Home > Topic > potions
1 " And didst thou imbibe mighty potions from the fruit of the grape (...)? And hast thou one Ache, this morning (...) appertaining unto Head, and much repentance in thy Soul forsooth? "
― Patrick Hamilton , The Slaves of Solitude
2 " By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory. "
― , Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
3 " Kisses were better than potions. "
― Gail Carson Levine , Fairest
4 " The vain woman spent fortunes seeking out astrologers, sorcerers, and magicians who would concoct spells and potions to preserve her beauty and help her remain looking young--but envy is hard to cover. "
― Camron Wright , Serann and the Prince of Angkor: A Cambodian Cinderella Story
5 " The dark ages are obscure but they were not weird. Magicians there were, to be sure, and miracles. In the flickering firelight of the winter hearth, mead songs were sung of dragons and ring-givers, of fell deeds and famine, of portents and vengeful gods. Strange omens in the sky were thought to foretell evil times. But in a world where the fates seemed to govern by whimsy and caprice, belief in sympathetic magic, superstition and making offerings to spirits was not much more irrational than believing in paper money: trust is an expedient currency. There were charms to ward of dwarfs, water-elf disease and swarms of bees; farmers recited spells against cattle thieves and women knew of potions to make men more - or less - virile. Soothsayers, poets and those who remembered the genealogies of kings were held in high regard. The past was an immense source of wonder and inspiration, of fear and foretelling. "
6 " Let us drink wine to remember what kind of mystical beauties life offers us and to comprehend what sort of magic potions existence has! "
― Mehmet Murat ildan
7 " No matter who you were in sixteenth-century Europe, you could be sure of two things: you would be lucky to reach fifty years of age, and you could expect a life of discomfort and pain. Old age tires the body by thirty-five, Erasmus lamented, but half the population did not live beyond the age of twenty. There were doctors and there was medicine, but there does not seem to have been a great deal of healing. Anyone who could afford to seek a doctor's aid did so eagerly, but the doctor was as likely to maim or kill as to cure. His potions were usually noxious and sometimes fatal—but they could not have been as terrible and traumatic as the contemporary surgical methods. The surgeon and the Inquisitor differed only in their motivation: otherwise, their batteries of knives, saws, and tongs for slicing, piercing, burning, and amputating were barely distinguishable. Without any anesthetic other than strong liquor, an operation was as bad as the torments of hell. "
― Philip Ball , The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science
