Magician Best Quotes

The best teachers impart knowledge through sleight of hand, like a magician.

The best lie is wrapped around a core of truth.

But then, liars do make the best magicians, and he happened to be exceptional.

Before we do, I suggest you take a break. If you need to go to the bathroom, this is a good time. If you're sleepy, go to bed and save the next chapter for tomorrow. For the magician's story, you must have all your wits about you. No wandering minds allowed.

You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves. After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. That’s what I believe. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens. These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.

We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.

I will not deny that my heart has long occupied itself with the most tender feelings for another. So strong were these impulses that I indulged myself by thinking that if I could not have him whom I admired whom I will admit it now when I would not before I loved then I would never want another. However those are sentiments best saved for one of Lily's romances. The heart is a far more practical thing and in its life is happily capable of more than a single attachment.

Take those frauds who practice pseudoscience - do you know who they're most afraid of?" "Scientists, of course." "No. Many of the best scientists can be fooled by pseudoscience and sometimes devote their lives to it. But pseudoscience is afraid of one particular type of people who are very hard to fool: stage magicians. In fact, many pseudoscience hoaxes were exposed by stage magicians.

When Klara plucks a coin from inside someone's ear or turns a ball into a lemon, she hopes not to deceive but to impart a different kind of knowledge, an expanded sense of possibility. The point is not to negate reality, but to peel back its scrim, revealing reality's peculiarities and contradictions. The very best magic tricks, the kind Klara wants to perform, do not subtract from reality. They add.

She who laughs last may not invariably laugh best, but she does laugh.

He was in the right place. He was living his best life. How many other people in the multiverse could say that?

If you've ever read one of those articles that asks notable people to list their favorite books, you may have been impressed or daunted to see them pick Proust or Thomas Mann or James Joyce. You might even feel sheepish about the fact that you reread Pride and Prejudice or The Lord of the Rings, or The Catcher in the Rye or Gone With the Wind every couple of years with some much pleasure. Perhaps, like me, you're even a little suspicious of their claims, because we all know that the books we've loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly - or the ones we'd most like other people to think we read over and over again.

And why not do the easiest possible thing? Because isn’t that always the best thing?

Dear friend…' The Witcher swore quietly, looking at the sharp, angular, even runes drawn with energetic sweeps of the pen, faultlessly reflecting the author’s mood. He felt once again the desire to try to bite his own backside in fury. When he was writing to the sorceress a month ago he had spent two nights in a row contemplating how best to begin. Finally, he had decided on “Dear friend.” Now he had his just deserts. 'Dear friend, your unexpected letter – which I received not quite three years after we last saw each other – has given me much joy. My joy is all the greater as various rumours have been circulating about your sudden and violent death. It is a good thing that you have decided to disclaim them by writing to me; it is a good thing, too, that you are doing so so soon. From your letter it appears that you have lived a peaceful, wonderfully boring life, devoid of all sensation. These days such a life is a real privilege, dear friend, and I am happy that you have managed to achieve it. I was touched by the sudden concern which you deigned to show as to my health, dear friend. I hasten with the news that, yes, I now feel well; the period of indisposition is behind me, I have dealt with the difficulties, the description of which I shall not bore you with. It worries and troubles me very much that the unexpected present you received from Fate brings you worries. Your supposition that this requires professional help is absolutely correct. Although your description of the difficulty – quite understandably – is enigmatic, I am sure I know the Source of the problem. And I agree with your opinion that the help of yet another magician is absolutely necessary. I feel honoured to be the second to whom you turn. What have I done to deserve to be so high on your list? Rest assured, my dear friend; and if you had the intention of supplicating the help of additional magicians, abandon it because there is no need. I leave without delay, and go to the place which you indicated in an oblique yet, to me, understandable way. It goes without saying that I leave in absolute secrecy and with great caution. I will surmise the nature of the trouble on the spot and will do all that is in my power to calm the gushing source. I shall try, in so doing, not to appear any worse than other ladies to whom you have turned, are turning or usually turn with your supplications. I am, after all, your dear friend. Your valuable friendship is too important to me to disappoint you, dear friend. Should you, in the next few years, wish to write to me, do not hesitate for a moment. Your letters invariably give me boundless pleasure. Your friend Yennefer' The letter smelled of lilac and gooseberries. Geralt cursed.

For the rest of the night he sat by himself under the elm-tree. Until this moment it had never seemed to him that his magicianship set him apart from other men. But now he had glimpsed the wrong side of something. He had the eeriest feeling - as if the world were growing older around him, and the best part of existence - laughter, love and innocence - were slipping irrevocably into the past.

