“What alchemy there was in human beings.”

“Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you've been given the door with open.”

“Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure - such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.”

“What is cheaper than lust or of less value than alchemy or aphrodisiacs?”

“The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.”

“What is the alternative to religion as we know it? As it turns out, this is the wrong question to ask. Chemistry was not an “alternative” to alchemy; it was a wholesale exchange of ignorance at its most rococo for genuine knowledge. We will find that, as with alchemy, to speak of “alternatives” to religious faith is to miss the point.”