Tag Archives: think

Some of these societies, being based upon a financial scheme for making money, pretending to be able to employ divine powers in their service and to have the will of God at their command for the purpose of procuring for their adherents physical health and worldly benefits, met with great success; for the multitudes will always rush to that camp, where they think that a mine of gold has been discovered and where they are expecting a share; and the holding out promises of making salvation easy has always been the fundamental power of every clerical institution.

Franz Hartmann, The Dangers of Occultism

“You think one of the two’s yours—joy or misery,” Margaret said, “or both. Why, if you don’t, should you mind?”

Charles Williams, Descent Into Hell [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

That poem of Browning owes much of its haunting charm to this very circumstance, that the reader is never told who Childe Roland is, or why he wants to get to the Dark Tower, or what he expects to find when he does get there. There is a skillfully constructed atmosphere of Giants, and Ogres, and Hunchbacks, and the rest of the apparatus of fairy-tales; but there is no trace of the influence of Bædeker in the style. Now this is really very irritating to anybody who happens to be seriously concerned to get to that tower. I remember, as a boy, what misery I suffered over this poem. Had Browning been alive, I think I would have sought him out, so seriously did I take the Quest.

Aleister Crowley, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Liber LXXI, The Voice of the Silence

Those who think to win the world by doing something to it, I see them come to grief. For the world is a sacred object. Nothing is to be done to it. To do anything to it is to damage it. To seize it is to lose it.

Ursula K Le Guin, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

After the War people said he was different. I, myself, think he was. But I can’t help feeling that with all his gifts he ought to have been doing bigger work. All that Britannic Majesty stuff isn’t my idea of a great man’s career. And Conway was—or should have been—great.

James Hilton, Lost Horizon [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Desirous of leaving the powers of fancy at liberty to expatiate through the boundless realms of invention, and thence of creating more interesting situations, he wished to conduct the mortal agents of his drama according to the rules of probability; in short, to make them think, speak and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions.

Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto [Amazon, Bookshop, Internet Archive]

No one, unless they were fanatics, would think of distributing religious tracts to the poor half starved ignorant portion of a large city. The human portion of their natures must be benefitted before any great results in moral improvements can be attained. Commence at the beginning.

Lydia Leavitt, Bohemian Society [Bookshop, Amazon]

“I think,” Barney said, gently, “you should let these people alone.” And me, too, he thought. I’ve got enough troubles as it is; don’t add your religious fanaticism and make it worse.

Philip K Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]

By protecting others, you save yourself. If you only think of yourself, you’ll only destroy yourself.

Akira Kurosawa, & al., Seven Samurai

Sometimes you pray even when you think you don’t believe.

Karen Traviss, The Best of Us

The Hermetic Library Blog

Faint gibbering heard from somewhere near the restricted stacks

Tag Archives: think