There are three things you will learn from tonight: even the most powerful Thief has limitations, it pays to have friends in high places, and there are some things best left to magicians.” - Cery

At six thousand or more years older than the stone circles of Stonehenge, the megaliths of Göbekli Tepe, like the deeply buried megaliths of Gunung Padang, mean that the timeline of history taught in our schools and universities for the best part of the last hundred years can no longer stand. It is beginning to look as though civilization, as I argued in my controversial 1995 bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods, is indeed much older and much more mysterious than we thought.

There are not two Germanies, a bad one and a good one, but only one, in which the best qualities have been corrupted with diabolical cunning into evil. The evil Germany is the good one in misfortune and guilt, the good Germany perverted and overthrown.

To those you care for, a nurse is a person of many faces: You are a warrior against death and suffering, a technician of the highest degree; you are a mother, a sister, a best friend, a psychiatrist; you are a teacher, a magician, a sounding board, a secretary, a fortuneteller, a politician, but most of all, you are a loving human being who has chosen to give that love in one of the best ways you can.

He did not see a hero of romance, but a plain man who had done his best-- not a leader of chivalry, but the pupil who had tried to be faithful to his curious master, the magician, by thinking all the time-- not Arthur of England, but a lonely old gentleman who had worn his crown for half a lifetime in the teeth of fate.

All of these techniques share an ontological purpose: to manipulate perceptions and to re-create reality. Once that Pandora’s box was open, there was no closing it again. The temptation was too great. For those who wanted to play God, there was the next best thing: one could play with the elements of creation in such a way that magical transformations would take place. As the men of the OSS, CIA, military intelligence and with Tavistock’s oversight developed from the armchair scholars that most of them were before the war years into soldiers fighting on all fronts of the Cold War, they became, in a very real sense, magicians. “The CIA mind control projects themselves represented an assault on consciousness and reality that has not been seen in history since the age of the philosopher-kings and their court alchemists.”9

Chaston wrote that a great many fairies harboured a vague sense of having been treated badly by the English. Though it was a mystery to Chaston — as it is to me — why they should have thought so. In the houses of the great English magicians fairies were the first among the servants and sat in the best places after the magician and his lady.

because we all know that the books we’ve loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly

It makes perfect political sense. We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.

Love is like a lot of things, it is always best done with the head. Save mindless efforts for mindless things.

hate is the most useless of all emotions. Success is the best revenge.

Liars make the best Magicians, and he happened to be exceptional!

Now he knew his way around a ward-and-shield or two. He could chuck a magic missile with the best of them. He was a damn one-man magic-missile crisis.

The best way to predict the future," observes magician Gregory Wilson, "is to influence it."17

The most important attribute of a magician is knowledge.” He paused, then looked at each of the novices who had spoken in turn. “Without it his strength is useless, he has nothing to be skilled or talented in, despite his best intentions.

You see, the foolish old man was actually beginning to imagine the Witch would fall in love with him. The two drinks probably had something to do with it, and so had his best clothes. But he was, in any case, as vain as a peacock; that was why he had become a Magician.

I asked Mr. Thurston to tell me the secret of his success... Thurston had a genuine interest in people. He told me that many magicians would look at the audience and say to themselves, "Well, there is a bunch of suckers out there, a bunch of hicks; I'll fool them alright." But Thurston's method was totally different. He told me that every time he went on stage he said to himself: "I am grateful because these people come to see me. They make it possible for me to make my living in a very agreeable way. I'm going to give them the very best I possibly can." p58

The curious measure, of course, is that we fail to recognize the most obvious notion in all of this: that we ourselves are the best magicians we know. What our bodies do, what our minds accomplish, and the context we can give to things, how we make it all fit together, this is something.

As he sat at the table, the silence was interrupted only by the sharp chirping of the birds. It occurred to Thomas that this would be a good moment to be found slumped over. He smiled when it struck him that, in his best suit and tie and his newest shoes, he was perfectly dressed for this , and would look distinguished if he had to be taken away by stretcher.

Now then, now then,” came the Cabby’s voice, a good firm, hardy voice. “Keep cool everyone, that’s what I say. No bones broken, anyone? Good. Well there’s something to be thankful for straight away, and more than anyone could expect after falling all that way. Now, if we’ve fallen down some diggings—as it might be for a new station on the Underground—someone will come and get us out presently, see! And if we’re dead—which I don’t deny it might be—well, you got to remember that worse things ’appen at sea and a chap’s got to die sometime. And there ain’t nothing to be afraid of if a chap’s led a decent life. And if you ask me, I think the best thing we could do to pass the time would be to sing a ’ymn.” And he did. He struck up at once a harvest thanksgiving hymn, all about crops being “safely gathered in.” It was not very suitable to a place which felt as if nothing had ever grown there since the beginning of time, but it was the one he could remember best. He had a fine voice and the children joined in; it was very cheering. Uncle Andrew and the Witch did not join in.

