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Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley Quotes

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Famous Aleister Crowley Quotes

“The affiliation clause in our Constitution is a privilege: a courtesy to a sympathetic body. Were you not a Mason, or Co-Mason, you would have to be proposed and seconded, and then examined by savage Inquisitors, and then-probably-thrown out on the garbage heap. Well, no, it's not as bad as that; but we certainly don't want anybody who chooses to apply. Would you do it yourself, if you were on the Committee of a Club? The O.T.O. is a serious body, engaged on a work of Cosmic scope. You should question yourself: what can I contribute?”

IfsWantShouldWellsBodySeriousConstitutionPrivilegeClubsEngagedThrownCosmicSavagesCommitteesScopeGarbageCourtesySympatheticDo It YourselfClausesMasonsAffiliation
Author:Aleister Crowley
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“To knot a sentence up properly, it has to be thought out carefully, and revised. New phrases have to be put in; sudden changes of subject must be introducted; verbs must be shifted to unsuspected localities; short words must be excised with ruthless hand; archaisms must be sprinkled like sugar-plums upon the concoction; the fatal human tendency to say things straightforwardly must be detected and defeated by adroit reversals; and, if a glimmer of meaning yet remain under close scrutiny, it must be removed by replacing all the principal verbs by paraphrases in some dead language.”

IfsHumansHandsLanguageSubjectsSentencesTendenciesPhrasesSugarPrincipalDefeatedRuthlessVerbsKnotsScrutinyPlumsReversalParaphraseLocalityShort WordsSudden Change
Author:Aleister Crowley
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“If you examine the highest poetry in the light of common sense, you can only say that it is rubbish; and in actual fact you cannot so examine it at all, because there is something in poetry which is not in the words themselves, which is not in the images suggested by the words 'O windy star blown sideways up the sky!' True poetry is itself a magic spell which is a key to the ineffable.”

IfsFactsLightPoetryStarsCommonMagicSkyKeysHighestCommon SensePoetry IsSpellsRubbishSidewaysIneffableWindy
Book:Eight Lectures on Yoga
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“It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy.”

IfsCountryDoneFormSexNaturalExampleTerribleThousandNormalResponsibleErrorsInstinctImpulseCrushPreoccupationSuppressionPuritanMorbidPerversion
Book:Moonchild
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“To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called?”

IfsMenShouldBookMankindDutyDemandMessagesHighestSeasonsDareAutumnHonorablePublishersAutumn Season
Author:Aleister Crowley
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“If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.”

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Author:Aleister Crowley
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“It sometimes strikes me that the whole of science is a piece of impudence; that nature can afford to ignore our impertinent interference. If our monkey mischief should ever reach the point of blowing up the earth by decomposing an atom, and even annihilated the sun himself, I cannot really suppose that the universe would turn a hair.”

IfsShouldWarSometimesWholeEarthTurnsUniverseSunPiecesHairStrikesAtomsMonkeysMischiefInterferenceBlowing UpImpudence
Author:Aleister Crowley
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