Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life.

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.

The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper....

Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.

I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.

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.

The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.

Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty.

Chinese civilisation is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle.

Indubitably, magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any...

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.

Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.

I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.

If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.

In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes - ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.