Authors From The United States

"I may be furious and sad about what happened with us, but that doesn't make me believe that what we had wasn't real. And it doesn't make me believe that I won't find something that real again."

"If a rapist comes to your door, then your own fears and anger and aggression have brought him there. You have broadcast your feelings, and he has picked them up . . . There is a reason -- there are no accidents."

"But in your terms, the population of the Earth is made of counterparts, and so there is, indeed, a relationship; and when you kill an enemy, you are killing a version of yourself."

"The Point of Power Is in the Present."

"Jane's attitude toward reincarnation (like mine) was strongly ambivalent. The idea of physical life being expressed in many historical situations made emotional and intuitive sense to her. Intellectually, however, she was highly suspicious of the standard notion of reincarnation, particularly as any kind of pat answer to present problems. Thus, when class started to experience the theory of reincarnation in emotionally-charged drama form, Jane would often find herself in a most uncomfortable one-foot-on-the-dock, one-foot-in-the-boat position, at once intellectually scandalized and intuitively involved. Even on those occasions when the inner events would "click," or when Seth gave past-life information that made complete sense to people, Jane worried about it for days afterwards. What was the meaning of such memories? Where did they come from? Were we creating the events through suggestion, combined with a need for emotional outlet? Or did we actually remember people who lived -- in our terms -- long before any of us were born? These questions demanded the class maintain a balance, from which Jane never let things stray too far."

"She said that she was technically a virgin when she married Rob. That after she and Walt were married, when they first came to making love and she caught sight of his penis, she'd cracked up because it was so big and she couldn't see how in hell they'd manage it. She never said in so many words, "I never had sexual interourse with Walt," e.g. But when I asked her, "So you were technically a virgin when you married Rob" (words to this effect), she said yes. She said that whenever she and Rob made love before a Seth session, or before a class session, that the results for the ensuing session were spectacular. And that sometimes she and Rob would make love for the sake of these results in a session."

"Jane never said much about this to me, and the few comments she did make, about a priest who "chased her around the bed," were delivered casually in group settings, with deprecating humor, no hint of the frightening child-molesting scenario or later sexual browbeating that Rob's notes make plain."

"You must realize that your personal self grows as naturally out of that universe as, in other terms, any star does, or any flower, or any oak leaf. You are a part of that system. AND WHEN YOU SEND OUT A PLEA, YOU DO INDEED SET THE UNIVERSE IN MOTION, SO THAT THE PLEA IS ANSWERED! And so do you also send help to others, often even when you are not aware of it, as a flower sends out help to someone simply because it is beautiful."

"To label Seth as a spirit guide is to limit an understanding of what he is . . . The minute I found out after my first book was published that this automatically put me in what people called the psychic field . . . I was so humiliated I could hardly hold my head up. I'm using my writing [and] my life to transform intuitive, sometimes revelationary material into art, where it can be enjoyed, understood to varying degrees, and stand free of the stupid interpretations . . . The whole psychic bit as it is, is intellectually and morally psychologically outrageous as far as I'm concerned and I want no part of it or the vocabulary or the ideas."

"As I became accustomed to keeping dream records, the dreams themselves got "better," with more direct information and precognitive "hits.""

"If you could see the dreams of any town, or neighborhood, or family, or any group of people, would all waking events appear there in bits and pieces?"

"What struck me more than the book's UFO stories, however, was the common thread weaving among them of breathtaking alterations in consciousness associated with the experiences -- sensations of leaving the body, of flying through the air or being "carried along by the wind," and receiving "startling and novel insights into the nature of reality" that reverberated thereafter with profound, life-changing effects."

"In the realm of ESP, precognition, dreams, and related matters, there are few guideposts and little common sense applied. Most of the books written in the so-called "occult" or "spiritual" fields were worthless nonsense in my opinion -- as were treatises that debunked all subjective experiences as "unscientific.""

"The truth is that Masonry is undoubtedly a religious institution, its religion being of that universal kind in which all men agree."

"I think that wherever your journey takes you, there are new gods waiting there, with divine patience — and laughter."

