The keystone of this arch of misery
Is set by the unfaltering hands
Of Fate. How desperate the anarchy
Wrought in one hour!
The fickle sands
Run through the glass, and all the light is gone.

Aleister Crowley, The Mother’s Tragedy

Hermetic quote Crowley The Mother's Tragedy keystone arch misery set by unfaltering hands fate desperate anarchy wrought one hour fickle sands glass light gone

Consider also:

  1. “Curves that snuggle in your palm and jack you all up. A quick bang now for a metric shitload of misery later. Guaranteed.”
  2. “But when this Impermanence is realised and known, Craving itself dies out,-for all this thirst after possessions depends on the illusion that these may be held and kept for ever”
  3. “Pale specters of the stars, corpse-lights, bad-ghosts Sicken the icy glamour of the moon Upon the vacant earth; and where the sea Marshals sepulchral billows, obscene hosts Of harpies gibber weirdly. I should swoon For the silence, rolled not some dread minstrelsy In fearful anguish on the shuddering air, Breathing out terror and lightning to the night That widely echoes back Hell’s venomous spite, And shrieks aloud the watchword of despair To draw each pain racked nerve more tense and gray For I am alone, unloved, in murk and gloom, Unloved, unfriended, fittest for the tomb, Who worshipped golden feet and found them clay.”
  4. “We do not whine about pain and loss! It is a gift. Burn your hand and understand fire, child! You don’t learn about the frost by asking for its name. You give it a finger…a toe. Hmm?”
  5. “This neither-neither I, shall transvalue ennui, fear, and all diseases to my wish. Dead is my misery in suffering! How could it exist in my Zodiac, unwilled?”