Best Quote

[000]

And here is my LAST QUOTE ( or should that be rhyme).......called

THE HORIZONS OF THE MAGI, by Louis J. Mc Cord Sr.

I may ne'er see you again
At least.....not now.
But I hope we shall meet again
Somewhere - somehow.
And show our skill
To all who will
Be watching without sorrow
The magic of our yesterdays
And the miracles of tomorrow.

[000]

This hybrid form - a filmed magic act beefed up by film trickery-is represented by some curious survivals in the Paper Print Collection: The Magician (1900), Allabad the Arabian Wizard (1902), The Hindoo Fakir ( 1902), The Necromancer (1903)
The unidentified 'magicians' in these films may or may not have been magicians. In all the films, it can be seen on close examination that the camera was stopped at crucial points to accomplish the transformations and other ilusions. In other words, an on-camera magician no longer needed to be a magician. Magicians, by helping to create this form, had helped to make their own skills excess baggage.

Erik Barnouw, The Magician and the Cinema.( 1981)

[000]

"...Performing Dark Arts: A Cultural History of Conjuring (2007) is the kind of book most magicians resist reading. The primary reason for this is that such books seem theory-laden and few tricks are explained"

Jon Racherbaumer, Genii, October 2008.

[Leonard Hevia]

Experience is everything, anything else is just information.
--Einstein

"There is a world of difference between not knowing how an illusion is done, and knowing it can't be done."
--Simon Arronson

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
--Abraham Lincoln

Eugene Burger mentions Lincoln's quote in The Experience of Magic. According to Burger, spectators well versed in architecture intuitively understood the method of Card Warp.

[Timothy Hyde]

According to Burger, spectators well versed in architecture intuitively understood the method of Card Warp.

One should also be wary of performing the effect for astronauts, for the same reason.

[Pete McCabe]

Never do a faceup Elmsley (or Jordan) count for an audience of bridge players.

[000]

Quotes on SHOWMANSHIP FOR MAGICIANS,By Dariel Fitzkee ( 1943, $5)

"The book should be studied, not merely read, by every person who now performs magic in public, or who even hopes to do so" John Mulholland, Sphinx.

"His logic is crystal-clear, and he hits the nail on the head in every chapter. No true student of magic can afford to pass up this unique treatise." John Braun, Linking Ring

[000]

His primary interest in magic now lay in the area of theory, and specifically in answering the question "Why is magic held in such low esteem by the general public?" Dariel thought that the answer was that most magicians were such poor performers.

David Goodsell ( on Dariel Fitzkee)

[Brian Morton]

Art ( Emerson) said Larry did most of his best thinking on the toilet and could be heard shouting down the stairs "Got it!" when he'd simplified a move or solved some other magical problem

You know, when I first got into magic, I went to high school with Larry West's son Lon and daughter Lori.

I'm so glad I'm reading this now and not in 1978.

brian :eek:

[000]

"I've heard of these things called scruples. I think it's the name of the currency in some Eastern European country or something"

THE MODERN CON MAN, Todd Robbins.

[David Thomas]

"Confusion is not magic"

-Dai Vernon

[Jonathan Townsend]

Indeed, his fellow traveler replied. But this, and here he gestured meaningfully to the perforated box set on his lap, is an imaginary mongoose.

from here though there are better to be read here or in Promethea issue 12 or "Magick in Theory and Practice" ,chapter 18:

or

Practice makes perfect.

this one in context of a published interview with Alan Moore.

Only in magicdom...

[000]

"The most celebrated card performer of the world is undoubtedly , Dr Hofzinger, of Vienna. He was a government employee and as he could not appear publicly as a conjurer, he established a theatre in Vienna under the name of Madame Hofzinger. He was an educated gentleman, having received his diploma as a doctor, and his manipulation of cards has never been excelled"


H.J. Burlingame, History of Magic and Magicians ( undated, but late eighteenth century. Reprinted by Magic, Inc. as a souvenir of the 1974 Collector's Weekend.

[Richard Kaufman]

Ugh, it drives me nuts when people write "Hofzinger" instead of "Hofzinser." (Yes, 000, I do realize you were simply reprinting a quote.)

