"Merlin: Tricks? Gadzooks, Madam, these are not tricks! I do magic. I — I create, I transpose, I transubstantiate, I break up, I recombine — but I never trick!"

"Apollonius of Tyana: I only read futures; I don't evaluate them."

"All those stories about me, they're lies. I'm not a bank robber or a cattle rustler, and I've never kicked a woman in the stomach even once, really!"

"Now, come on, Doc! What kind of oriental hocus-pocus is going on around here? A circus with no wagons, no animals, no cages? A crazy old magician? What's it all about?"

"Mike, the whole world is a circus if you look at it the right way. Every time you pick up a handful of dust, and see not the dust, but a mystery, a marvel, there in your hand, every time you stop and think, "I'm alive, and being alive is fantastic!" Every time such a thing happens, Mike, you are part of the Circus of Dr. Lao."

"My dear lady, the role of skeptic becomes you not. There are things in the world not even the experience of a lifetime spent in Abalone could conceive of."

"You worry too much. You worry about how I brought my circus to Abalone with wagons. You worry about the future of your town. Or, if the sun will rise a year from today. The answer is to such matters, remain closed behind a curtain. Then, time says, presto! And out they come."

"Now, Mr. Cunningham, do you suppose this garrulous intruder may be a... a swindler, perhaps, an assassin, a charlatan plotting some curious disaster for your town? Such characters exist, but they are secretive rather than mysterious. I, sir, am a major mystery."

"Whatever men do not understand they find unconvincing."