Crowley Quotes

The Chinese, you know, believe that deep within each of us, no larger than the ball of your thumb, is the garden of the immortals, the great valley where we are all king forever. ~ John Crowley

Love is the only principle which makes life tolerable. ~ Aleister Crowley

You've been looking like this for months." Leo does something strange with his face.
"I don't look like that."
"Yeah. You do."
"I'll look like that if Daisy dumps me, and she'll dump me if she thinks I lied," Dylan says.
"You threw eggs at her head. Odds are she's dumping you anyway." I turn to Leo. "We decided. We said that we weren't telling anyone. We said it was art for art's sake. We said the more people knew, the more chance the cop's pick us up. We said it was you and me, no crew."
"Are you sure I didn't say it was to score girls? ~ Cath Crowley

Life is the big scheme; death is the little one at the end. ~ Cath Crowley

How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed
to any other qualities than those of brutes. ~ Aleister Crowley

Who's this?" Dad asks when a catchy tune comes on the CD mix I made for the trip. We pass the skeleton tree that never has leaves, no matter what the time of year. Bare gray branches wave us on. "No one you know Dad," I say. It's me. ~ Cath Crowley

Shallow thinkers always seem to be obsessed by the stupidity that if anything is a shadow, dream, illusion, it ceases to exist. ~ Aleister Crowley

It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say 'if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,' we might believe them; but were they to cry 'if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,' we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific. ~ Cyril Connolly

I don't believe that the future gives us signs. I think that we look back and read the past with the present in our eyes...Maybe you read to look forward, and start reading the future. ~ Cath Crowley

But I love you, and before you say it words do matter. They're not pointless. If they were pointless then they couldn't start revolutions and they wouldn't change history and they wouldn't be the things that you think about every night before you go to sleep. If they were just words we wouldn't listen to songs, we wouldn't beg to be read to when we're kids. If they were just words, then they'd have no meaning and stories wouldn't have been around since before humans could write. We wouldn't have learned to write. If they were just words then people wouldn't fall in love because of them, feel bad because of them, ache because of them, stop aching because of them, have sex, quite a lot of the time, because of them. ~ Cath Crowley

With Graham Greene life is a precious, perpetual, snot-sodden whinge. ~ John Crowley

The moral, dear child, is that such powers are never to be considered as the main object; it ought in fact to be obvious from the start that any one's True Will must be deeper and more comprehensive than any mere technical achievement. I will go further and say that any such endeavour must be a magical mistake, like cherishing a gun or a clock or a fishing-rod for its own sake, and not for the use that one can make of it. Indeed, that remark goes to the root of the matter; for all these powers, if we understand them properly, are natural by-products of one's real Great Work. My own experience was very convincing on this point; for one power after another came popping up when it was least wanted, and I saw at once that they represented so many leaks in my boat.

And really they are quite a bit of a nuisance. Their possession is so flattering, and their seduction so subtle. One understands at once why all the first-class Teachers insist so sternly that the Siddhi (or Iddhi) must be rejected firmly by the Aspirant, if he is not to be side-tracked and ultimately lost. ~ Aleister Crowley

Emma Forest?" Jazz asks. "His ex is the girl with the big ... ?"
"That's the one," Daisy tells her.
Jazz looks at her chest. I pat her shoulder. "Guys care about personality too."
"Girls like me started that rumor. ~ Cath Crowley

They don't wait for something to happen. They wait to happen to something. ~ Cath Crowley

They called him John Storm: John after his grandfather, but Storm after his father and his mother. ~ John Crowley

What's up with you?" "I'm grounded," I say, just to say something real. "I told Mum to fuck off." He whistles. "Why'd you tell her that? Any other 'off' leaves room for parole. 'Sod off,' 'shove off' - even 'sock off' is still pretty satisfying." "You've told your dad to sock off?" "Once. He said, 'What the fuck is "sock off"? Be a man and tell me to fuck off.'" "So did you tell him?" "No. Because that was the trap. There's never time out for good behavior with 'fuck off. ~ Cath Crowley

I had a dream where Cal told me he could see the world from above,' I tell Henry. 'He said the seconds were pouring off people, tiny glowing dots pouring from their skins, only no one could see them.'