[000]

Apologies Chief, my mistake!
From the same book for those that need reminding....(late 18th century)
"The social position of the professional conjuror was at this period even more dubious than that of the actor. The prejudice against his art and its professors which had been born of ignorance and superstition was dying out with the process of mental enlightenment: but he was ranked, in common with the juggler, the posturer, and the tumbler, as a vagrant, and in his provincial ramblings was sometimes in danger of being treated in that character with the stocks. He might be patronized by the upper classes, and even by the royal family: but he was not admitted into good society, or even regarded as a respectable character. They were often confounded with fortune-tellers, and suffered in repute by the error."

[JHostler]

"It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes."

Oscar Wilde

[Ken Northridge]

"Love is the real magic."

Doug Henning

[David Acer]

"It's high time we all faced the truth: nobody cares about thimble magic."
Jay Sankey

[Doc Dixon]

I dont want to kill doves. Hugh Jackman
Then stay off the stage! Michael Caine
The Prestige

[Lee Almond]

A direct written quote from my departed friend Maurice Lowe's autograph book.
May you live as long as you want
And never want as long
As you live
May you live five years
Longer than I
And I shall never die.
Signed,
Harry Blackstone Sr. 1939
The Forum
Wichita, Ks.

[flynn]

"The method is merely the vehicle with which you get to the effect, and you want to make the method as short as possible."

Mike Maxwell in the introduction to "The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings".

[Ray T. Stott]

It's easy to grin when your ship's coming in
and you think you've got the stock market beat.

But the man that's worthwhile is the man that can smile
when his shorts are too tight in the seat.

Judge Elihu Smails -
Great American Jurist and Avid Golfer

[Dustin Stinett]

"Elihu, would you loofah my stretch marks?"
--Mrs. Smails

[Bill Mullins]

Carl Spackler: "So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking.

So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-galunga.

So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

I can't remember where I laid my cell phone last night, but I can quote minutes of dialog of this movie. What gives?

[Ray T. Stott]

"Elihu, would you loofah my stretch marks?"
--Mrs. Smails

:D :D

[Josh Mandel]

"Nobody sleeps with the emcee."

[Lee Almond]

Tonight's forecast, "Dark"
The hippy dippy weatherman.
RIP
George Carlin

[Pete McCabe]

"Continued dark throughout the evening, changing to widely scattered light in the morning."

[castawaydave]

"Classic: a book which people praise and don't read." --Mark Twain in "Following the Equator".
[In a 1900 speech called "The Disappearance of Literature" he also said, "A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."]

Thus, an offering of quotes from some "Classics" of the magic world...

From "Our Magic" by John Neville Maskelyne and David Devant:

"... magic is one of the ephemeral arts, which can only attain fruition in actual performance."

"The art of the magician...depends upon matters far higher than mere appliances and processes."

"In the hands of a skilled magician, a magical experiment becomes something vastly different from what it would be if conducted by a novice. That needs no argument whatsoever."

"Attractive personality is a good thing to possess. So also, is technical ability. But neither of those good qualities singly, nor both in conjunction, will serve to make the performer an artist. Something more is necessary. He must understand the proper method of displaying his qualifications."

"If his art is meritorious, the expert spectators will appreciate the performance highly, no matter how old, how new, how ingenious, or how simple may be the technical devices employed."

"The spectacle of a performer attempting to present in public magical feats which obviously have not passed beyond the stage of difficulty in private practice, is by no means unusual. The effect produced in the minds of spectators by witnessing such presentations is invariably of a most deplorable character."

"Never attempt, in public, anything that cannot be performed with the utmost ease in private."

"An entertainer--magician or not--must be able to make his audience think and feel as he chooses, not as accident may decide. He may excite laughter or arouse sympathy, but it must be on account of his art, not himself."

"A lifetime of effort, upon one dead level, is of less value than a single step toward higher aims."


From "Magic by Misdirection" by Dariel Fitzkee:

"The magician is smartly groomed. He is polished, refined, confident, poised."

"Interpretation... is the explanation, construction or sense given by the performer to the spectator... This is probably the most potent individual weapon at the disposal of the magician. Through it, it becomes possible for him to justify and explain an action that is suspicious or even revealing. It diverts suspicion... It causes the significant to become insignificant. Interpretation makes the bait look like a hearty and tasty meal. It converts an act of burglery into a mere social call."

