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

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.

The accepted versions of the Bible are all substantially correct.

As I have studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I have come to know through the power of the Spirit of God, that these books contain the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth.

There are any number of people who profess to be good Christian people who are willing to believe all kinds of things on suspicion. Now that is not the way the Bible directs for Christian people to do.

Many of us view the bible and other religious teachings as mythology.

It is to be deeply regretted that the clergymen would oppose an effort to teach the people the Bible truths; nevertheless, we find much opposition everywhere, and many clergymen will attempt to prevent the people from reading what is here written.

If the president is going to use so much language of theology and the Bible, then let's use that language for a serious discussion about the war in Iraq. And that was never done.

So after the Lewinsky scandal, everything changed, and we moved from using the Bible to address the moral issues of our time, which were social, to moral issues of our time that were very personal. I have continued that relationship up until the present.

There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice.

When I commit, I commit with my whole heart, my whole being. I know the Bible like the back of my hand.

The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

I've read the last page of the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right.

Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.

Accordingly the Northern races of Europe found their inspiration in the Bible; and the enthusiasm for it has not yet quite faded away.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

The Bible is proved to be a revelation from God, by the reasonableness and holiness of its precepts; all its commands, exhortations, and promises having the most direct tendency to make men wise, holy, and happy in themselves, and useful to one another.

Political freedom is a political reading of the Bible.