In vain we labour at the loathsome task Not knowing if we wake or sleep ; But in the end we lift the plum

"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"

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

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"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!"

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

"We must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige."

"Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life...."

"What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over."

"I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion."

"The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them."

"May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!"

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

"Virtue is but heroic bravery, to do the thing thought to be true, in spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all temptations or menaces."

"That which we say and do, if its effects last not beyond our lives, is unimportant."

"Man is not to be comprehended as a starting-point, or progress as a goal, without those two great forces , Faith and Love . Prayer is sublime."