'Beautiful dream,' Henry says.

'Is it? Wouldn't it be better if the seconds were adding up? Do we have a set amount of seconds to live when we're born or an unknowable number?'

'An unknowable number,' Henry says.

'How do you know?'

'I don't. I believe.' He rolls over and looks at me. 'I believe I am adding up to something. ~ Cath Crowley

You have to take chances - working in film is a mixture of luck, talent, and ability to take the risk. You have to be optimistic. You can't be a pessimistic person. ~ Nathan Crowley

Some of the FDA's own scientists have charged that politics, not science, is behind the FDA's actions. ~ Joseph Crowley

Real is better, The truth is better. Painful but better. ~ Cath Crowley

I don't understand,' Dad says. 'You were such happy children.'

'I was never a happy child,' George says.

'True, but Henry was.'

'I'm not anymore. It's actually hard to imagine how my life could be any more shit at this point,' I say, and George holds up the copy of the book she's reading. The Road.

'Okay. Sure. It could get more shit if there was some kind of world-ending event and people started eating each other. But that's a whole different shit scale. On your average human-emotion scale, my life is registering as the shittiest of the shit. ~ Cath Crowley

Obama doesn't run around wearing a Carrie Bradshaw-esque nameplate necklace that says 'Socialist.' But his policies, actions, words, background and associations speak louder than any ID necklace ever could. ~ Monica Crowley

There is a splendour in my name hidden and glorious, as the sun of midnight is ever the son. ~ Aleister Crowley

Of course there are individual racists in America. Sadly that's true. And sadly that will always be true. It's true in this country, it will be true because it's human nature. ~ Monica Crowley

This is my real bed-rock objection to the eastern systems. They decry all manly virtue as dangerous and wicked, and they look upon Nature as evil. True enough, everything is evil relatively to Adonai; for all stain is impurity. A bee's swarm is evil - inside one's clothes. "Dirt is matter in the wrong place." It is dirt to connect sex with statuary, morals with art.
Only Adonai, who is in a sense the True Meaning of everything, cannot defile any idea. This is a hard saying, though true, for nothing of course is dirtier than to try and use Adonai as a fig-leaf for one's shame.
To seduce women under the pretense of religion is unutterable foulness; though both adultery and religion are themselves clean. To mix jam and mustard is a messy mistake. ~ Aleister Crowley

It's a fine, warm day," Henry replied. "I thought a spot of fishing?"
"Just the thing!" said Felix. "Will you join us, Lucy?" Lucy felt Kitty and Sophia staring at her. Well-bred ladies, evidently, did not fish.
"Oh, no! I assure you, Mr. Crowley-Cumberbatch, I have given up those hoyden pursuits of my youth." She turned to Toby. "I haven't been fishing in ages. I can't remember the last time."
"Really, Luce?" Toby sounded incredulous. "Henry - is it true?"
Henry sawed away at a slice of ham. "If you count six days as ages, then I suppose it's true. But if you can't remember six days back, Lucy, and you've forgotten Felix's Christian name, I'm concerned for you. Perhaps you've been spending too much time with Aunt Matilda. ~ Tessa Dare

Hire the best people you can find. This was kind of easy in the early days of foursquare - we hired our friends who were really passionate about the stuff they were building. We have a superstar team not just because their resumes are so strong, but because they've been passionate, thinking about and tinkering in this space forever. Those are the people you want to surround yourself with. ~ Dennis Crowley

If the government controls your health care, the government controls you. Obamacare was never about health care. It was about government power, dependency, and control. ~ Monica Crowley

Ed looks at me like he wishes I'd disappear and if I had the choice I'd grant that wish; I'd turn into smoke and blow away. I want to sit on the other side of the table from him so he doesn't think I'm interested, but there's no room on the other side so I sit as far away from him as I can and try to have an out-of-body experience. This couldn't get more awkward if we all tried.
"How about we get some air?" Leo asks Jazz, and they walk outside. Daisy follows them and Dylan follows her. Okay, it could get more awkward if we all tried. ~ Cath Crowley

