“Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has rarely been more interesting times than these.”
Source: Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987), p. 113
Context: An ancient Chinese curse runs, "May you live in interesting times." Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has rarely been more interesting times than these. Whenever history becomes unstable and destinies hang in the balance, then magicians and messiahs appear everywhere. Our own civilization has moved into an epoch of permanent crisis and upheaval, and we are beset with a plague of wizards. They serve an historic purpose, for whenever a society undergoes radical change, alternative spiritualities proliferate, and from among these a culture will select a new world view.
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Peter J. Carroll 45
British occultist 1953Related quotes
Political and Literary Essays, 1908-1913
“The captain of the Hampshire grenadiers…has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.”
Memoirs (1796)
Source: Quotaes, Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418-584(1980), p. 35
“Rumor is rarely more interesting than fact, but it is always more readily available.”
Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 46, Resting Places, I
Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 68
Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. 12
The Stark Munro Letters (1894)
Context: The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time. Some eighty thousand years are supposed to have existed between paleolithic and neolithic man. Yet in all that time he only learned to grind his flint stones instead of chipping them. But within our father's lives what changes have there not been? The railway and the telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity. Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain footsteps. Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.
Ce corps qui s'appelait et qui s'appelle encore le saint empire romain n'était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire.
Essai sur l'histoire générale et sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations, Chapter 70 (1756)
Citas