What he'd find there, of course, was up to Pete. But he was sure there were magicians in Tampico and leopard-skins and golden thrones in Juba. Dragons and pirates and white temples where magic dwelt. And best of all, the places he didn't know about yet, the ones that would come as surprises. Oh, not entirely pleasant surprises. There should be a hint of peril, a touch of terror, to emphasize the brightness of adventure... ("Before I Wake...")

Well, let’s see . . .” She put a finger on her chin and looked up and to one side, pretending to think. “I’m the best there is at what I do. I have some things I need to take care of, and it’ll be a lot easier to do that with two million dollars. And I enjoy violence and riding around in stretch limos with nerds. The end!” She smiled. “Now you.” If Stoppard had not already had a raging crush on Betsy, he had one by the end of that speech. Either way some of the attitude went out of him.

The female, she said, was like a queen who sat on her throne talking with God. This is the part of us that can converse easily with Spirit. She is wise and intuitive, and totally tuned in. However, by herself she cannot accomplish anything in the world, for she needs her best warrior to help her. This is the inner male. He has the power to bring her ideas to fruition, the power to make them real. In other words, without her wisdom the warrior acts aimlessly, even destructively. But when he is connected to her, and she is connected to Spirit, then he and she can become anything from a sage to a king, a magician, or a lover, but together they can become enlightened ones.

Bugge had leaned forward then. “Who’s the man?” he asked. “The one who hasn’t come, though the hour has?” “It is the man who will lead you. Listen to me now, you complacent fathers and householders, and don’t make up your twopenny minds that what I’m saying is necessarily a fable. Do you recall the stories of Sigmund, who drew out Odin’s sword easily from the Branstock Oak when no other man in the Volsung’s hall could budge it with his best efforts?” “Certainly,” Bugge had nodded. “And I also recall what became of that sword when the one-eyed god inexplicably turned on him. Odin shattered it in battle, and Sigmund, left unarmed, was killed by Lyngi’s spearmen.” The magician had nodded. “That’s true. Now listen, Odin has allowed—ordered, rather—Sigmund himself to return to the flesh, to lead you in pushing back Muspelheim’s hordes.” The men around the table had been skeptical, but afraid to let Gardvord see it. “How will we meet him?” piped up one of them. “You must sail up the Elbe, through various tributaries and overland crossings, and finally down the Danube. When you have reached the city that is built around Balder’s barrow, you’ll know it, because,” he paused impressively, “Sigmund will actually rise from the water to greet you. I suspect the barrow is near the city of Tulln, but I can’t be sure. You’ll know the spot, in any case, by Sigmund’s watery resurrection

Now then, now then,” came the Cabby’s voice, a good firm, hardy voice. “Keep cool, everyone, that’s what I say. No bones broken, anyone? Good. Well, there’s something to be thankful for straight away, and more than anyone could expect after falling all that way. Now, if we’ve fallen down some diggings – as it might be for a new station on the Underground – someone will come and get us out presently, see! And if we’re dead – which I don’t deny it might be – well, you got to remember that worse things ’appen at sea and a chap’s got to die sometime. And there ain’t nothing to be afraid of if a chap’s led a decent life. And if you ask me, I think the best thing we could do to pass the time would be sing a ’ymn.

It was the biggest joint summoning that I’d been involved in since the great days of Prague. Forty djinn materializing more or less at once, in a vast chamber built for that purpose in the bowels of Whitehall. As with all such things, it was a messy business, despite the best efforts of the magicians. They were all lined up in tidy rows of identical pentacles, wearing the same dark suits and speaking their incantations quietly, while the officiating clerks scribbled their names down at tables to the sides. We djinn, of course, were less concerned with regimental decorum: we arrived in forty very different guises, trumpeting our individuality with horns, tails, iridescent flanges, spikes, and tentacles; with colors ranging from obsidian-black to delicate dandelion-yellow; with a menagerie full of hollerings and chitter; with a magnificent range of sulfurous guffs and stenches.

In that case,” the herbalist said to Eragon, “you had best have this, since it seems you and I are to do most of the fighting.” She handed him her short sword, then drew a poniard with a jeweled hilt from within the folds of her dress. “What is it made of?” Eragon asked as he peered through the transparent blade of the sword, noticing how it caught and reflected the light. The substance reminded him of diamond, but he could not imagine that anyone would make a weapon out of a gemstone; the amount of energy required to keep the stone from breaking with every blow would soon exhaust any normal magician. “Neither stone nor metal,” said the herbalist. “A word of caution, though. You must take great care when handling it. Never touch the edge or allow anything you cherish to come near it, else you will regret it. Likewise, never lean the sword against something you might need--your leg, for example.

