“I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“Dreams are imperfections of sleep; even so is consciousness the imperfection of waking.
Dreams are impurities in the circulation of the blood; even so it's consciousness a disorder of life.
Dreams are without proportion, without good sense, without truth; so also is consciousness.
Awake from dream, the truth is known: awake from waking. The truth is: The Unknown”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“The Universe is the Practical Joke of the General
at the expense of the Particular, quoth FRATER
PERDURABO, and laughed.
But those disciples nearest to him wept, seeing the
Universal Sorrow.
Those next to them laughed, seeing the Universal Joke.
Below these certain disciples wept,
Then certain laughed.
Others next wept.
Others next laughed.
Next others wept.
Next others laughed.
Last came those that wept because they could not
see the Joke, and those that laughed lest they
should be thought not to see the Joke, and thought
it safe to act like FRATER PERDURABO.
But though FRATER PERDURABO laughed
openly, He also at the same time wept secretly;
and in Himself He neither laughed nor wept.
Nor did He mean what He said.”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“A red rose absorbs all colors but red; red is therefore the one color that it is not.”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the most certain it is that I only assert a limitation.”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“This is the Night wherein I'm lost, the Love through which I am no longer”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“Keep on acquiring a taste for what is naturally repugnant; this is an unfailing source of pleasure.”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“In the wind of the mind arises the turbulence called I.
It breaks; down shower the barren thoughts.
All life is choked.
This desert is the abyss wherein the Universe.
The Stars are but thistles in that waste.
Yet this desert is but one spot accursed in a world of bliss”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“For when all is equilibrated, when all is beheld from without all, there is joy, joy, joy that is but one facet of a diamond, every other facet whereof is more joyful than joy itself.”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“Awake from dream, the truth is known: awake from waking. The truth is: The Unknown”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“10. WINDLESTRAWS. KEΦAΔH I WINDLESTRAWS The Abyss of Hallucinations has Law and Reason; but in Truth there is no bond between the Toys of the Gods. This Reason and Law is the Bond of the Great Lie. Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations. There is no silence in that Abyss: for all that men call Silence is Its Speech. This Abyss is also called "Hell", and "The Many." Its name is "Consciousness", and "The Universe", among men. But THAT which neither is silent, nor speaks, rejoices therein.”
― Aleister Crowley, quote from The Book of Lies
“And you could try to stop pretending to be so fucking perfect. Maybe then people will stop expecting perfection all the time”
― Ais, quote from The Interludes
“Summer days, and the flat water meadows and the blue hills in the distance, and the willows up the backwater and the pools underneath like a kind of deep green glass. Summer evenings, the fish breaking the water, the nightjars hawking round your head, the smell of nightstocks and latakia. Don’t mistake what I’m talking about. It’s not that I’m trying to put across any of that poetry of childhood stuff. I know that’s all baloney. Old Porteous (a friend of mine, a retired schoolmaster, I’ll tell you about him later) is great on the poetry of childhood. Sometimes he reads me stuff about it out of books. Wordsworth. Lucy Gray. There was a time when meadow, grove, and all that. Needless to say he’s got no kids of his own. The truth is that kids aren’t in any way poetic, they’re merely savage little animals, except that no animal is a quarter as selfish.
A boy isn’t interested in meadows, groves, and so forth. He never looks at a landscape, doesn’tgive a damn for flowers, and unless they affect him in some way, such as being good to eat, he doesn’t know one plant from another. Killing things - that’s about as near to poetry as a boy gets. And yet all the while there’s that peculiar intensity, the power of longing for things as you can’t long when you’re grown up, and the feeling that time stretches out and out in front of you and that whatever you’re doing you could go on for ever.”
― George Orwell, quote from Coming Up for Air
“We wish you a merry Christmas” is the most demanding song ever. It starts off all nice and a second later you have an angry mob at your door scream-singing, “Now bring us some figgy pudding and bring it RIGHT HERE. WE WON’T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME SO BRING IT RIGHT HERE.” Also, they’re rhyming “here” with “here.” That’s just sloppy. I’m not rewarding unrequested, lazy singers with their aggressive pudding demands. There should be a remix of that song that homeowners can sing that’s all “I didn’t even ask for your shitty song, you filthy beggars. I’ve called the cops. Who is this even working on? Has anyone you’ve tried this on actually given you pudding? Fig-flavored pudding? Is that even a thing?” It doesn’t rhyme but it’s not like they’re trying either. And then the carolers would be like, “SO BRING US SOME GIN AND TONIC AND LET’S HAVE A BEER,” and then I’d be like, “Well, I guess that’s more reasonable. Fine. You can come in for one drink.” Technically that would be a good way to get free booze. Like trick-or-treat but for singy alcoholics. Oh my God, I finally understand caroling.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
“Book light,” Grandma grumbles as I hurry her away from Dad’s boss and his wife. “Who the hell wants
a book light?”
“Lots of people,” I say. “They are very handy things to have.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Queen of Babble
“And from that moment, I watched her. Watched her with different coloured eyes, until the raging energy that coursed through my body finally revealed itself and gave itself a name: envy. For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced itself with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear, a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice, and it was a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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