Alchemists Quotes

1. "Master Li, how are we going to murder a man who laughs at axes?" I asked.We are going to experiment, dear boy. Our first order of business will be to find a deranged alchemist, which should not be very difficult. China," said Master Li, "is overstocked with deranged alchemists."
Author: Barry Hughart

2. "In a way, we are magicians. We are alchemists, sorcerers and wizards. We are a very strange bunch. But there is great fun in being a wizard."
Author: Billy Joel

3. "Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?"
Author: Catherynne M. Valente

4. "And the continual non-up-turnance of so valuable a commodity as a giant squid—the thought of getting their alembics on which made the city's alchemists whine like dogs—was provoking more and more interest from London's repo-men and -women."
Author: China Miéville

5. "It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,' we might believe them; but were they to cry ‘if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,' we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific."
Author: Cyril Connolly

6. "Could I interrupt here, because there is an alternative explanation, which you are particularly well placed to examine. You know the argument that it is the alchemists in the laboratories who invent the sweet new kits."
Author: E. P. Thompson

7. "With or without our knowledge, we are all alchemists."
Author: Eric Micha'el Leventhal

8. "Men wholly bent on wordly treasures were the dupes of their own passions, rather than deceived by the writings or pretenses of those who claimed to be Alchemists."
Author: Ethan A. Hitchcock

9. "The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: ... Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of life."
Author: Hermann Franz Moritz Kopp

10. "The streets of Prague were a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century—or the twentieth or nineteenth, for that matter. It was a city of alchemists and dreamers, its medieval cobbles once trod by golems, mystics, invading armies. Tall houses glowed goldenrod and carmine and eggshell blue, embellished with Rococo plasterwork and capped in roofs of uniform red. Baroque cupolas were the soft green of antique copper, and Gothic steeples stood ready to impale fallen angels. The wind carried the memory of magic, revolution, violins, and the cobbled lanes meandered like creeks. Thugs wore Motzart wigs and pushed chamber music on street corners, and marionettes hung in windows, making the whole city seem like a theater with unseen puppeteers crouched behind velvet."
Author: Laini Taylor

11. "Plants are nature's alchemists, expert at transforming water, soil and sunlight into an array of precious substances, many of them beyond the ability of human beings to conceive, much less manufacture."
Author: Michael Pollan

12. "Ares always reemerges from the chaos. It will never go away. Athenian civilization defends itself from the forces of Ares with metis, or technology. Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists' uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn't work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish."
Author: Neal Stephenson

13. "And what went wrong when other alchemists tried to make gold and were unable to do so?""They were looking only for gold his companion answered. They were seeking the treasure of their personal legend, without wanting actually to live out the personal legend."
Author: Paulo Coelho

14. "Men command the world that they know . Everything that men know they make their own. Everything that they learn, they claim for themselves. They are like the alchemists who took for the laws that govern the world, and then want to own them and keep them secret. Everything they discover,they hug to themselves: they shape knowledge into their own selfish image. What is left to us women but the realms of the unknown?"
Author: Philippa Gregory

15. "Hey, have you ever heard of the Alchemists? " "Sure, " he said."Of course you have. " "Why? Did you run into them? " "Kind of. " "What'd you do? " "Why do you think I did anything? " He laughed. "Alchemists only show up when trouble happens, and you bring trouble wherever you go. Be careful, though. They're religious nuts." "That's kind of extreme," I said. "Just don't let them convert you." He winked. "I like you being the sinner you are."
Author: Richelle Mead

16. "Are you okay with what we ordered?" Angeline asked him. "You didn't pipe up with any requests." Neil shook his head, face stoic. He kept his dark hair in a painfully short and efficient haircut. It was the kind of no-nonsense thing the Alchemists would've loved. "I can't waste time quibbling over trivial things like pepperoni and mushrooms. If you'd gone to my school in Devonshire, you'd understand. For one of my sophomore classes, they left us alone on the moors to fend for ourselves and learn survival skills. Spend three days eating twigs and heather, and you'll learn not to argue about any food coming your way." Angeline and Jill cooed as though that was the most rugged, manly thing they'd ever heard. Eddie wore an expression that reflected what I felt, puzzling over whether this guy was as serious as he seemed or just some genius with swoon-worthy lines."
Author: Richelle Mead

17. "I thought Alchemists avoided alcohol the same way they do primary colors."
Author: Richelle Mead

18. "I decided the Alchemists needed an entire department devoted to handling Adrian Ivashkov."
Author: Richelle Mead

19. "The Alchemists' beliefs are my beliefs," I say quickly.She arched an eyebrow. "Are they? I would hope your beliefs would be your beliefs."I'd never thought about it that way before, but I suddenly hoped desperately that her words were true."
Author: Richelle Mead

20. "Sydney, don't leave Adrian because of me.""It's more complicated than that," I said automatically."It's really not," she said. "From everything I've seen and heard, you're just afraid. You've always controlled every detail of your life. When you couldn't-like with the Alchemists-you found a way to seize back that control.""There is nothing wrong with wanting control," I snapped."Except that we can't always have it, and sometimes that is a good thing. A great thing, even," she added. "And that's how it is with Adrian. No matter how hard you try, you aren't going to be able to control your feelings for him. You can't help loving him, and so you're running away. I'm just an excuse."
Author: Richelle Mead

21. "What were you thinking?" I demanded once we were moving to the music. I was trying to ignore his hands. "Do you know how much trouble you may have gotten me in?"Adrian grinned. "Nah. They all feel bad for you. You'll achieve martyrdom after dancing with a mean, wicked vampire. Job security with the Alchemists."
Author: Richelle Mead

22. "As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams."
Author: W.B. Yeats

23. "The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words."
Author: William H. Gass

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