(Marco's thoughts in captivity). "What will it be best to think about first? This he said because one of the most absorbedly fascinating things he and his father talked about together was the power of the thoughts which human beings allow to pass through their minds, the strange strength of them... What he (his father) believed, he had taught Marco quite simply from his childhood. It was this: he himself, Marco... was the magician. He held and waved his wand himself, and his wand was his own thought. When special privation or anxiety beset them, it was their rule to say, What will it be best to think about first, which was Marco's reason for saying it to himself now... (recalling his father's words): Let pass through thine mind, my son, only the image which thou would desire to see as truth. Meditate only upon the wish of thy heart, seeing first that it could injure no man and is not ignoble. Then will it take earthly form and draw near to thee. This is the law of that which creates.

That Cicely’s brave undertaking ought to come to some great result in itself, that she ought to be able to make her way nobly, as her purpose was, working with her hands for the children that were not hers, bringing them up to be men, having that success in her work which is the most pleasant of all recompenses, and vindicating her sacrifice and self-devotion in the sight of all who had scoffed and doubted — this, no doubt, would be the highest and best, the most heroical and epical development of story. To change all her circumstances at a stroke, making her noble intention unnecessary, and resolving this tremendous work of hers into a gentle domestic necessity, with the “hey presto!” of the commonplace magician, by means of a marriage, is simply a contemptible expedient. But, alas! it is one which there can be no doubt is much preferred by most people to the more legitimate conclusion; and, what is more, he would be justified by knowing the accidental way is perhaps, on the whole, the most likely one, since marriages occur every day which are perfectly improbable and out of character, mere tours de force, despicable as expedients, showing the poorest invention, a disgrace to any romancist or dramatist, if they were not absolute matters of fact and true. Pardon the parenthesis, gentle reader.

There was a bell clanging in the tower of the building next to the black-shrike-thorn-cave. She found the noise irritating, so she twisted her neck and loosed a jet of blue and yellow flame at it. The tower did not catch fire, as it was stone, but the rope and beams supporting the bell ignited, and a few seconds later, the bell fell crashing into the interior of the tower. That pleased her, as did the two-legs-round-ears who ran screaming from the area. She was a dragon, after all. It was only right that they should fear her. One of the two-legs paused by the edge of the square in front of the black-shrike-thorn-cave, and she heard him shout a spell at her, his voice like the squeaking of a frightened mouse. Whatever the spell was, Eragon’s wards shielded her from it--at least she assumed they did, for she noticed no difference in how she felt or in the appearance of the world around her. The wolf-elf-in-Eragon’s-shape killed the magician for her. She could feel how Blödhgarm grasped hold of the spellcaster’s mind and wrestled the two-legs-round-ears’ thoughts into submission, whereupon Blödhgarm uttered a single word in the ancient-elf-magic-language, and the two-legs-round-ears fell to the ground, blood seeping from his open mouth. Then the wolf-elf tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Ready yourself, Brightscales. Here they come.” She saw Thorn rising above the edge of the rooftops, Eragon-half-brother-Murtagh a small, dark figure on his back. In the light of the morning sun, Thorn shone and sparkled almost as brilliantly as she herself did. Her scales were cleaner than his, though, as she had taken special care when grooming earlier. She could not imagine going into battle looking anything but her best. Her enemies should not only fear her, but admire her. She knew it was vanity on her part, but she did not care. No other race could match the grandeur of the dragons. Also, she was the last female of her kind, and she wanted those who saw her to marvel at her appearance and to remember her well, so if dragons were to vanish forevermore, two-legs would continue to speak of them with the proper respect, awe, and wonder.

Magician is the best storyteller in the world.

There is no requirement for those affected by an idea to be aware of any of this, of course. When the writer and media critic Philip Sandifer writes that "David Whitaker, at once the most important figure in Doctor Who's development and the least understood, created a show that is genuinely magical and this influence cannot be erased from within the show," he does not mean that any of the hundreds of actors and writers who went on to work on the programme saw it in those terms. Or as Sandifer so clearly puts it, "I don't actually believe that the writers of Doctor Who were consciously designing a sentient metafiction to continually disrupt the social order through a systematic process of détournement. Except maybe David Whitaker." From Drummond and Cauty's perspective, the story of Doctor Who is irrelevant. All that was happening was that they were exploring their mental landscape, and they were fulfilling their duty as artists by doing so more deeply than normal people. This is a landscape with many unseen, unknown areas where who-knows-what might be found. The KLF explored further than most and, if we were to accept Moore's model, it would perhaps not be surprising that a fiction as complex as Doctor Who could encounter them in Ideaspace and, being at its lowest point and in dire need of help, use them for its own ends. For Moore, and other artists such as David Lynch who use similar models, the role of the artist is like that of a fisherman. It is their job to fish in the collective unconscious and use all their skill to best present their catch to an audience. Drummond and Cauty, on the other hand, appear to have been caught by the fish. Lacking any clear sense of what they were doing, they dived in as deeply as Moore and Lynch. They did not have a specific purpose for doing so. They just needed to make something happen - anything really, such is the path of chaos. "It was supposed to be a proper dance record, but we couldn't fit the four-four beat to it, so we ended up with the glitter beat, which was never really our intention but we had to go with it," Cauty has said. "It was like an out of control lorry, you know, you're just trying to steer it, and that track took itself over really, and did what it wanted to do. We were just watching." This lack of intention is significant, from a magical point of view. One of the most important aspects of magical practice is the will. Aleister Crowley defined magic as being changes in the world brought about by the exercise of the will, hence his maxim 'Do what thou Will shall be the whole of the Law.' The will or intention of a magical act is important because the magician opens himself up to all sorts of strange powers and influences and he must avoid being controlled by them. Drummond and Cauty were not exerting any control on the process, and so they made themselves vulnerable to the who-knows-whats that live out of sight in the depths of Ideaspace. For this reason, you could understand why Moore would think that Bill Drummond was “totally mad." All this only applies if you're prepared to accept the notion of magic, of course.

Everyone knows that Brearley the player could barely qualify for a place in the side for his batting. In fact but for England’s tradition of selecting its captain first and then the rest of the team, Brearley may not have played much for England at all. In contrast, Australia selects its best players and chooses the captain from that pool. England got it right with Brearley for without doubt he is among the best captains cricket has ever known. To be able to captain with such command, for players to look up to him and do his bidding, when he was himself a mediocre contributor must imply that Brearley must have been a magician of a leader. He was quite simply outstanding. Unruffled, technically very sound, able to move swiftly between attack and defense and above all the ability to get everyone together as a team to perform to their potential.

Many of the best scientists can be fooled by pseudoscience and sometimes devote their lives to it. But pseudoscience is afraid of one particular type of people who are very hard to fool: stage magicians. In fact, many pseudoscientific hoaxes were exposed by stage magicians. Compared to the bookworms of the scientific world, your experience as a cop makes you far more likely to perceive such a large-scale conspiracy.

Legends of Bangladesh - A bunch of pure souls who achieved the glory for a country, Bangladesh, will remember forever as the legends of the nation. The world will know them for their work, sacrifice, love and mostly commitment to give best to their country until last breath. Some of them are famous for writing, some are journalism, Actor movie directors, sportsmen, cricketer, Footballer, economist, scientist, photographer, singer, businessman, martyr, architect, magician and so on. Its not enough to salute and remember them, nationwide respect and acknowledgment with proper mind will fulfill their destiny of making a golden country with all those hard work.

Emery nodded. “But I’m afraid you’re now a week behind in your studies.” “You told me I was two months ahead!” Ceony frowned. “A week behind,” he repeated, as though not hearing her. And perhaps he didn’t. Emery Thane had a talent for selective hearing, she’d learned. “I’ve determined it’s best for you to study the roots of Folding.

properly-trained magician. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t fear the second best, Sergeant Miles had said. He fears the worst, because he doesn’t know what the idiot will do. Emily looked up at the battlements. It was hard to be sure, but

Many of the best scientists can be fooled by pseudoscience and sometimes devote their lives to it. But pseudoscience is afraid of one particular type of people who are very hard to fool: stage magicians. In fact, many pseudoscientific hoaxes were exposed by stage magicians.

Most important of all, perhaps, all the childhood images of God—God the Magician, God the Santa Claus, God the wrathful Judge, God the Puppeteer—disappear. We know now that the God of Creation has shared power with us and remains with us to help us see life through. Our role is to do our part, to do our best, to trust the path.

You fucked her royally. I don’t see the problem with that at all.” He picked up another doughnut and waved it at me. “You want me to tell you how to get rid of the best thing that’s ever happened to you and not have it hurt like hell? You think I’m some kind of fucking magician? There is no easy answer to this because you’re in love with the girl, am I right?

•​Two verses on the Samadhi of Illusion, from the Jewel Ornament of Liberation. First verse: “Knowing the five skandhas are like an illusion / Don’t separate the illusion from the skandhas / Free of thinking that anything is real / This is perfect wisdom’s conduct at its best!”6 Second verse: “All the images conjured up by a magician / The horses, elephants, and chariots in his illusions / Whatever may appear there, know that none of it is real / And it’s just like that with everything there is!

We’re conditioned that our success (and our neighbor’s) is best measured by looking at our possessions. Those possessions influence perception, and because a certain perception earns us status, we chase the proof of wealth rather than wealth itself.

What had he witnessed? She had looked like a wild and beautiful creature, a goddess, something ethereal and undecipherable. Dina had filled his vision, the pale light dancing around her, as she'd broken his world, and everything he thought he knew, apart. He was ninety percent sure that Dina was a witch. The other ten percent... well. He was flirting with the idea that she might be some kind of djinn, or succubus, but neither of those terms felt quite right. And "magician" made him think of rabbits in hats and coins collected from behind ears. No, if there was ever a word to describe Dina Whitlock, it was "witch.

If you’re out in the world for any length of time, there are going to be people who will accuse you of using sex as a weapon just because they’re afraid it would work on them if you did. It is a weapon, if you want to use it. But it isn’t the best or the only one you have, and you shouldn’t ever let them make you feel it is.

MANASSEH WAS THE WORST KING the Hebrews ever had. He was a thoroughly bad man presiding over a totally corrupt government. He reigned in Jerusalem for fifty-five years, a dark and evil half century. He encouraged a pagan worship that involved whole communities in sexual orgies. He installed cult prostitutes at shrines throughout the countryside. He imported wizards and sorcerers who enslaved the people in superstitions and manipulated them with their magic. The man could not do enough evil. There seemed to be no end to his barbarous cruelties. His capacity for inventing new forms of evil seemed bottomless. His appetite for the sordid was insatiable. One day he placed his son on the altar in some black and terrible ritual of witchcraft and burned him as an offering (2 Kings 21). The great Solomonic temple in Jerusalem, resplendent in its holy simplicity, empty of any form of god so that the invisible God could be attended to in worship, swarmed with magicians and prostitutes. Idols shaped as beasts and monsters defiled the holy place. Lust and greed were deified. Murders were commonplace. Manasseh dragged the people into a mire far more stinking than anything the world had yet seen. The sacred historian’s judgment was blunt: “Manasseh led them off the beaten path into practices of evil even exceeding the evil of the pagan nations that GOD had earlier destroyed” (2 Kings 21:9).[2]

But Jadis and Uncle Andrew are both magicians. And in this book we see that Jadis and Uncle Andrew both believe they are "above the rules." They both believe rules are only for ordinary, common people. In this way, they try to put themselves above all authority but their own. They do not want anybody telling them what to do and they do not want any rules telling them what to do. The problem with this, of course, is that you should never trust people who have strong views of authority when talking about people under them, but have very weak views of authority when talking about people over them. Whenever you encounter someone like that, you need to run in the other direction as fast and as far as you can—that person is going to abuse any authority they can get. One of the best things C. S. Lewis teaches us is that true authority can only be exercised by leaders who delight in submitting to authority themselves.

I challenge you to go after whatever it is you want in life. Don't die without trying to be all that you can be. In this book, I'm not encouraging you to sit back, nod and agree with me. I'm strongly encouraging you to go out and live your life to the full, do amazing things and be the best that you can be.

Walking alongside his apprentice’s horse, Sethil Longmere, magus of the Third Circle, Magi Master of Dormir’s army, and a man who had seen more years than most men could count, did his best to keep his apprentice Rousche from falling off his gelding. The dun horse had a sure foot and a good temper, but it seemed unlikely the animal was used to a grown man lying face first in its mane, legs sprawled behind, dangling with each step.

The very best magicians are scavengers of the useful and banishers of the useless.

The best tycoons are like magicians; they know when to share information and when to withhold.

Magical. Magician. Magic.” Robin glanced at the pen again. It continued to hover, serene. He took a long breath. “All right.” “All right?” The humanising note of exasperation was matched by something flaring in Courcey’s face. “Honestly? You expect me to believe this is the first time you’ve come across any kind of magic, and you’re sitting there without so much as—and the best you can muster is all right?

Will the cage hold?" Raider snapped. "Probably." Jin didn't sound convinced. "Not good enough," the human snarled. Jin snorted. "That's the best you're going to get. I'm not a magician. I had seconds to switch the polarity to give us this much protection. Next time give me more of a head’s up if you want a more quality product.

Many of the best scientists can be fooled by pseudoscience and sometimes devote their lives to it. But pseudoscience is afraid of one particular type of people who are very hard to fool: stage magicians.

He liked one tapestry in particular that depicted a marvelously appointed griffin frozen in the act of putting a company of foot soldiers to flight. It was supposed to symbolize the triumph of some group of long-dead people over some other group of long-dead people whom nobody had liked, but for some reason the griffin had cocked its head to one side in the midst of its rampage and was gazing directly out of its woven universe at the viewer as if to say, yes, granted, I’m good at this. But is it really the best use of my time?

The best cooks doubled as magicians, uplifting moods and conjuring memories through the medium of food.

the best lie is one that is wrapped around a core of truth.

Seeing Tully was stung by the reference to ancient church canon long since abandoned, Kulgan softened his tone “No disrespect to you, Tully. But don’t try to teach an old thief to steal. I know your order chops logic with the best of them, and that half your brother clerics fall into laughing fits when they hear those deadly serious young acolytes debate theological issues set aside a century ago. Besides which, isn’t the legend of the lost art an Ishapian dogma?

14 – Would anyone like to have a little look down into the secret of how ideals are fabricated on this earth? Who has enough pluck? . . . Come on! Here we have a clear glimpse into this dark workshop. Just wait one moment, Mr Nosy Daredevil: your eyes will have to become used to this false, shimmering light . . . There! That’s enough! Now you can speak! What’s happening down there? Tell me what you see, you with your most dangerous curiosity – now I am the one who’s listening. – – ‘I cannot see anything but I can hear all the better. There is a guarded, malicious little rumour-mongering and whispering from every nook and cranny. I think people are telling lies; a sugary mildness clings to every sound. Lies are turning weakness into an accomplishment, no doubt about it – it’s just as you said.’ – – Go on! – ‘and impotence which doesn’t retaliate is being turned into “good- ness”; timid baseness is being turned into “humility”; submission to people one hates is being turned into “obedience” (actually towards someone who, they say, orders this submission – they call him God). The 27 On the Genealogy of Morality inoffensiveness of the weakling, the very cowardice with which he is richly endowed, his standing-by-the-door, his inevitable position of having to wait, are all given good names such as “patience”, also known as the virtue; not-being-able-to-take-revenge is called not-wanting-to-take-revenge, it might even be forgiveness (“for they know not what they do – but we know what they are doing!”).33 They are also talking about “loving your enemies” – and sweating while they do it.’ – Go on! – ‘They are miserable, without a doubt, all these rumour-mongers and clandestine forgers, even if they do crouch close together for warmth – but they tell me that their misery means they are God’s chosen and select, after all, people beat the dogs they love best; perhaps this misery is just a preparation, a test, a training, it might be even more than that – some- thing that will one day be balanced up and paid back with enormous inter- est in gold, no! in happiness. They call that “bliss”.’ – Go on! – ‘They are now informing me that not only are they better than the powerful, the masters of the world whose spittle they have to lick (not from fear, not at all from fear! but because God orders them to honour those in authority)34 – not only are they better, but they have a “better time”, or at least will have a better time one day. But enough! enough! I can’t bear it any longer. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are fabricated – it seems to me just to stink of lies.’ – No! Wait a moment! You haven’t said anything yet about the master- pieces of those black magicians who can turn anything black into white- ness, milk and innocence: – haven’t you noticed their perfect raffinement, their boldest, subtlest, most ingenious and mendacious stunt? Pay atten- tion! These cellar rats full of revenge and hatred – what do they turn revenge and hatred into? Have you ever heard these words? Would you suspect, if you just went by what they said, that the men around you were nothing but men of ressentiment? . . .

With bullies it’s always the same: whether or not you can best them doesn’t matter. What is important is whether or not you’ll stand up to them.

How good is your head movement? Do you know where everyone stands if the ball comes to you? Scholes and Lampard never look surprised when they receive the ball because they have already scoped several courses of action, and by the time they release it, several more. That is why they can surprise everyone with their service to their strikers – flicked-through passes, early crosses, deft one-twos. Whether you are a midfield magician or a catalytic C, pulling rabbits out of hats should not be beyond you.

There's something rum about this," she said. "Beasley was your friend long before he was ours. You introduced us to him and we know you like him, but somehow you don't seem terribly upset at what's happened to him. Is it because you know something that we don't?" "What can I know when I just got back to London?" "I don't know," said Andrew, "but Sara's right. You either know something or you've guessed something. I'll bet you know what's happened to him, maybe even where he is." "That's very flattering. Do you think I'm a magician, a psychic, or the Sleuth of all Sleuths?" "If you mean by that, the best detective in England, the answer is, yes. Sometimes." "I repeat, that's very flattering, and it's nice to be appreciated by two such illustrious colleagues, but— " He broke off at a knock.

A Provider is not a magician. He cannot wave a magic wand and produce a perfect product—solutions take time and effort to produce... However, he will have an expertise in his field and he will use this expertise in his work. If you have chosen your Provider wisely, begin by trusting his expertise. Allow your Provider the freedom to do his work.

When Klara plucks a coin from inside someone's ear or turns a ball into a lemon, she hopes not to deceive but to impart a different kind of knowledge, an expanded sense of possibility. The point is not to negate reality, but to peel back its scrim, revealing reality's peculiarities and contradictions. The very best magic tricks, the kind Klara wants to perform, do not subtract from reality. They add.

When Klara plucks a coin from inside someone's ear or turns a ball into a lemon, she hopes not to deceive but to impart a different kind of knowledge, an expanded sense of possibility. The point is not to negate reality, but to peel back its scrim, revealing reality's peculiarities and contradictions. The very best magic tricks, the kind Klara wants to perform, do not subtract from reality. They add.

