Quote:

“Dreams, memories, the sacred–they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles. (chapter 6 (note 1)”

Notes:

note 1: The quote comes from an epub version of the book. So it’s impossible to give the exact page, but it’s written at the beginning of the chapter.