Gnostic Quotes
What’s the meaning of life? Aphorisms, maxims and quotations expressing the paradoxical essence of gnosticism.
Adam
"We are not accountable for the sins of Adam." - Robert G. Ingersoll
Admit
"When a man does not admit he is an animal, he is less than an animal…. Blake was the revolt of one man. He was not a revolutionary but a man in revolt. A creature in revolt can conceive that there is NO solution and that there will be unending construction and destruction…. Blake revolted [...]
Adults
"Adults are obsolete children." - Dr. Seuss
Advice
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." - Erica Jong
Aliens
"The more I learn of other people’s thoughts the more universally true it seems that each person has another world in him and that no one really belonds to the world as it is. In other words, we are all aliens. None of us belong to this world; it does not belong to us. The [...]
Alone
"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." - Sir Francis Bacon
"To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both - a philosopher." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Maxims and Arrows
"The humorist, like the [...]
Americans
"It is one of my firmest and most sacred beliefs… that the government of the United States, in both its legislative and its executive arm, is ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and disgusting… that the administration of justice in the Republic is stupid, dishonest, and against all reason and equity… that the foreign policy of the [...]
Amphibians
"Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time." - C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963
"We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of [...]
Angelic Language
"The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot understand them." - Anatole France
"The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be [...]
Animals
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell
"Man may be defined as the animal that can say "I," that can be aware of himself as a separate entity." - Erich Fromm
"Man has liberated himself (by breaking the divine commandment not to eat of [...]
Animals II
"All men who would surpass the other animals should do their utmost not to go through life unheralded like the brutes whom nature made to face the ground, obedient to their bellies." - Sallust, The War with Catiline, pub. 40 B.C.
"Spiritual power begins by directing animal power to other than egoistic ends." [...]
Animals III
"You wouldn't consider all the bipeds you pass on the street human beings simply because they walk upright and carry their young in their bellies nine monthsl It is obvious how many of them are fish or sheep, worms or angels, how many are ants, how many are bees!" - Herman Hesse, Demian, pp.109-1-, [...]
Answers & Questions
"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the question." - Susan Sontag
"What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell." - H.L. Mencken, Minority Reports
"That is the essence of science: [...]
Antichrist
"We may not all break the Ten Commandments, but we are certainly all capable of it. Within us lurks the breaker of all laws, ready to spring out at the first real opportunity." - Isadora Duncan, 1878-1927
"Inside every saint there appeared a heretic struggling to get out; and the converse. One man's [...]
Antinomianism
"I agree with Nietzche that to be truly free, one must commit evil [acts]" - Georges Bataille
"Man is evil - all the wisest men have told me that to comfort me. Oh, if only this were true today! For evil is man's strength. Man must grow better and more evil - this [...]
Apes
"Man is an ape with possibilities." - Roy Chapman Andrews
"Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written." - Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet Heretic, pub. 1970
"What is an ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And yet the same shall [...]
Apes II
"I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape." - Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape
"Perhaps the remote ancestors of human beings were apes, though no evolutionist has made clear to me reasons for doubting the equally plausible theory that apes have either ascended, or descended, from [...]
Apocalypse
"What a tragic world this is. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it, they think they are free because they never have been free, and do not understand what it means. This is a prison and few men have guessed. But I know, he said to himself. [...]
Appearance
"The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it." - Webster
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
"If you pretend [...]
Art
"What is art, what is life, who am I?" - Salvador Dali
"Art, that great undogmatized church." - Ellen Key
"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." - Pablo Picasso
"Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self." - Jean-Luc Godard
"Art is [...]
Art II
"Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb." - Jean Arp
"Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death. God is Jesus." - William Blake
Art III
"A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture… and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment." - Lionel Trilling
"Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of [...]
Artist
"Inside you there's an artist you don't know about." - Rumi
"In memory each of us is an artist: each of us creates." - Patricia Hampl, "A Romantic Education," 1981
"The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible…" - James Joyce, [...]
Asses
"Things are in the saddle And ride mankind." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ode to Channing, pub. 1867
"Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ." - Heinrich Heine
"It is good for a man to eat thistles and to remember that he is an ass." - E. S. Dallas [...]
Awareness
"The devil doesn't cry and Christ don't run with the wolves. I have allegiance to Awareness." - Charles Manson, Interview in issue #3 of Feast of Hate and Fear, 1993
"The world was made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness." - Bull Durham, screenplay by Ron Shelton
