Indubitably, Magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgement and practice than in any other branch of physics.

— Aleister Crowley

...in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.

— Aleister Crowley

In this book it is spoken of the Joseph Roth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

— Aleister Crowley

I seem to remember asking myself if I was insane, and answering, ''Of house I am - sanity is a compromise. Sanity is the thing that keeps one back.

— Aleister 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 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 thought I would stand myself a little dinner. I hadn't quite enough sense to know that what I really wanted was human companions. There aren't such things. Every man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease - that of thinking.

— Aleister Crowley

It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy.

— Aleister Crowley

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of performing these small ceremonies regularly, and being as nearly accurate as possible with regard to the times. You must not mind stopping in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare—lorries or no lorries—and saying the Adoration; and you must not mind snubbing your guest—or your host—if he or she should prove ignorant of his or her share of the dialogue. It is perhaps because these matters are so petty and trivial in appearance that they afford so excellent a training. They teach you concentration, mindfulness, moral and social courage, and a host of other virtues.

— Aleister Crowley

... it was once necessary to proclaim the entire doctrine of Yoga in the fewest possible words.... I did so.“Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!” The first two of these instructions comprise the whole of the technique of Yoga. The last two are of a sublimity which it would be improper to expound in this present elementary stage.

— Aleister Crowley