The average man cannot believe that an artist may be as serious and highminded an observer of life as the professed man of science.

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.

But neither Europe nor Africa can show any such desolation as America. The proudest, stubbornest, bitterest peasant of deserted Spain, the most primitive and superstitious Arab of the remotest oases, are a little more than kin and never less than kind at their worst; whereas in the United States one is almost always conscious of an instinctive lack of sympathy and understanding with even the most charming and cultured people.

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?

Initiation means the Journey Inwards: nothing is changed or can be changed; but all is trulier understood with every step.

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

The True Will is thus both determined by its equations, and free because those equation are simply its own name, spelt out fully.