Mikhail Bulgakov Quotes

When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? My Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.

Medieval Europeans did not much fear witches until they created an inquisition to find them.

I don't want to act like the witch trials all over New England were warranted, but when you live in a culture that believes something is real, it feels very real.

Witches never existed, except in people’s minds. All there was in the olden days was women and some men who believed in herbal cures and in folklore and in the wish to fly. Witches? We’re all witches in one way or another. Witches was the invention of mankind, son. We’re all witches beneath the skin.

I can cite a few cases of where people have tampered around with magic and witchcraft that they've been very severely frightened and traumatised by some of the outcomes. I mean we are playing with fire, and I had to say that.

Without really analyzing it, I grew up in Massachusetts, so the Salem witch trials were always something that I was around. The average kindergartner probably doesn't know about it, except that in Massachusetts, you do, because they'll take you on field trips to see reenactments and stuff.

The plain truth is that the period I study is the 16th century, and they were absolutely obsessed with witches and spiritual beings.

The number of witches had everywhere become enormous.

In the middle ages when people were convinced there were witches, they certainly found them.

Carefully take notice of witches, charmers, and all such abusers of the people.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.....There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed.

The Reign of the Witches

For my part, I have ever believed, and do so now, that there are witches.

Everywhere we are surrounded by dogs and sorcerers and whores and the Godless and all who love lies and commit them.

Basically, I was always disappointed that the witches weren't real when we learned about the Salem witch trials.

I don't really believe in the supernatural, as far as the negativity.

I can't explain witchcraft.

I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung.

Justine," Zoe said, "I don't want to curse anyone." "Of course you don't, you're much too nice. But I don't have that problem.

To the Sabbath! To the Sabbath!' they cried. 'On to the Witches' Sabbath!" Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the women on each side of him, to the wildest measure he had ever imagined, yet which he dimly, dreadfully remembered, till the lamp on the wall flickered and went out, and they were left in total darkness. And the devil woke in his heart with a thousand vile suggestions and made him afraid.

I’m not superstitious. I’m a witch. Witches aren’t superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of.

Witchcraft was hung, in History, But History and I Find all the Witchcraft that we need Around us, every Day -

When I was a child there were many witches, and they bewitched both cattle and men, especially children.

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.

To deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament, and the thing itself is a Truth to which every nation in the world hath, in its turn, borne testimony, by either example seemingly well attested or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits.