James Barden > James's Quotes

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“Music fathoms the sky.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul,
that soft summer morning
round a turning in the path,
the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones,
its legs in the air like a woman in need
burning its wedding poisons
like a fountain with its rhythmic sobs,
I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound,
but I touch my body in vain to find the wound.
I am the vampire of my own heart,
one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughter
who can no longer smile.
Am I dead?
I must be dead.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“With wine, poetry, or virtue
as you choose.
But get drunk.”
― Charles Pierre Baudelaire

“You shall suffer for ever the influence of my kiss. You shall be beautiful in my fashion. You shall love that which I love and that which loves me: water, clouds, silence and the night; the immense green sea; the formless and multiform streams; the place where you shall not be; the lover whom you shall not know; flowers of monstrous shape; perfumes that cause delirium; cats that shudder, swoon and curl up on pianos and groan like women, with a voice that is hoarse and gentle! And you shall be loved by my lovers, courted by my courtiers. You shall be the queen of all men that have green eyes, whose necks also I have clasped in my nocturnal caresses; of those who love the sea, the sea that is immense, tumultuous and green, the formless and multiform streams, the place where they are not, the woman whom they do not know, sinister flowers that resemble the censers of a strange religion, perfumes that confound the will; and the savage and voluptuous animals which are the emblems of their dementia.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Do not regret what you have done”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“There is no one way to salvation, whatever the manner in which a man may proceed. All forms and variations are governed by the eternal intelligence of the Universe that enables a man to approach perfection. It may be in the arts of music and painting or it may be in commerce, law, or medicine. It may be in the study of war or the study of peace. Each is as important as any other. Spiritual enlightenment through religious meditation such as Zen or in any other way is as viable and functional as any "Way."... A person should study as they see fit.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda

“The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda

“If religion means primarily God-consciousness, or the realization of God both within and without, and secondarily a body of beliefs, tenets and dogmas, then, strictly speaking, there is but one religion in the world, for there is but one God.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, Science of Religion

“Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

“The Fundamentalist Christians have told me that I am a slave of Satan and should have my demons expelled with an exorcism. The Fundamentalist Materialists inform me that I am a liar, charlatan, fraud and scoundrel. Aside from this minor difference, the letters are astoundingly similar. Both groups share the same crusading zeal and the same lack of humor, charity and common human decency. These intolerable cults have served to confirm me in my agnosticism by presenting further evidence to support my contention that when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins

“The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

“How many times... have you encountered the saying, 'When the student is ready, the Master speaks?' Do you know why that is true? The door opens inward. The Master is everywhere, but the student has to open his mind to hear the Masters Voice.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Masks of the Illuminati