"If the performer is skillful, there is no external distinction between deception and truth."

"Whether the spectator knows the performer's true thought or something else is entirely within the performer's control. He may reveal or conceal as he sees fit."

"Naturalness is an anesthetic to attention."

"Effective attention control is never recognized as such."

"And so a classic is born. It becomes a classic because it fits the average style and the average abilities."

"Naturally, all of this discussion, all of these examples... impress upon one the complexity and intricacy of expert deception."


From "Expert At The Card Table" by S.W. Erdnase:

"It will have been seen by the foregoing that the presentation of a card trick may contain much more bosh than action, and indeed the performance... might be advantageously prolonged by a great deal more nonsense. In all card entertainments the more palaver, the more the interest is excited and the address and patter of the performer will count as much if not more than his skill in manipulation."

"... there are many...who cannot make an ordinary shuffle or 'riffle' without bending, breaking, exposing or in some way ruining half the cards, and such bunglers must learn to handle a deck gracefully before attempting a flight to the higher branches of card manipulation."

[Dick Christian]

From a subscriber to that "other" forum (the Genii Forum's bastard cousin, the Magic Cafe) in reference to many of its members: "I think the problem is many people who want to be magicians, are exactly the sort of people who shouldn't be magicians."

[David Alexander]

"The confidence of the amateur is the envy of the professional."

-Jean George Nathan
American drama and social critic

Nathan was commenting about amateur writers, but the quote applies to the magic community as well.

[Watson]

"What the eye see and the ears hear, the mind believes."
- Houdini

But I don't think this is the right way 'round. A more accurate quote should be something like:
"What the mind sees, the eye believes."

:)

[Eric Fry]

I once read something by a psychologist that is pertinent to magic, although he wasn't writing about magic. The comment was something like this: We see what we expect to see, and what we expect to see is what we already know.

In other words, as I interpret it: We have a hard time truly noticing something novel. Our brain, with its habitual thinking and limited knowledge, gets in the way of our perception.

We frequently take advantage of this in magic.

[David Alexander]

Eric's post reminds me of a Tim Leary observation:
"Convictions cause convicts."

[Dick Christian]

Without addressing the multitude of underlying inherent human biases, many of which are the inevitable result of our evolution, Eric's post is summed up in one of the statements I make in my presentations on principles of deception as part of the training programs at our various national intelligence agencies -- "believing is seeing."

[Eric Fry]

I tracked down the scrap of paper on which I wrote the author's comment. I'm sorry I can't name the author. I hope I didn't misrepresent the gist of it.

The actual wording, which is better-stated than my paraphrase, is: "The eyes see in things only what they look for, and they look for what is already in their mind."

The correct wording makes a more apt statement for magicians because, of course, we tell people what to look for...

[Brad Henderson]

"Magic results not from the manipulation of objects, but from the manipulation of people's perceptions."

[Lee Almond]

From the foreword of Bro John Hamman's book. "Magic is in the mind of the spectator-not in your fingers". I posted this on Conjure Nation's website and damn did I get flamed from the a- holes on that site. Guess all on CN know more about card magic than Bro. John Hamman. NOT! Peace to all that know.
Lee,

[Joe Mckay]

There was a thread on this forum about a year ago - it was asking why people were interested in magic. Various people wrote about what it was that most interested them in magic. Well, I remember Bob Farmer's response - he said something along the lines of how he was interested that "one set of actions by one person preceived in a different order by another person can result in the perception of magic". That is just what I can recall and I may have mis-remembered it slightly. Well, I think it is a very elegant and concise way of looking at magic and I hope if Bob reads this, he can correct my memory with the correct quotation...

Joe

[Dick Christian]

The Hamman quote cited by Lee Almond is probably based on the following from Dariel Fitzkees classic Magic By Misdirection:

"The true skill of the magician is in the skill he exhibits in influencing the spectator's mind. This is not a thing of mechanics. It is not a thing of digital dexterity. It is entirely a thing of psychological attack. It is completely a thing of controlling the spectator's thinking. Control of the perceptive faculties has nothing whatever to do with it. Convincingly interpreting, to the spectator, what the senses bring to him, in such a way that the magician's objectives are accomplished, is the true skill of the magician."