Lilith quotes

It contained a fine library, whose growth began before the invention of printing, and had continued to my own time, greatly influenced, of course, by changes of taste and pursuit.

Nothing surely can more impress upon a man the transitory nature of possession than his succeeding to an ancient property!

Like a moving panorama mine has passed from before many eyes, and is now slowly flitting from before my own.

“That is impossible.

You know nothing about whereness. The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home.

”

“You did me no wrong,” he returned. “Calling me a raven, or thinking me one, you allowed me existence, which is the sum of what one can demand of his fellow-beings. Therefore, in return, I will give you a lesson:—

No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he is, and then what himself is.

In fact, nobody is himself, and himself is nobody. There is more in it than you can see now, but not more than you need to see.

“You did me no wrong,” he returned. “

Calling me a raven, or thinking me one, you allowed me existence, which is the sum of what one can demand of his fellow-beings.

Therefore, in return, I will give you a lesson:—No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he is, and then what himself is. In fact, nobody is himself, and himself is nobody.

You have, I fear, got into this region too soon, but none the less you must get to be at home in it; for home, as you may or may not know, is the only place where you can go out and in.

There are places you can go into, and places you can go out of; but the one place, if you do but find it, where you may go out and in both, is home.

”

“Because it will grow proud, and cease to recognise its superiors.”

No man knows it when he is making an idiot of himself.

“Where do the worms come from?” said the raven, as if suddenly grown curious to know.

“

When you have a will, you will find that no one can.

”

“I cannot,” he returned. “

To go back, you must go through yourself, and that way no man can show another.

”

When some pray, they lift heavy thoughts from the ground, only to drop them on it again; others send up their prayers in living shapes, this or that, the nearest likeness to each.

All live things were thoughts to begin with, and are fit therefore to be used by those that think.

When one says to the great Thinker:—‘Here is one of thy thoughts: I am thinking it now!’ that is a prayer—a word to the big heart from one of its own little hearts.—Look, there is another!”

“I could not. But if I could, what better would you be? you would not know it of yourself and itself!

Why know the name of a thing when the thing itself you do not know?

Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!”

But if I could, what better would you be? you would not know it of yourself and itself! Why know the name of a thing when the thing itself you do not know? Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes?

But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!

”

A whole night-heaven lay condensed in each pupil; all the stars were in its blackness, and flashed; while round it for a horizon lay coiled an iris of the eternal twilight.

What any eye is, God only knows: her eyes must have been coming direct out of his own!

the still face might be a primeval perfection; the live eyes were a continuous creation.

“

Because no one anywhere ever wakes of himself. You can wake yourself no more than you can make yourself.

”

“Not much,” rejoined the sexton with a smile, “—not nearly enough!

Blessed be the true life that the pauses between its throbs are not death!

”

“Naturally not. Neither do I understand you; I can read neither your heart nor your face.

When my wife and I do not understand our children, it is because there is not enough of them to be understood. God alone can understand foolishness.

”

Home is ever so far away in the palm of your hand, and how to get there it is of no use to tell you. But you will get there; you must get there; you have to get there.

Everybody who is not at home, has to go home.

You thought you were at home where I found you: if that had been your home, you could not have left it. Nobody can leave home. And nobody ever was or ever will be at home without having gone there.”

you must get there; you have to get there. Everybody who is not at home, has to go home. You thought you were at home where I found you: if that had been your home, you could not have left it.

Nobody can leave home.

And nobody ever was or ever will be at home without having gone there.”

“No; but you came, and found the riddles waiting for you! Indeed you are yourself the only riddle.

What you call riddles are truths, and seem riddles because you are not true.

”

“And you must answer the riddles!” he continued. “They will go on asking themselves until you understand yourself.

The universe is a riddle trying to get out, and you are holding your door hard against it.

”

At first I was annoyed, as at the rudeness of a fellow creature; but soon I saw or fancied a certain wondering pity in her gaze: why was I out in her night?

Then first I knew what an awful thing it was to be awake in the universe: I was, and could not help it!

As I walked, my feet lost the heather, and trod a bare spongy soil, something like dry, powdery peat. To my dismay it gave a momentary heave under me;

Though hers was no primal radiance, it so hampered the evil things, that I walked in safety.

For light is yet light, if but the last of a countless series of reflections!

How swiftly would not my feet have carried me over the restless soil, had I known that, if still within their range when her lamp ceased to shine on the cursed spot, I should that moment be at the mercy of such as had no …

weapons and hoofs clashed and crushed; while skeleton jaws and phantom-throats swelled the deafening tumult with the war-cry of every opinion, bad or good, that had bred strife, injustice, cruelty in any world.

The holiest words went with the most hating blow.

Lie-distorted truths flew hurtling in the wind of javelins and bones. Every moment someone would turn against his comrades, and fight more wildly than before, The truth! The truth! still his cry.

weapons and hoofs clashed and crushed; while skeleton jaws and phantom-throats swelled the deafening tumult with the war-cry of every opinion, bad or good, that had bred strife, injustice, cruelty in any world. The holiest words went with the most hating blow.

