To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression.

Your friends will notice at once that glib vacuities fail to impress, and hate you, and tell lies about you. It's worth it.

Magic is real. And reality... it is magical.

It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.

Morality can muddle mystical understanding and virtue is only necessary in so far as it favours success. All wisdom must be encompassed in order to achieve enlightenment.

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.

May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early!