Charles Churchill Quotes

Not at all do I trust augurs, who enrich the ears of others, so that they can enrich their own homes with gold.

For me, there is very little difference between magic and art. To me, the ultimate act of magic is to create something from nothing: It's like when the stage magician pulls the rabbit from the hat.

Nancy is superstitious.

I had a great grandmother who believed in so many strange superstitions. She used to tell the future from the things that catch on to the hem of your skirt when you've been sewing, and different colored threads would mean different things... Of course, all that influenced me quite a lot as a child.

The 18th century, which is usually held to be the most "materialistic" of epochs, was, in fact, a most "spiritualistic" one; in which ghosts, demons, quacks, philosophers' stones, enchanters' wands, mysteries and mummeries, were as fashionable—as they will probably be again some day.

I had my fortune told once at the Great Wall of China. A withered old lady told my fortune - but it was probably one of these things that are set up to rip off tourists. She told me a couple of vague things that came true, but she was probably just lucky. I would never do it again.

MAGIC, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.

Magic: (n) The art of converting superstition into coin.

Why don't you come up sometime 'n see me? I'm home every evening. . . . Come up. I'll tell your fortune. . . . Ah, you can be had.

If Goddess religion is not to become mindless idiocy, we must win clear of tendency of magic to become supertition. Magic - and among its branches I include psychology as its purpose to describe and change consciousness - is an art.

Everything that I spent my entire life dedicated to, which is this art of mentalism, of magic... I don't see it and feel it and experience it like I first did when I was getting involved in this art. I try to look at it as a spectator but unless I get amnesia I still can't overlook that. I can appreciate the performance but I would love to be fooled.

PALMISTRY, n. The 947th method . . . of obtaining money by false pretences [by] "reading character" in the wrinkles [of] the hand. The pretence is not altogether false. . . for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe."

Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a begging.

With one hand I take thousands of rubles from the poor, and with the other I hand back a few kopecks.

It is with honesty in one particular as with wealth,--those that have the thing care less about the credit of it than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses the less he can afford to be supposed to want it.

I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

Niggas wit no money act like money isn't everything.

Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.

if you tell yourself the great lie of bad art-that you are in charge-your chance at the truth will be lost. The truth isn't always pretty.

You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.