slab on which she was forced to lie. The girl did not know how long she had been there, nor where ‘there’ was. All that she knew was that she had been forsaken, and that there were only two ways she would ever see the outside of that room again, and neither of them were desirable.

The deepest of powers are often the most subtle. Something that most fail to realize... ☥

The declining age of learning and of mankind is marked, however, by the rise and rapid progress of the new Platonists. The school of Alexandria silenced those of Athens; and the ancient sects enrolled themselves under the banners of the more fashionable teachers, who recommended their system by the novelty of their method and the austerity of their manners. Several of these masters—Ammonius, Plotinus, Amelius, and Porphyry—were men of profound thought and intense application; but, by mistaking the true object of philosophy, their labors contributed much less to improve than to corrupt human understanding. The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both of these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in these deep but unsubstantial meditations, their minds were exposed to illusions of fancy. They flattered themselves that they possessed the secret of disengaging the soul from its corporeal prison, claimed a familiar intercourse withe dæmons and spirits; and, by a very singular revolution, converted the study of philosophy into that of magic. The ancient sages had derided the popular superstition; after disguising its extravagance by the this pretense of allegory, the disciples of Plotinus and Porphyry becomes its most zealous defenders. As they agreed with the Christians in a few mysterious points of faith, they attacked the remainder of their theological system with all the fury of civil war. The new Platonists would scarcely deserve a place in the history of science, but in that of the church the mention of them will very frequently occur.

The door opened. She looked in the mirror and suppressed a curse. Slipping in behind some tourists, that winged shadow was back again. Karou rose and made for the bathroom, where she took the note that Kishmish had come to deliver. Again it bore a single word. But this time the word was Please.

The dragon flew up and settled in the crook of Mina’s hood, and quickly became invisible again. “I don’t trust that thing,” Jared shot back. “Relax, I find him quite cute. Isn’t that right, Ander?” She held up a finger and felt the invisible dragon rub its face against her. “Great, you’ve named it, now you’re gonna want to keep it. But I’m telling you that thing better be house-trained.” He turned to the bookshelf and began to pull open the book to open the hidden exit door. Mina felt Ander leave her shoulder but didn’t let Jared know he was missing. She saw Constance’s teacup float mysteriously above Jared’s head. She clapped her hand over her mouth to contain the laughter. A second later the cup turned over, spilling lukewarm tea on Jared’s unsuspecting head. “Oh, it better not have just peed on me!” he screamed.

The Earth created magic to protect the magic that is the Earth.

The deeper magic always comes, in the intense sorcery of your inner silence.

The denizens of Feyland find the absence of magic to be quite funny. I mean no offense. ” “None taken.” “For example – In the Land Over the Crystal River (for that's how we refer to humans), there was once a man and a woman. And the man was in love with the woman, and wanted her for himself. But because he had no magic, he couldn't feel whether or not there was a “pull” towards her or not, so he didn't know whether she loved him or not. So what did he do?” “What?” “He had to ASK her!” Kian couldn't help laughing. “I don't get it!” “Ask her!” said Kian. “It's funny – because he didn't have magic.” His laughter grew louder and less controlled, tinkling like bells in the winter snow. “He had to ask her!” I realized that there were some cultural barriers Kian and I might never transcend.

The earth is a mosaic, and most fail to notice the gossamer tesserae floating down from the realm of the mind that form its images of beauty and horror.

The enduring rapture with magic and fable has always struck me as latently childish and somehow sexless (and thus also related to childlessness).

The evolutionists, piercing beneath the show of momentary stability, discovered, hidden in rudimentary organs, the discarded rubbish of the past. They detected the reptile under the lifted feathers of the bird, the lost terrestrial limbs dwindling beneath the blubber of the giant cetaceans. They saw life rushing outward from an unknown center, just as today the astronomer senses the galaxies fleeing into the infinity of darkness. As the spinning galactic clouds hurl stars and worlds across the night, so life, equally impelled by the centrifugal powers lurking in the germ cell, scatters the splintered radiance of consciousness and sends it prowling and contending through the thickets of the world.

The fight wasn’t over,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’d have won it.” Probably. “Right,” he said. “And something just flew past your window. It was oinking.

The first thing you need to know about magic is that everything you've been told about it is a lie.

The fact is I'm in a serious jam.

