Aleister Crowley Quotes

Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty.

Chinese civilisation is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle.

There is a splendour in my name hidden and glorious, as the sun of midnight is ever the son.

30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops an does naught. 31. If power asks why, then power is weakness.

I'm a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them.

I've written this to keep from crying. But I am crying, only the tears won't come.

Love is a virtue; it grows stronger and purer and less selfish by applying it to what it loathes; but theft is a vice involving the slave-idea that one's neighbor is superior to oneself.

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

Man has the right . . . to play as he will . . . to think what he will: to speak what he will: to write what he will: to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will: to dress as he will.

Alas the Master; so he sinks in death. But whoso knows the mystery of man Sees life and death as curves of the same plan

Initiation means the Journey Inwards: nothing is changed or can be changed; but all is trulier understood with every step.

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!

I am alone. There is no God where I am.

I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.

Acts which are essentially dishonourable must not be done; they would be justified only by calm contemplation of their correctness in abstract cases.

Morality can muddle mystical understanding and virtue is only necessary in so far as it favours success. All wisdom must be encompassed in order to achieve enlightenment.

Religion itself becomes offensively monotonous. On every point of vantage are pagodas -- stupid stalagmites of stagnant piety.

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.

Toronto as a city carries out the idea of Canada as a country. It is a calculated crime against the aspirations of the soul and the affection of the heart.

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work.

It is only necessary to destroy in oneself the roots of those motives which determine a man's course, in order to enjoy the omnipotence and immunity of a god.

We can no longer assert any single proposition, unless we guard ourselves by enumerating countless conditions which must be assumed.

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

A madhouse of frenzied moneymaking and frenzied pleasure-seeking, with none of the corners chipped off. It is beautifully situatedand the air reminds one curiously of Edinburgh.

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.

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

Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them...

One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously but to take it seriously one must be already mad.

Belief is the enemy of knowledge.

Woe to that seven months abortion who thinks to take advantage of the accidents of birth, and, mocking the call of duty, sneaks off to stare at a wall in China!

I seem to remember asking myself if I was insane, and answering, ''Of couse I am - sanity is a compromise. Sanity is the thing that keeps one back.

...the sole test of music is its power to exalt the soul.

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.

The keystone… some have called God, some Brahma, some Zeus… some even IAO… but in truth, O seeker, it is Thy-SELF.

There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.Love is the law, love under will.

...the true test of the perversity of a pleasure is that it occupies a disproportionate amount of the attention.

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.

And allow me again to assure you that when you've got yourself going, doing your True Will, you won't find you have any time to get bored.

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.

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.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.