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The purpose of ghost stories is extortion, generally: to frighten poor folks into paying for prayers and charms to protect them.

— Hilary Mantel The Mirror & the Light (2020)

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Prayer

More quotes by Hilary Mantel

He will remember his first sight of the open sea: a gray wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream.

Wolf Hall (2009)

It is a sure sign of troubled minds, the habit of quotation.

Wolf Hall (2009)

A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old.

Wolf Hall (2009)

Lent saps the spirits, as of course it is designed to do.

Wolf Hall (2009)

Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it.

Wolf Hall (2009)

All Hilary Mantel quotes →

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When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God.

Basil of Caesarea

Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside.

Plato

To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer.

Claude Debussy Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933)

"O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small."

John F. Kennedy

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hilary Mantel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.