The first handkerchief was tied to a second, yellow handkerchief. He fed both through the window and kept pulling. Attached to it was a red one. Then a green one. “Go away, you goddamn clown!” Jenny ordered. But Benny the Clown continued to pull out handkerchief after handkerchief. Five…ten…fifteen…then… That’s not a handkerchief.

The Golden Horn of Griffo is finely wrought," Zenodotus said, tracing his finger along the curve of Telemach's treasure. "And the magic is in its making alone. Do you understand? There is no sorcery here..." “Magic is not the only power in this world,” the old mage said gently, handing the horn back to its royal owner. “Griffo made an instrument so perfect that even the dead must rise to hear its call. He made it with his hands, without spells or dragon-songs. I wish that I could do the same.

The goblins have been after me ever since I helped the Coven drive them out of Essex. (They were gobbling up drunk people in club bathrooms, and the Mage was worried about losing regional slang.) I think the goblin who successfully offs me gets to be king.

The greatest magicians know every single thought their audience is thinking. They know every thought their audience could think and might think and will think. They choose to either prove them right or trick them again and again. A mixture of the two, however, is perfect. There are no greater storytellers in the world then magicians. Who could make you question your reality as well as a magician can disappear and reappear in the seat beside you? Who else, other than a magician, could bring their final act into your dreams? Who could build a narrative and finish it with as big a finale than a magician?

The greatest magic of life is that all things in life can be changed!

The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and which must therefore be pacified lest they revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies

The Green Man had stepped into the fire smiling a warm, yet wry smile on his brown face of living wood. She had watched his tall body, which was covered in rich brocade made of leaves, with a crown of holly bright with scarlet berries on his head, disappear into the leaping flames as though they were a cozy blanket. He was gone in a flash as the tall flames engulfed him with a loud whoosh. Tears had coursed down her cheeks while others cheered the onset of the solstice and toasted the beginning of longer days.

The heartache of your brother and your best friend? I mean, Hayes if it's not your business, then whose business is it?

The Hedgehog I ran away and hid in the woods, I was an imprudent child, in My charmed hedgehog skin, I ran away And I was happy in my fairytale Forest, where no one came in, nor Could have penetrated my white magic, I was protected from any disturbances. I was feeding on blueberries, blackberries, wild Fruits, I ate, wept, and I was looking for The tender raspberry, which, magically, It could change my dreams in reality And could drive all my sadness away; Here in my divine forest I loved And I was much loved...

The heightened sanity of science and the sheer lunacy of magic. It's in the area where they overlap that we both are able to find... ecstasy!

The ground keeps changing." He gave her arm a gentle pinch. "Do you still think this is a dream?" "All dreams change," said Saffron. "That's how you know they're dreams." "So does reality," he replied. "That's how you know it's real.

The Healing spells on his chest were certainly earning their keep tonight. Sullivan got to his feet. The lack of noise from the courtyard indicated that his team had gotten all the mechanical men. “Thanks.” Toru just grunted a noncommittal response as he lifted the feed tray to check the condition of his borrowed machine gun. They didn’t see the final robot inside until it turned on its eye and illuminated the Iron Guard in blue light. Sullivan’s Spike reversed gravity, and the gigantic machine fell upward to hit the steel beams in the ceiling. Sullivan cut his Power and the robot dropped. It crashed hard into the floor where it lay twitching and kicking. The two of them riddled the mechanical man with bullets until the light died and it lay still in a spreading puddle of oil. “Normally, this would be the part where you thank me for returning the favor and saving your life.” “Yes. Normally… If we were court ladies instead of warriors,” Toru answered. “Shall we continue onward or do you wish to stop and discuss your feelings over tea?” Sullivan looked forward to the day that the two of them would be able to finish their fight. “Let’s go.

The hidden mist of forgotten truth is not for the mundane eye to see... ☥

The idea of magic being something that is separate from everyday life – known to the magicians but not the ordinary people – still slows down our recognition that it is here, now, of the Earth and Universe, all around us, and perhaps most essentially, in us.

The irony was that my real enemy had been there all along right in front of me. Smiling crookedly and convincing me we were friends. Trying to seduce me for the thrill of the chase. Chastising me for not trusting him that first year in the tower stairs at the Academy… Telling me he loved me. And then tossing me aside the second I jeopardized his dreams. I wasn’t what he had wanted all these years. I’d merely been a diversion in his pursuit of the crown. I never should have trusted a prince.

The King had advertised the old magic tea set, but for some reason, no one wanted sugar teeth that could gouge their eyes out.