The Magician should devise for himself a definite technique for destroying "evil." The essence of such a practice will consist in training the mind and the body to confront things which case fear, pain, disgust, shame and the like. He must learn to endure them, then to become indifferent to them, then to become indifferent to them, then to analyze them until they give pleasure and instruction, and finally to appreciate them for their own sake, as aspects of Truth. When this has been done, he should abandon them, if they are really harmful in relation to health and comfort. ~ Aleister Crowley

But Max said: "Last summer I spent working these peace booths at state fairs. We'd go around in this bigole pickup with this knocked-down booth in the back and boxes of literature. People'd come up to me and hear me talking about colonialism or the bomb or who was responsible for the Cold War, and they'd start railing on Communists. Communists, these damn Communists. And I'd say hey, hold on now, you're talkin' about my mother. They'd look at me like I'd turned into a Russky before their very eyes. It certainly shut 'em up." He smiled to remember, delighted. "They were good people. Country people. Didn't want to say anything bad about a fellow's mom." Saul ~ John Crowley

I like to think of love as being slightly more forgiving than time. ~ Cath Crowley

One must find out for oneself, and make sure beyond doubt, 'who' one is, 'what' one is, 'why' one is ... Being thus conscious of the proper course to pursue, the next thing is to understand the conditions necessary to following it out. After that, one must eliminate from oneself every element alien or hostile to success, and develop those parts of oneself which are specially needed to control the aforesaid conditions. ~ Aleister Crowley

When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God."
-Review of Ida Craddock's "Heavenly Bridegrooms ~ Aleister Crowley

Two famous happy warriors - Reagan and his political soulmate, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - knew they were fighting their own ideological and external wars. But they did so with the sunny dispositions and positive outlooks of those who knew they were on the right side of history. ~ Monica Crowley

If a person wants to spend forever with you, that's Love. ~ Cath Crowley

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people. ~ Aleister Crowley

Your idea of romance requires a corset and a time machine. ~ Cath Crowley

I'm a vegetarian who doesn't like eggplant parmesan. Isn't that awful? I'm also sick of portobello mushrooms. People are like, 'A vegetarian's coming to dinner,' so they serve those. ~ Candy Crowley

Do you remember what it says in The Book of the Law?
'I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge and Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, and be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all.'"
"Yes," I said slowly, "and I thought it a bit daring; might tempt people to be foolhardy, don't you think?"
"Of course," agreed Basil, "if you read it carelessly. ~ Aleister Crowley

Everything is what it is. I just wish it were something else. ~ Cath Crowley

I took the money and passed the box across the counter and said politely, 'Your choice of colour
really lacks style.' I smiled and Beth laughed and the guy asked to see my manager.
I got Bert and he leant over the box and looked at the paint and said, 'Ed was being polite. Your
choice of colour is shit. ~ Cath Crowley

Light, Life and Love are like three glow-worms at thy feet: the whole universe of stars, the dewdrops on the grass whereon thou walkest! ~ Aleister Crowley

Stop sketching. Start building. ~ Dennis Crowley

This Universe is a wild revel of atoms, men, and stars, each one a Soul of Light and Mirth, horsed on Eternity. ~ Aleister Crowley

The things that make us happy make us wise. ~ John Crowley

Oh God how subtle he would have to be, how cunning ... No paragraph, no phrase even of the thousands the book must contain could strike a discordant note, be less than fully imagined, an entire novel's worth of thought would have to be expended on each one. His attention had only to lapse for a moment, between preposition and object, colophon and chapter heading, for dead spots to appear like gangrene that would rot the whole. Silkworms didn't work as finely or as patiently as he must, and yet boldness was all, the large stroke, the end contained in and prophesied by the beginning, the stains of his clouds infinitely various but all signifying sunrise. Unity in diversity, all that guff. An enormous weariness flew over him. The trouble with drink, he had long known, wasn't that it started up these large things but that it belittled the awful difficulties of their execution. ("Novelty") ~ John Crowley

Our lives can be considered a sacred quest. It is a quest which may have begun in this lifetime or many lifetimes before. It is a quest to find ourselves: who and what we really are. To do this we must first cease to pretend to be what we are not. We must cast away our Persona or mask. We must be prepared to confront the Shadow, that which we are and rather were not. Only then can we unify our conscious and unconscious minds and so give birth to the hidden Sun - the Self. ~ Vivianne Crowley

