Harry Houdini Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

My professional life has been a constant record of disillusion, and many things that seem wonderful to most men are the every-day commonplaces of my business.

Harry Houdini
The great day of the Fire-eater - or, should I say, the day of the great Fire-eater - has passed.

Harry Houdini
It is needless to say that women make the most patient as well as the most dangerous pickpockets.

Harry Houdini
An old trick well done is far better than a new trick with no effect.

Harry Houdini
Pickpockets either work alone or in pairs, or what is called a mob.

Harry Houdini
The secret of showmanship consists not of what you really do, but what the mystery-loving public thinks you do.

Harry Houdini
The pickpocket is usually very well dressed and of prepossessing appearance.

Harry Houdini
My business has given me an intimate knowledge of stage illusions, together with many years of experience among show people of all types. My familiarity with the former, and what I have learned of the psychology of the latter, has placed me at a certain advantage in uncovering the natural explanation of feats that to the ignorant have seemed supernatural.

Harry Houdini
"All wonder," said Samuel Johnson, "is the effect of novelty on ignorance." Yet we are so created that without something to wonder at we should find life scarcely worth living. That fact does not make ignorance bliss, or make it "folly to be wise." For the wisest man never gets beyond the reach of novelty, nor can ever make it his boast that there is nothing he is ignorant of; on the contrary, the wiser he becomes the more clearly he sees how much there is of which he remains in ignorance. The more he knows, the more he will find to wonder at.

Harry Houdini
I knew, as everyone knows, that the easiest way to attract a crowd is to let it be known that at a given time and a given place some one is going to attempt something that in the event of failure will mean sudden death. That's what attracts us to the man who paints the flagstaff on the tall building, or to the 'human fly' who scales the walls of the same building.

Harry Houdini
Another method of eating burning coals employs small balls of burned cotton in a dish of burning alcohol.

Harry Houdini
No performer should attempt to bite off red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth.

Harry Houdini
How the early priests came into possession of these secrets does not appear, and if there were ever any records of this kind the Church would hardly allow them to become public.

Harry Houdini
Flames from the lips may be produced by holding in the mouth a sponge saturated with the purest gasoline.

Harry Houdini
Fire has always been and, seemingly, will always remain, the most terrible of the elements.

Harry Houdini
Disloyalty in trusted servants is one of the most disheartening things that can happen to a public performer. But it must not be thought that I say this out of personal experience: for in the many years that I have been before the public my secret methods have been steadily shielded by the strict integrity of my assistants, most of whom have been with me for years. Only one man ever betrayed my confidence, and that only in a minor matter. But then, so far as I know, I am the only performer who ever pledged his assistant to secrecy, honor and allegiance under a notarial oath.

Harry Houdini
Rosabelle — answer — tell — pray, answer — look — tell — answer, answer — tell.
The secret message devised with his wife to test spiritualist séances should he or she die.

Harry Houdini
It is still an open question, however, as to what extent exposure really injures a performer.

Harry Houdini
To cause the face to appear in a mass of flame make use of the following: mix together thoroughly petroleum, lard, mutton tallow and quick lime. Distill this over a charcoal fire, and the liquid which results can be burned on the face without harm.

Harry Houdini
In all feats of fire-eating it should be noted that the head is thrown well back, so that the flame may pass out of the open mouth instead of up into the roof, as it would if the head were held naturally.

Harry Houdini
Eating coals of fire has always been one of the sensational feats of the Fire Kings, as it is quite generally known that charcoal burns with an extremely intense heat.

Harry Houdini
The eating of burning brimstone is an entirely fake performance.

Harry Houdini