Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

Hindsight is good, foresight is better; but second sight is best of all.

[Macbeth] is historically set in a place depicted by Shakespeare as brutal and violent, incredibly superstitious, and that's something that I do believe is Scottish.

Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.

My own novel, 'The Silver Bough,' about the inhabitants of a remote town at risk of being overwhelmed by Scotland's mythological past, was once criticised by a disgruntled fan as 'fantasy for people who don't read fantasy.'

Mollie Hunter was both a great friend and a very fine writer for children. She was fascinated by Scotland's history and its folklore - almost all her novels reflect her tremendous knowledge of both.

I'm superstitious.

I swear to God I was freaked out about the Aswang when I was a kid in the Philippines.

I think Scotland has some great stories.

I do like the idea of consequence and how our actions play themselves out, but I am completely scared of knowing what the future would be like. I would never go near a fortune teller, even though it's probably not even real. I just don't wanna know.

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.

I believe in superstitions. You don't talk about a child who hasn't been born.

Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

Of course I don't believe in it [pointing to horseshoe on his office wall]. But I understand that it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not.

For this reason, if you believe proverbs, let me tell you the common one: "It is unlucky to marry in May.

For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit?s foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit?s foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by the wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there.

Superstition is a part of the very being of humanity; and when we fancy that we are banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself at all safe.

Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philosophy, and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and inchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the church-yards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit.

I have seen some astrologers who predicted wonderful things; but I have no reason to believe they predicted them only from the stars, or anything of the sort. In many cases it is simply mind-reading. Sometimes wonderful predictions are made, but in many cases it is arrant trash.

No man of sense in the whole world believes in devils any more than he does in mermaids, vampires, gorgons, hydras, naiads, dryads, nymphs, fairies, the Fountain of Youth, [or] the Philosopher's Stone. . . .

Peasants have believed in dowsing, and scientists used to believe that dowsing was only a belief of peasants. Now there are so many scientists who believe in dowsing that the suspicion comes to me that it may only be a myth after all.

If you hear an old parable and you don't believe it, it's mythology. If you hear an old parable and you believe it, it's religion.

Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.

We call them faerie. We don't believe in them. Our loss.