Lie-distorted truths flew hurtling in the wind of javelins and bones.

Every moment someone would turn against his comrades, and fight more wildly than before, The truth! The truth! still his cry. One I noted who wheeled ever in a circle, and smote on all sides.

“

One bad apple may grow on the best tree

,” I said.

To enlarge their minds after the notions of my world—might it not be to distort and weaken them? Their fear of growth as a possible start for gianthood might be instinctive!

The part of philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.

“Not at all!” she answered. “

That only can be ours in whose existence our will is a factor.

”

Yet what could such foresight have availed me? That which is within a man, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in what is about to befall him: the operation upon him is the event.

Foreseeing is not understanding, else surely the prophecy latent in man would come oftener to the surface!

The sun was halfway to the horizon when I saw before me a rugged rocky ascent; but ere I reached it my desire to climb was over, and I longed to lie down.

But what mattered where while everywhere was the same as nowhere! I had not yet, by doing something in it, made anywhere into a place!

I was not yet alive; I was only dreaming I lived! I was but a consciousness with an outlook!

Truly I had been nothing else in the world I had left, but now I knew the fact!

which, if the author of a tale I was enjoying appeared, would wish him away that I might return to his story. I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking!

“Any man,” I said now, “is more than the greatest of books!”

I had not cared for my live brothers and sisters, and now I was left without even the dead to comfort me!

“

It must: there’s marriage in it! You and I are damned in each other.

”

but they are pretty steadily growing more capable, and will by and by develop faces; for every grain of truthfulness adds a fibre to the show of their humanity.

Nothing but truth can appear; and whatever is must seem.

”

“

In this world never trust a person who has once deceived you.

Above all, never do anything such a one may ask you to do.”

I would save the little warmth left in her, hoping an increase to it when the sun came back. Then I tried another grape, but could perceive no slightest movement of mouth or throat.

“Doubt,” I said to myself, “may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.”

So tight was the skin upon her bones that I dared not use friction.

I saw now that a man alone is but a being that may become a man—that he is but a need, and therefore a possibility.

To be enough for himself, a being must be an eternal, self-existent worm!

So superbly constituted, so simply complicate is man; he rises from and stands upon such a pedestal of lower physical organisms and spiritual structures, that no atmosphere will comfort or nourish his life, less divine than that offered by other souls;

All day long we had been walking over thick soft grass: abruptly she stopped, and threw herself upon it. There was yet light enough to show that she was utterly weary. I stood behind her, and gazed down on her for a moment.

Did I love her? I knew she was not good! Did I hate her? I could not leave her!

I knelt beside her.

I bore it as well as I could, wishing not to provoke enmity where wanted to remain for a while. Oftener than once or twice I appealed to passersby whom I fancied more benevolent-looking, but none would halt a moment to listen to me.

I looked poor, and that was enough: to the citizens of Bulika, as to house-dogs, poverty was an offence!

Deformity and sickness were taxed; and no legislation of their princess was more heartily approved of than what tended to make poverty subserve wealth.

“I suppose there must be, but we never think of such people.

When one goes poor, we forget him. That is how we keep rich.

We mean to be rich always.”

“Such a place would be pulled down, and its owner burned.

How is purity to be preserved except by keeping low people at a proper distance? Dignity is such a delicate thing!

”

“You shiver!” she said. “This place is cold for you! Come.”

I stood silent: she had struck me dumb with beauty; she held me dumb with sweetness.

Taking me by the hand, she drew me to the spot of light, and again flashed upon me. An instant she stood there.

Our natures, however, are so different, that this may not be easy. Men and women live but to die; we, that is such as I—we are but a few—live to live on.

Old age is to you a horror; to me it is a dear desire: the older we grow, the nearer we are to our perfection.

Your perfection is a poor thing, comes soon, and lasts but a little while; ours is a ceaseless ripening. I am not yet ripe, and have lived thousands of your years—how many, I never cared to note. The everlasting will not be measured.

Such love as yours was then, is hateful to me. I knew that, if you saw me as I am, you would love me—like the rest of them—to have and to hold: I would none of that either! I would be otherwise loved!

I would have a love that outlived hopelessness, outmeasured indifference, hate, scorn!

Therefore did I put on cruelty, despite, ingratitude. When I left you, I had shown myself such as you could at least no longer follow from pity: I was no longer in need of you!

The moon was high, and the place like the inside of a faint, sun-blanched moon. The princess was not there. I must find her: in her presence I might protect myself; out of it I could not!

I was a tame animal for her to feed upon; a human fountain for a thirst demoniac!

She showed me favour the more easily to use me! My waking eyes did not fear her, but they would close, and she would come!

“Not much; but you know the fact, and that is something!

Most people take more than a lifetime to learn that they have learned nothing, and done less!

