… For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress.

William Blake, Songs of Innocence, quoted in Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

Hermetic quote Harris Blake Innocence Dragon mercy pity love peace

Consider also:

  1. “I’d come to live as a human, to experience all the human traditions. And spending many a beautiful afternoon cooped up at the library service desk in order to make sure a bunch of middle schoolers weren’t playing dirty dating sims on the computers apparently counted as one.”
  2. “Weishaupt’s concept of virtue stems from his Rousseauian influences. Jean-Jacques Rousseau equated true virtue with the purity of mankind in its infancy before it was corrupted by civilization. This virtue was still apparent in the ‘savage’ races still being encountered by explorers in the forests and jungles of North and South America. By comparison, the despotism of western culture, with its class structures and inherent inequality, was considered inferior and contemptible.”
  3. “This self is the sun, the very center of man’s personal solar system, around which revolves his whole existence. The understanding of self causes all the other worlds of human experience to assume an orderly relationship.”
  4. “Surely, then, it behoves us to acquaint ourselves with what that larger end consists, to enquire why the fulfilment of that purpose is worthy to be called a science, and to ascertain what are those ‘mysteries’ to which our doctrine promises we may ultimately attain if we apply ourselves assiduously enough to understanding what Masonry is capable of teaching us.”
  5. “I mean there was one buffet supper, but there was nobody moving around saying come on I want you to meet the Nobel prize winner or taking the Nobel prize winner and saying come on I want you to meet Albert Hoffmann. It didn’t seem to me that there was any attempt to cross these groups. So they were like strange weirdos and Austrian bureaucrats and never these groups came in contact with each other.”