Aleister Crowley · 960 pages
Rating: (658 votes)
“The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.”
“Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.”
“Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.”
“Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life....”
“Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.”
“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. [....] The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”
“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.”
“...in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.”
“Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgement and practice than in any other branch of physics.”
“I discover, too, that grief is different to different people. Comes in many guises. In shocked silences and closed doors around our village, as people try to shut it out. That a blank face or fleeting smile can hide the worst, most private kind of agony.”
“You see de white gown she wears, richly embroidered, showing de family’s wealth and influence,” said Daphne authoritatively. “De red rose in her hair symbolizes her Spanish ancestry. De prayer book in her left hand to display de Catholic allegiance.”
“What does the dog symbolize?” Sarah asked. Daphne blinked at her for a moment.
“De dog is just a dog,” she said, finally.”
“The lion-as proud as the diamond bright,
Though the spell may be clouding that radiant light-in the death of the sun what's amiss will then mend, while the raven is dying discloses the end.”
“There were only two real people in the world, Chris and this woman whose personality was sounding through her squalor like a beautiful voice singing in a darkened room, and I was absorbed in a mental vision of them.”
“You can love an illusion, but the illusion can't love you back.”
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