Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature.

Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.

Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life.

The development of beings with minds is probably the highest individuation the world has ever known, and its prehistory is the history of life on earth.

The power of magic has no known limits. A person knows, in a fair way, his own physical capacities, the weight of the blows he can deal, the furthest range of his arrows, the strength of his voice, the speed and endurance of his running; but the reaches of his mind are indefinite and, to his feeling, infinite.

Religion, even the most primitive and superstitious, is inevitably a beginning of culture. It is not possible without some kind of symbolic expression ... and begets dramatic gesture, dance, and chant.