I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.

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

Indubitably, magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics.

Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.

The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.

I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.

Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.

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

Intolerance is evidence of impotence.

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.

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.

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

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.

I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.

If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.

I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.

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.

The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.

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.

Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life.

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.

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 fulfill it according to the law of light.

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.

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!

Love is the only principle which makes life tolerable.

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.

One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

The belief that the good in American society will finally win out... I don't believe any more.

Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture.

That friend a great man's ruin strongly checks, who rails into his belief all his defects.

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.

It is my belief that one's salary is between an individual and the IRS.

It is my belief that we all have the need to feel special. It is this need that can bring out the best in us, yet the worst in us.

I am always easy of belief when the creed pleases me.

The truth is that relative income is not directly related to happiness. Nonpartisan social-survey data clearly show that the big driver of happiness is earned success: a person's belief that he has created value in his life or the life of others.

Effective use of Braille is as important to the blind as independent mobility, knowledge in the use of adaptive technology, and the core belief that equality, opportunity and security are truly possible for all people who are blind.

Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.

I think that the core doctrines of Christianity - the incarnation, the resurrection, life after death-these are as strong as ever. In fact, the belief in life after death has increased in this century.

He was the first to conceive of movies as an art form. His belief was that if the traditional art form would not find room for him, then he would make an art form of his own.

It took a brave editor in the U.S. to sign a contract for Dancing Girls, and without her belief in the book, I'm not sure it would ever have found its way into print.

If we are going to save this country, if we are going to reestablish that belief in God, it's up to us. If we don't do it, who will?

It's a short step from the belief that every child should be wanted to the belief that a child exists to satisfy our wants.

My parents gave me stability and a belief in myself and in all the possibilities life has to offer. I was told the only limitations I would ever face were those I placed upon myself.