Themes

"Beautiful is a word for young people. Beauty is a phase you grow through, like acne."

"Unfortunately, truth is neither a listable nor a decidable property; nor is the truth of a statement of arithmetic. The American logician John Myhill has used the term 'prospective' to characterize those attributes of the world that are neither listable nor decidable. They are properties that cannot be recognized by the application of some formula, made to conform to a rule, or generated by some computer program. They are characterized by incessant novelty that cannot be encompassed by any finite set of rules. 'Beauty', 'ugliness', 'truth', 'harmony', simplicity', and 'poetry' are names we give to some of the attributes of this sort. There is no way of listing all examples of beauty or ugliness, nor any procedure for saying whether or not something possesses either of those attributes, without redefining them in some more restrictive fashion that kills their prospective character."

"Beauty is something that disappears when you try to define it."

"Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite."

"Are not all young men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer beauty of soul from beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads them to believe that moral perfection must co-exist with physical perfection."

"The beautiful are never desolate; But some one always loves them—God or man. If man abandons, God himself takes them."

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

"Inasmuch as love grows in you, in so much beauty grows; for love is itself the beauty of the soul."

"Slow was I, Lord, too slow in loving you. ... You were waiting within me while I went outside me, looking for you there, misshaping myself as I flung myself upon the shapely things you made."

"A common expression among African Americans relates the good to the beautiful, "beauty is as beauty does" or "she's beautiful because she's good." The first statement places emphasis on what a person does, that is, how a person "walks" among others in the society. The second statement identifies the beautiful by action. If a person's actions are not good, it does not matter how the person looks physically. Doing good is equivalent to being beautiful."

"I must not say that she was true, Yet let me say that she was fair; And they, that lovely face who view, They should not ask if truth be there."

"Beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that "good" means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the "beautiful" is something pleasant to apprehend."

"Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God."

"Beauty, real beauty, is something very grave. If there is a God, He must be partly that."

"Things are beautiful if you love them."

"What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or wingëd air."

"In the dark and cloudy day, When earth's riches flee away, And the last hope will not stay, Saviour, comfort me."

"To solemnize this day the glorious sun Stays in his course and plays the alchemist, Turning with splendour of his precious eye The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold."

"O, he sits high in all the people's hearts; And that which would appear offence in us, His countenance, like richest alchemy, Will change to virtue and to worthiness."

"I had discovered, early in my researches, that their doctrine was no mere chemical fantasy, but a philosophy they applied to the world, to the elements, and to man himself."

"Transmutemini (inquit) transmute∣mini de lapidibus mortuis in Lapides vivos philosophicos."

"It is necessary to deprive matter of its qualities in order to draw out its soul. ... Copper is like a man; it has a soul and a body; ...the soul is the most subtile part, ... that is to say, the tinctorial spirit. The body is the ponderable, material, terrestrial thing, endowed with a shadow. ... After a series of suitable treatments copper becomes without shadow and better than gold. ...The elements ... grow and are transmuted, because it is their qualities, not their substances, which are contrary."

"You are an alchemist; make gold of that."

"Alchemists knew the coiled serpent as Uboros. ...it represented the highest goal of their quest: the harmonious union of opposites, especially the masculine and the feminine sides of the personality. The motto that usually accompanied it was "From the One to the One.""

"The starving chemist in his golden views Supremely blest."

"Although Alchemy has now fallen into contempt, and is even considered a thing of the past, the physician should not be influenced by such judgements. For many arts, such as astronomy, philosophy , and others, are also in disrepute. I am directing you, physicians, to alchemy for the preparation of the magnalia, for the production of the mysteria, for the preparation of the arcana, for the separation of the pure from the impure, to the end that you may obtain a flawless, pure remedy, God-given, perfect, and of certain efficacy, acheiving the highest degree of virtue and power. For it is not God's design that the remedies should exist for us, ready-made, boiled and salted, but that we should boil them ourselves, and it pleases Him that we boil them and learn in the process, that we train ourselves in this art and are not idle on earth, but labour in daily toil. For it is we who must pray for our daily bread, and if He grants it to us, it is only through our labour, our skill and preparation."

"They can picture love affairs of chemicals and stars, a romance of stones, or the fertility of fire. Strange, fertile correspondences the alchemists sensed in unlikely orders of being. Between men and planets, plants and gestures, words and weather."

"Alchemy is an erotic science, involved in buried aspects of reality, aimed at purifying and transforming all being and matter."

"If by fire Of sooty coal th' empiric alchymist Can turn, or holds it possible to turn, Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold."

"Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find."

"Subtle. No egg but differs from a chicken more Than metals in themselves. Surly. That cannot be. The egg's ordained by nature to that end And is a chicken in potentia. Subtle. The same we say of lead and other metals, Which would be gold if they had time. ...for 'twere absurd To think that nature in the earth bred gold Perfect in the instant; something went before. There must be remote matter."

"[T]he growth of a plant, a tree, or an animal is an alchemical process going on in the alchemical laboratory of nature, and performed by the great Alchemist, the power of God acting in nature."

"And mark yon alchemist, with zodiac-spangled zone, Wrenching the mandrake root that fattens in the gloom."

"What a lovely afternoon On a cloudbusting kind of day. We took our own 'Mystery Tour' And got completely lost somewhere up in the hills. And we came up on a bee-keeper, And he said "Did you know they can change it all?" They got alchemy. They turn the roses into gold They turn the lilac into honey They're making love for the peaches. And they'll do it, Do it for you."

"[E]ach author seems to have aimed to write treatises intelligible only to himself, and we greatly doubt his success in even this respect."

"Azoth is the essence of life! We alchemists have the ability to convert it into power! We can live forever! Your Azoth, Fiona, belongs to me! Come to me, Fiona. I will now extract the Azoth latent in you, in order to realize the everlasting life of Aureolus Belli."

"Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold, buried somewhere in his vineyard; while they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions to light."

"[E]very relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, ... and ... everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable."

"The Hindus do not pay particular attention to alchemy, but no nation is entirely free from it, and one nation has more bias for it than another, which must not be construed as proving intelligence or ignorance; for we find that many intelligent people are entirely given to alchemy, whilst ignorant people ridicule the art and its adepts."

"Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth."

"[A]n art without principles, the beginning of which was deceit, the progress delusion, and the end poverty."

"The matter lies before the eyes of all; everybody sees it, touches it, loves it, but knows it not. It is glorious and vile, precious and of small account, and is found everywhere... But, to be brief, our Matter has as many names as there are things in this world; that is why the foolish know it not."

"Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene; Resumes them, to prepare us for the next."

"As sure as God ever puts His children into the furnace, He will be in the furnace with them."

"Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble; they must be burned into us by the hot iron of affliction, otherwise we shall not truly receive them."

"Affliction of itself does not sanctify any body, but the reverse. I believe in sanctified afflictions, but not in sanctifying afflictions."

"The truly great and good, in affliction, bear a countenance more princely than they are wont; for it is the temper of the highest hearts, like the palm tree, to strive most upward when they are most burdened."

"Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified cross is a fruitful tree."

"Seek holiness rather than consolation."

"Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed."