RS Classics: Saturday Quote-a-thon! Magic and Dragons

Ah, yes, that's me all over, moving from hardcore science to magic and dragons. We do like to mix things up.

OK, folks, finding good dragon quotes is not so easy. So, I expanded it a bit to cover both magic and dragons and this is what I came up with. Sadly, I had to go searching for some. I didn’t have them already in my collection.

I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?
-John Lennon

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-Arthur C. Clarke

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.
-Daniel Burnham

First rule of magic: Don’t let anyone know your real name. Names have power.
-Neil Gaiman

No magic can change something into something that it is not; the imaginative transformation at the heart magic is recognition, not creation.
-Susan Palwick

Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.
-Nora Roberts, as quoted in Rainbow Bridge Farm (2003) by Lynn Roberson, p. 127

If we are to have magical bodies, we must have magical minds.
-Dr Wayne Dyer

Poetry is a kind of magic that very few can create and even fewer can truly understand and appreciate in all its glory.
-Dennis Gabor

A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.
-Caroline Gordon

Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
-Martha Graham

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
-Robert A. Heinlein

When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves.
-Alice Hoffman

Books are a uniquely portable magic.
-Stephen King

The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.
-Blaine Lee

That’s the thing with magic. You’ve got to know it’s still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.
-Charles de Lint

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.
-John Mortimer

A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.
-Earl Nightingale

The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.
-José Ortega y Gasset

There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment
-Norman Vincent Peale

It’s only in innocence you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.
-Sean Penn

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?
-J. B. Priestley

There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.
-Lou Reed

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
-Tom Robbins

Here we have a game that combines the charm of a Pentagon briefing with the excitement of double-entry bookkeeping.
– Cecil Adams (On Dungeons & Dragons)

Then, because I’m easily amused, I included some bumper sticker/T-shirt dragon slogans.

If you can’t stand the heat, don’t tickle the dragon.

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

When you find yourself in the company of a halfling and a Dragon, remember, you do not have to outrun the Dragon, you just have to outrun the halfling.

If you have any others you think I should add to the collection, don’t hesitate to share. I always like to add to my collection. And don’t forget to vote for next week. Vote well and vote often! Cheating encouraged!

(One commentor added two pertinent quotes so I'll include them here)

“For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and even trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom.”
–Ursula K. Le Guin, “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?”

“Make these stories dragons. Dragons can’t fly with unnecessary scales crusting them down, or with a hundred yards of tail dragging behind them. Make them strong instead, sleek, fast, aggressive, and filled with enough fire to toast the reader’s ass.”
–Limyaael, “Keeping Those Dragons Alive”