It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment. ~ Aleister Crowley

as if all the years haven't dulled that moment. She's staring at a spot of air in front of it, and I know, in that spot of air, is her son. ~ Cath Crowley

I should tell her to leave. I should maintain what dignity I can, which isn't much considering I'm wearing a blanket and the smell of last night's drinking. But my family is pretty shit at dignity as well as love, so I think: fuck dignity. Dignity is not in my genes ~ Cath Crowley

When you talk about presidents, loyalty is a great thing until it becomes a bad thing. Witness once again Watergate. ~ Monica Crowley

He had the distracted chuckle of troubled old people who look within, keeping watch on failing organs. ~ John Crowley

I'm sick of staring at what I want, I thought. I'd do anything to hold it in my hands. ~ Cath Crowley

His mouth dips into that freckle on my neck. Thank you, sun. Thank you, thank you, sun. ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Aleister Crowley

I didn't say you weren't smart. I said you were stupid."
"I guess I'm too dumb to see the difference. ~ Cath Crowley

I'd have to say that "Mr. Crowley" in my most memorable solo ... I had spent hours trying to figure out a solo for the song ... Ozzy came in and said "it's crap - everything you're playing is crap" .. he told me to get in there and just play how I felt. He made me really nervous, so I just played anything. When I came back to listen to it, he said it was great.. ~ Randy Rhoads

What do I mean when I say that I think I was Eliphaz Lévi? No more than that I possess some of his most essential characteristics, and that some of the incidents in his life are remembered by me as my own. There doesn't seem any impossibility about these bundles of Sankhara being shared by two or more persons. We certainly do not know enough of what actually takes place to speak positively on any such point. Don't lose any sleep over it. ~ Aleister Crowley

I thought i found the love of my life then he broke my heart i thought he was my everything i thought he cared but i guess i was wrong ~ Sereana Crowley

If we pursue a spiritual path in depth, then it changes who and what we are. There is no turning back. We can only move forward. ~ Vivianne Crowley

We were the only three people awake in a world half asleep and the air felt heavy with maybe. ~ Cath Crowley

Mum and I were both there at the moment that Cal died, and sometimes I worry that seeing that has altered something so fundamental about us. Sometimes I worry we lost some of our humanness that day, and It's not coming back. ~ Cath Crowley

It's when I'm around some people that my entire vocabulary goes on vacation. Like now, when Dave's walking next to me wearing an old black singlet and board shorts and the tattoo of a bird on his wrist, every single word in my head except "no" and "huh" is lying somewhere on a beack getting a suntan ~ Cath Crowley

Shitness, my sister says, has a momentum that good luck just doesn't have. ~ Cath Crowley

It's important to know what motivates you, not what motivates somebody else. ~ Candy Crowley

It is necessary that we stop, once for all, this ignorant meddling with other people's business. Each individual must be left free to follow his own path. ~ Aleister Crowley

Nothing any man can do will improve that genius; but the genius needs his mind, and he can broaden that mind, fertilize it with knowledge of all kinds, improve its powers of expression; supply the genius, in short, with an orchestra instead of a tin whistle. All our little great men, our one-poem poets, our one-picture painters, have merely failed to perfect themselves as instruments. The Genius who wrote The Ancient Mariner is no less sublime than he who wrote The Tempest; but Coleridge had some incapacity to catch and express the thoughts of his genius - was ever such wooden stuff as his conscious work? - while Shakespeare had the knack of acquiring the knowledge necessary to the expression of every conceivable harmony, and his technique was sufficiently fluent to transcribe with ease. ~ Aleister Crowley

Asking's the easy bit. Then there's everything that comes after. ~ Cath Crowley

Serial killer aren't creative."
"Watch a little Dexter and get back to me on that. ~ Cath Crowley

A man friends are more capable of working him harm than strangers; and his greatest
danger lies in his own habits. ~ Aleister Crowley

Mr. Obama's choices show how fundamentally unserious he is about deficit reduction and spending restraint. ~ Monica Crowley

Messrs. Washington and Lincoln would be appalled and saddened by what their successor, President Obama, and the modern Democratic Party are doing to the nation they dedicated their lives to keep alive. ~ Monica Crowley

