Nothing is stranger to men
Than silence, and wisdom, and kindness.

Imponderables are all-important; when science declares that it can concern itself only with that which can be measured, it classes itself with the child that counts on its fingers and brands Shakespeare and Shelley as charlatans.

The spiritual energy derived from the high trances makes the seer a formidable force; and unless he be aware that his interpretation is due only to the exaggeration of his own tendencies of thought, he will seek to impose it on others, and so delude his disciples, pervert their minds and prevent their development.  He can do good only in one way, that is, by publishing the methods by which he attained illumination:  in other words, by adding his experience to the sum of scientific knowledge.

One must really be a profound philosopher with a definite intellectual conception of the universe as an organic whole, based on the co-ordination of immense knowledge, before one can expect really satisfactory results.  The Samadhi of an ignorant and shallow thinker who has failed to co-ordinate his conceptions of the cosmos will not be worth very much.

What we call ultimate truth is in reality no more than a statement of the internal relations of the universe which we perceive.

The power to perceive...identities of essence beneath a difference of material manifestation is the inevitable token of mastery.  Anyone who understands (not merely knows) one subject will also understand any other, whether he also knows it or not.

To defend oneself against the accusations of a knave is to seek justice from the verdict of fools.

It seemed incredible that I should ever have fancied that I or anything else had any bearing on each other.  All things were alike as shadows sweeping across the still surface of a lake--their images had no meaning for the water, no power to stir its silence.

The only object in attaching oneself to an individual is to have a standard suitable for symbolic representation of certain phenomena which happen to interest one, though they cannot possibly possess any importance for one, and the only reason for interesting oneself in the welfare of any such individual is to increase the efficiency of one's instrument of perception.  This, then, explains why the only intelligent course of action for a man is to obtain initiation.  Even this is useless in itself.  The highest attainment is insensate except in reference to the convenience of an intelligence who is not in any way involved in the individuality of its instrument.

The secret of life is concentration.

It is only necessary to destroy in oneself the roots of those motives which determine a man's course, in order to enjoy the omnipotence and immunity of a god.

Imagine listening to Beethoven with the prepossession that C is a good note and F a bad one; yet this is exactly the standpoint from which all uninitiates contemplate the universe.  Obviously, they miss the music.

The fulfillment of his ambitions would depend on his willing submission to discipline, the conquest of idleness....

"Every man and every woman is a star!"  You...are therefore a star.  The soul of a star is what we call genius.  You are a genius.  This fact is obscured either by moral complexes which enmesh it, or lack of adequate machinery to express it in terms of action.

In the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.  ...Unless the anatomist is careful to supply a spine to support the structure, you will have a mollusc and not a man.  You must have a fulcrum, not only to move the world, but to move a feather.

Love is the only principle which makes life tolerable.

More of the Same On Poetry

It is a very peculiar psychology; yet it is frequently found among poets:  We are lonely and suffer intensely on that account.

To write poetry...his technique must be based on the study of grammar and so on, which have no essential relation with art.

I suppose that...failure and...success was mostly a matter of personal genius, just as Burns with hardly any literary apparatus could write poetry, and Tennyson, with any amount, could not..

My definition of poetry...is this:  A poem is a series of words so arranged that the combination of meaning, rhythm and rime produces the definitely magical effect of exalting the soul to divine ecstasy.  Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Machen share this view.

A poet is incapable of recognizing his best work, but...though good technique does not mean good work bad technique does mean bad work.

Paris is not a stimulant to a poet of my calibre; I need to be face to face with God and see Him, and live. For when it is said that no man shall look upon His face and live, the emphasis must be on the word "man".  It is the privilege of the poet that his life is fed by direct communication with nature, as a child in the womb of its mother.  The man who is separate from nature, and is nourished by the gross food of his conscious impressions, produces only second-rate stuff. I feel the necessity of being absolutely shut off from the external universe--"My life is hid with Christ in God", to borrow the phraseology of the Christian mystic.  I received my inspiration directly, without even needing an intellectual peg on which to hang it.  My consciously conceived work is always inferior; it only exists because when I come to the point of actual writing, my pen runs away with me.

The only things I complete are those of which (as for instance, poetry and Magick) I am not the real author but an instrument impelled by a mysterious power which sweeps me away in effortless enthusiasm which leaves no room for my laziness, cynicism and similar inhibiting qualities to interfere.

Self-styled poets and poetesses are as common in America as common bacilli in a choleraic colon.

The yearning of the poet to surpass all other singers, his rage at the resistance of the language to his rapture, have their root in his absolute trust in and worship of himself.