There was once an artistically talented teenager who felt unrequited love for a girl in his art class. It so happened that his beloved’s artwork was particularly bad, so bad, in fact, that it was often quietly mocked. One day the boy overheard two classmates laughing about how bad her artwork was. But just then she entered the room, and they quickly changed the subject. After a couple of minutes, the two classmates started playing a cruel game where they praised her for her artistic abilities. She protested, but the classmates kept insisting that she had real talent and should think about exhibiting something in the end-of-year art show. A week later she pulled the lovelorn boy to one side and asked for some advice about a painting. He jumped at the chance to talk with her, and while the work was terrible, he praised it profusely. To his horror, the praise he lavished on it convinced her to enter the painting in the school art exhibition. Because of his love, he didn’t want her to be humiliated, so the day before the show he went into the room holding all the submissions and stole her painting along with a couple of others. Once the theft was discovered, the art teacher quickly worked out who was guilty and pulled the boy out of class. Before suspending him, the teacher asked why he’d stolen the paintings. “That’s easy,” replied the boy. “I wanted to win the prize and so stole the best work.” News quickly spread around the school that the girl had created a masterpiece that might have won the prize if allowed to compete.

Witness Never trust a witness. By the time a thing is Noticed, it has happened. Some magician’s redirected Our attention to the rabbit. The best life is suspected, Not examined. And never trust reverse. The mourners of the dead Count backward from the date Of the event, rehearsing Its approach, investing Final words with greatest weight, As though weight ever Carried what we meant: As though he could have Told us where he went.

Power cost me the best thing in my life. I'd give it all up for one more day with her

We all can become magicians of sorts. But to experience this higher reality I’m speaking of—to really find it—you’ll need to leave the world a lot. Play in common society and succeed in the game it sells you but disconnect from it often, so you’re never really owned by it. Because the sport the majority is playing is only an illusion—sort of a waking dream—that too many good people are donating the best mornings of their finest days to as they put money over meaning, profits over people, popularity over integrity, being busy over family and achievement over loving the basic miracles of the now.

The best tycoons are like magicians: they know when to share information and when to withhold. - p141

It was quite common for households in towns like mine to have BB rifles, commonly called slug guns. These were air rifles that shot very tiny soft lead pellets called slugs. They weren’t that lethal unless you shot at very close range, but they could blind you if you got shot in the eye. Most teenagers had them to control pests like rats, or to stun rabbits. However, most kids used them to shoot empty beer cans lined up on the back fence, practising their aim for the day they were old enough to purchase a serious firearm. Fortunately, a law banning guns was introduced in Australia in 1996 after thirty-five innocent people were shot with a semi-automatic weapon in a mass shooting in Tasmania. The crazy shooter must have had a slug gun when he was a teenager. But this was pre-1996. And my brothers, of course, loved shooting. My cousin Billy, who was sixteen years old at the time – twice my age – came to visit one Christmas holiday from Adelaide. He loved coming to the outback and getting feral with the rest of us. He also enjoyed hitting those empty beer cans with the slug gun. Billy wasn’t the best shooter. His hand-eye coordination was poor, and I was always convinced he needed to wear glasses. Most of the slugs he shot either hit the fence or went off into the universe somewhere. The small size of the beer cans frustrated him, so he was on the lookout for a bigger target. Sure enough, my brothers quickly pushed me forward and shouted, ‘Here, shoot Betty!’ Billy laughed, but loved the idea. ‘Brett, stand back a bit and spread your legs. I’ll shoot between them just for fun.’ Basically, he saw me as an easy target, and I wasn’t going to argue with a teenager who had a weapon in his hand. I naively thought it could be a fun game with my siblings and cousin; perhaps we could take turns. So, like a magician’s assistant, I complied and spread my skinny young legs as far apart as an eight-year-old could, fully confident he would hit the dust between them . . . Nope. He didn’t. He shot my leg, and it wasn’t fun. Birds burst out of all the surrounding trees – not from the sound of the gunshot, but from my piercing shriek of pain. While I rolled around on the ground, screaming in agony, clutching my bleeding shin, my brothers were screaming with laughter. I even heard one of them shout, ‘Shoot him while he’s down!’ Who needs enemies when you have that kind of brotherly love? No one rushed to help; they simply moved to the back fence to line up the cans for another round. I crawled inside the house with blood dripping down my leg, seeking Mum, the nurse, to patch me up. To this day, I have a scar on my leg as a souvenir from that incident . . . and I still think Billy needed glasses. I also still get very anxious when anyone asks me to spread my legs.

But for as long as I’ve done this, there are still times I’m blown away when souls drop in for a visit. I’ll never forget when, during a group reading, I saw a man sitting at the end of the dining room table. He wanted me to tell the host that he knew she was concerned about her best friend’s husband. Then he looked at me and said, “I’m going to be with my father now.” I told this story to the group in real time, and the host, overwhelmed with emotion, excused herself and left the room upset. When she came back, she said that just forty minutes before the session began, her best friend called to say that her husband died and his last words in private were, “I’m going to be with my father now.” Are you kidding me with this? If that’s a parlor trick, I’m one hell of a magician.