We Stand Above by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.

“I CANNOT say how deeply I feel about this matter. The insensate screams of the mob threaten to deafen even those few ears which were attuned to the still small voice of wisdom.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “We are warring for Democracy, but also for civilization, apparently owing to our inherent love of paradox. We have here a war within a war. We have not only to fight the foe without, and the foe within, but also the foe that is the worst of all, the overzealous friend.”
  2. “The other day I came into a fortune, and went to buy a necktie. The young man (or should I say gentleman) who accommodated me in this matter was English, and remembered me in those days of glory when I wandered in Bond street, and bought as many as three neckties on the same day.”
  3. “IT is written in the Book of the Law: Every man and every woman is a Star. It is Our Lady of the Stars that speaketh to thee, O thou that art a star, a member of the Body of Nuit.”
  4. “IN normal times art and literature take care of themselves. Wisdom is justified of her children. Before we have been dead three hundred years somebody is almost sure to notice it. The great mass of people is a homogeneous mass of brainless idiocy. Men are dumb animals, and women only quack. In times of peace the hack journalists are as inconspicuous as they are insignificant; but when war breaks out the hysteria natural to weak minds becomes vocal, and everybody wants to ‘do his bit’ on one side or the other, by squealing when much the best thing to do would be to bury himself.”
  5. “IT is a somewhat invidious task; but we suppose that some one has got to do it, and it seems as if that some one had to be ourselves.”