"Originally presented in The "Unknown" Reality, the counterpart idea holds that each of us is neurologically and psychically connected to others who are living in roughly the same given time period and exploring related areas of interest of life-themes; counterparts spring, as it were, from the same entity, or source-self, thus gaining experience from many simultaneous viewpoints."

"To few Freemasons of the present day, except to those who have made Freemasonry a subject of especial study, is the name of Desaguliers very familiar. But it is well that they should know that to him, perhaps, more than to any other man, are we indebted for the present existence of Freemasonry as a living Institution, for it was his learning and social position that gave a standing to the Institution, which brought to its support noblemen and men of influence so that the insignificant assemblage of four London Lodges at the Apple-Tree Tavern has expanded into an association which now shelters the entire civilized world. And the moving spirit of all this was John Theophilus Desaguliers."

"Freemasonry... has no pretension to assume a place among the religions of the world as a sectarian "system of faith and worship," in the sense in which we distinguish Christianity from Judaism, or Judaism from Mohammedanism. In this meaning of the word we do not and can not speak of the Masonic religion, nor say of a man that he is not a Christian, but a Freemason. Here it is that the opponents of Freemasonry have assumed mistaken ground in confounding the idea of a religious Institution with that of the Christian religion as a peculiar form of worship, and in supposing, because Freemasonry teaches religious truth, that it is offered as a substitute for Christian truth and Christian obligation."

"A system is a plan or scheme of doctrines intended to develop a particular view."

"After 1909, Monet drastically enlarged his brushstrokes, disintegrated his images, and broke through the taming constraints and delicacy of Impressionism for good. Nineteen gnarly paintings, starting in 1909 and carrying through his final seventeen years, finish off the notion that Monet went happily ever after into lily-land."

"You can't prove Rembrandt is better than Norman Rockwell - although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I'd say you were shunning complexity, were secretly conservative, and hadn't really looked at either painter's work. Taste is a blood sport."

"I'm looking for what the artist is trying to say and what he or she is actually saying, what the work reveals about society and the timeless conditions of being alive."

"I made him swear he'd always tell me nothing but the truth. I promised him I never would resent it. No matter how unbearable, how harsh, how cruel. How come He thought I meant it?"

"Adults only look like they know what they're doing. In fact, they're all making it up as they go along, especially when giving advice."

"Lawyers exist to tell you everything that could possibly go wrong with anything you want to do. The correct way to interact with them is to say thank you very much, and then do it anyway. Actually no one told me that; I had to figure it out myself."

"OK, maybe being an international pop star is more exciting than the life of an element collector, but it has its moments."

"And so it is that we come to the end of our journey through the periodic table not with a bang, but with a committee."

"The periodic table is the universal catalog of everything you can drop on your foot. There are some things, such as light, love, logic, and time, that are not in the periodic table. But you can't drop any of those things on your foot."

"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations."

"The trouble with a man who takes his time is that he takes your time, too."

"A clear conscience doesn’t mean anything if you haven’t any conscience."

"Nothing makes us so sleepy as the bell of our alarm clock."

"A tinfoil wrapper doesn’t make a bum cigar taste any better."

"One of the indictments of civilization is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person."

"Let’s not have any more wars to end all war."

"A good time is seldom had by all."

"A single fact will often spoil an interesting argument."

"Many of us are dull, but not as dull as the grandchildren think we are."

"When the gardeners are praying for rain, the picnickers are praying for sunshine. So what is the poor Lord to do?"

"Uneasy lies the head that ignores a telephone call late at night."

"In closing a deal, what you don’t say may be more helpful than what you do say."

"The kindness lavished on dogs, if evenly distributed, would establish peace on earth."

"Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age."

"Every job has two salaries. One is the pay you get. The other is the mental satisfaction you derive from working for the company."

"Flattery must be pretty thick before anybody objects to it."

"If you do not have the capacity for happiness with a little money, great wealth will not bring it to you."

"The way to get things done is to have a good assistant."

"The most difficult jobs look easy until you try to do them."

"Beware of the man who won't be bothered with details."

"Anyone who can think clearly can write clearly. But neither is easy."