"The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript."

"Your friends will notice at once that glib vacuities fail to impress, and hate you, and tell lies about you. It's worth it."

"He shall fall down into a pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of reason."

"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."

"...in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless."

"For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union."

"Don't talk for five minutes, there's a good chap! I've a strange feeling come over me--almost as if I were going to think!"

"64. I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky."

"This complaining rambling rubbish is the substitute which has taken the place of love."

"The key of joy is disobedience."

"Since all things are God, in all things thou seest just so much of God as thy capacity affordeth thee."

"I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman."

"The man who denounces life merely defines himself as the man who is unequal to it."

"A man friends are more capable of working him harm than strangers; and his greatest danger lies in his own habits."

"Their false compassion is called compassion and their false understanding is called understanding, for this is their most potent spell."

"The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the most certain it is that I only assert a limitation."

"This is the Night wherein I'm lost, the Love through which I am no longer"

"30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought. 31. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness."

"A red rose absorbs all colors but red; red is therefore the one color that it is not."

"Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light."

"Keep on acquiring a taste for what is naturally repugnant; this is an unfailing source of pleasure."

"Keep on acquiring a taste for what is naturally repugnant; this is an unfailing source of pleasure."

"There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."

"The first condition of success in magick is purity of purpose."

"Chaos is Peace… Blackness, blackness intolerable, before the beginning of the light. This is the first verse of Genesis. Holy art thou, Chaos, Chaos, Eternity, all contradictions in terms!"

"The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites."

"The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego—or what not."

"I am perplexed"

"Light illuminates the path of humanity: it is our own fault if we go over the brink."

"To resist and subdue Nature is to make for one's self a personal and imperishable life: it is to break free from the vicissitudes of Life and Death."

"I do not think we were afraid of death; life had become such an infinitely boring alternation between a period of stimulation which failed to stimulate and of depression which hardly even depressed."

"Light, Life and Love are like three glow-worms at thy feet: the whole universe of stars, the dewdrops on the grass whereon thou walkest!"

"We [of Thelema] are whole-hearted extroverts; the penalty of restricting oneself is anything from neurosis to down right lunacy; in particular, melancholia."

"Stab your demoniac smile to my brain, Soak me in cognac, love, and cocaine"

"Thou hast no right but to do thy will... For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect."

"She it is, she, that found me In the morphia honeymoon; With silk and steel she bound me In her poisonous milk she drowned me, Even now her arms surround me"

"The technical developments of almost every form of wealth [e.g., oil, minerals] are the forebears of Big Business; and Big Business, directly or indirectly, is the immediate cause of War."

"It is as if the first diviner of absinthe had been indeed a magician intent upon a combination of sacred drugs which should cleanse, fortify and perfume the human soul."

"Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains."

"Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt"

"Sleep I forget. Her silky breath no longer fans my ears; I dream I float on some forgotten stream that hath a saviour still of death,"

"This is th' abyss. Behold wherein I lurk The lazar-house my mind, wherein do work The horrid charnel-priests, whose loathly song Sickens my soul, and quells the spirit strong."

"Love in a night shall live and die, Love in a day shall wing and fly; Love in the Spring shall last an hour, Easily fade a spring-tide flower."

"All this is true and false; and it is true and false to say that it is true and false."

"Like clouds in rain, like seas Exultant as they roll, We mix in ecstasies, And, as breeze melts in breeze, Thy soul becomes my soul."

"But to understand English is one thing; to understand an Englishman who talks is another."

"When we've all finished talking, there's something that never utters a word, but goes right down through the earth, plumb to the centre."

"Do what thou wilt, the most sublimely austere ethical precept ever uttered, despite its apparent license."

"Must not understanding lie open unto wisdom as the pyramids lie open to the stars? (6:2)"

"Verily, I say unto thee, many are the adepts that have looked upon the back parts of my father, and cried, "our eyes fail before the glory of thy countenance."