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 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.

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

The police officers, so far as discipline, organization, pay, and orders were concerned, came exclusively under the German Reich police system and were in no way connected with the administration of the Government General.

I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.

It takes as much discipline to be a mother and a wife as it does to do anything else.

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.

I'm not good enough, technically, to be a classic musician. I lack discipline.

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.

I do it as a therapy. I do it as something to keep me alive. We all need a little discipline. Exercise is my discipline.

My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

Perfect retention. I don't think I could do that-I've never disciplined myself to do it.I suppose a lot of it is a question of discipline. Which improvisation is not.

You have got to have discipline and focus - on the customer and how you run the business.

My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline.

The student develops an analytical as well as finely blended character. He is able to choose from a wide variety of job fields from which to embrace a career, without having to be a specialist in one particular discipline.

A mode of conduct, a standard of courage, discipline, fortitude and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful.

I was taking piano lessons with a very good piano instructor in Toronto, and I'm afraid due to my schedule and discipline, it kind of fell apart. One thing lead to another and I was unable to practice as much as I wanted to.

People like me have to have the discipline only to work for clients, corporations, political people, products, services, networks that we believe in and we want to see succeed.