Men and women are not free to love decently until they have analyzed themselves completely and swept away every mystery from sex; and this means the acquisition of a profound philosophical theory based on wide reading of anthropology and enlightened practice. ~ Aleister Crowley

Divorced?'
'Separated.'
He tested his thumb against the pricks of the rose. 'Women. They say you got all the freedom. Then you give them their freedom, and they don't want it.' ("Novelty") ~ John Crowley

I know what irony is.'
'Okay, Alanis. ~ Cath Crowley

MARSYAS: Beware!
Easily trips the big word "dare."
Each man's an Œdipus, that thinks
He hath the four powers of the Sphinx,
Will, Courage, Knowledge, Silence. Son,
Even the adepts scarce win to one!
The Thoughts - they fall like rotten fruits.
But to destroy the power that makes
These thoughts - thy Self? A man it takes
To tear his soul up by the roots!
This is the mandrake fable, boy! ~ Aleister Crowley

Sit down, Will. There's a good fellow," he said.
"Yes, sir," replied Will, and Halt's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"He's never called me sir," he said.
"Probably trying to get on my good side," Crowley replied.
Halt nodded savagely. "Probably. ~ John Flanagan

Newt Gingrich would cream Barack Obama in a debate. ~ Monica Crowley

When the world lacks muscular and wise American leadership, it devolves into total chaos, which, in turn, produces unspeakable evils. ~ Monica Crowley

The people who have really made history are the martyrs. ~ Aleister Crowley

Acts which are essentially dishonourable must not be done; they would be justified only by calm contemplation of their correctness in abstract cases. ~ Aleister Crowley

There are no "standards of Right". Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with "moral principle"; there is no such thing. ~ Aleister Crowley

Earth to Democrats: Displaying contempt for the American people when you are being paid by those people to serve their interests is generally not a good political move. ~ Monica Crowley

Belief is the enemy of knowledge. ~ Aleister Crowley

U fall in love so easly and break so hard ~ Sereana Crowley

And I look at him because he needs to be looked at. He needs to be seen. I hate that he has been on his own for so long painting graffiti moons in the dark keeping quiet about who he really is. ~ Cath Crowley

The word of Sin is Restriction ~ Aleister Crowley

There's a time in some years, after the first frosts, when the sun gets hot again, and summer returns for a time. Winter is coming; you know that from the way the mornings smell, the way the leaves, half-turned to color, are dry and poised to drop. But summer goes on, a small false summer, all the more precious for being small and false. In Little Belaire, we called this time
for some reason nobody knows
engine summer. ~ John Crowley

Let me meet Poet, too, but mainly Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers. A guy who paints things like that is a guy I could fall for. Really fall for ~ Cath Crowley

We are the books we read and the things we love. ~ Cath Crowley

Just when you think you've heard it all from Team Obama, the next day brings another jaw-dropper. ~ Monica Crowley

Keep on acquiring a taste for what is naturally repugnant; this is an unfailing source of pleasure. ~ Aleister Crowley

When wanting collides with getting, that's the moment of truth. I want to collide. ~ Cath Crowley

In silvergreen rainy April they went down to Glastonbury on the long straight roads ... ~ John Crowley

One of the nice things about time, Crowley always said, was that it was steadily taking him further away from the fourteenth century. ~ Jill Thompson

Handsome guy, Victor, in a brutal, black-Irish way. Like most New York bartenders, he was really an actor, or was it the reverse? ("Novelty") ~ John Crowley

The man who was known as 'no drama Obama' during the campaign has given us nothing but depleting and infuriating drama since he arrived in office. ~ Monica Crowley

I had no agenda in writing this play except expressing myself ... It later occurred to me that I was not only announcing things to my family; I was announcing it to the world. Of course, if the play had been a flop, only my family would have known. ~ Mart Crowley

Dale Chihuly." She pulls out her phone and moves close to show me a picture of his work. "It's an eleven meter-long chandelier at the Victoria and Albert Museum."
It looks like one of those tanges she drew, only it's hanging from a ceiling. Blue and yellow. A sideways ocean.
"It looks to me like a feeling pulled straight out from under your skin," she says. ~ Cath Crowley