At least you have not been without the desire to be of use!”

“Had you accepted our invitation, you would have known the right way.

When a man will not act where he is, he must go far to find his work.

”

“When you were with them, you were where you could help them: you left your work to look for it!

It takes a wise man to know when to go away; a fool may learn to go back at once!

”

“No doubt you would—the aim of all stupid philanthropists!

Why, Mr. Vane, but for the weeping in it, your world would never have become worth saving!

You confess you thought it might be water they wanted: why did not you dig them a well or two?”

“What difference does that make?

The man who grounds his action on another’s cowardice, is essentially a coward himself.

—I fear worse will come of it! By this time the Little Ones might have been able to protect themselves from the princess, not to say the giants—they were always fit enough for that; as it was they laughed at them!

“Nothing will ever close that wound,” he answered, with a sigh. “It must eat into her heart!

Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead.

An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.”

“Nay, now you talk foolishly! You could not have done otherwise than you did, not knowing she was evil!—

But you never brought anyone to life! How could you, yourself dead?

”

“Ah,” said one of the wildest, “but we were not birds then! We were run-creatures, not fly-creatures! We had our hide-places in the bushes then; but when we came to no-bushes, only trees, we had to build nests!

When we built nests, we grew birds, and when we were birds, we had to do birds!

We asked them to teach us their noises, and they taught us, and now we are real birds!—Come and see my nest. It’s not big enough for king, but it’s big enough for king to see me in it!”

She might suggest something I should do; she might ask me what she ought to do; but she never seemed to suppose that I, any more than she, would like to do, or could care about anything except what must be done.

Her love overflowed upon me⁠—not in caresses, but in a closeness of recognition which I can compare to nothing but the devotion of a divine animal.

I never told her anything about her mother.

“I would give my life,” she said, “to have my mother!

She might kill me if she liked! I should just kiss her and die!

”

“

Nosy dear, I am digging you out of the mountain, and shall soon get down to you: be patient; I’m a coming!

Very soon now you’ll send up your nose to look for me, and then we’ll kiss like good elephants, we will!”

Then I knew that I had run away from a shadow that wanted to be me and wasn’t, and that I was the Odu that loved Sozo.

It was the shadow that got into me, and hated him from inside me; it was not my own self me!

And now I know that I ought not to have run away! But indeed I did not quite know what I was doing until it was done! My legs did it, I think: they grew frightened, and forgot me, and ran away! Naughty legs! There!

“That is just why.—

A friend is one who gives us what we need, and the princess is sorely in need of a terrible scratching.

”

“Please, king,” said one, “

I’m so afraid of being afraid!

”

“My boy,” I answered, “there is no harm in being afraid.

The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master!

Laugh in his face and he will run away.”

“

You cannot like, and you ought not to dislike what you have never seen.

—Once more, you must not call her the cat-woman!”

“No, my child.

She loves no one, therefore she cannot be with anyone.

There is One who will be with her, but she will not be with Him.”

“So long as I feel myself what it pleases me to think myself, I care not. I am content to be to myself what I would be. What I choose to seem to myself makes me what I am.

My own thought makes me me; my own thought of myself is me.

Another shall not make me!”

“I am no slave, for I love that light, and will with the deeper will which created mine.

There is no slave but the creature that wills against its creator.

Who is a slave but her who cries, ‘I am free,’ yet cannot cease to exist!”

“

She alone is free who would make free; she loves not freedom who would enslave: she is herself a slave.

Every life, every will, every heart that came within your ken, you have sought to subdue: you are the slave of every slave you have made—such a slave that you do not know it!—See your own self!”

She sees at last the good she is not, the evil she is. She knows that she is herself the fire in which she is burning, but she does not know that the Light of Life is the heart of that fire.

Her torment is that she is what she is.

Do not fear for her; she is not forsaken. No gentler way to help her was left. Wait and watch.”

“Had he not made you,” said Mara, gently and slowly, “you could not even hate him. But he did not make you such.

You have made yourself what you are.

—Be of better cheer: he can remake you.”

“Those, alas, are not the tears of repentance!” she said. “The true tears gather in the eyes. Those are far more bitter, and not so good.

Self-loathing is not sorrow.

Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father’s arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates. Once with his father, he is to himself of no more account. It will be so with her.”

A horrible Nothingness, a Negation positive infolded her; the border of its being that was yet no being, touched me, and for one ghastly instant I seemed alone with Death Absolute!

It was not the absence of everything I felt, but the presence of Nothing.

The princess dashed herself from the settle to the floor with an exceeding great and bitter cry. It was the recoil of Being from Annihilation.

“

Which you have been playing all your life! Oh, you are hard to teach!

”

she was in the outer darkness, we present with her who was in it! We were not in the outer darkness; had we been, we could not have been with her; we should have been timelessly, spacelessly, absolutely apart.

The darkness knows neither the light nor itself; only the light knows itself and the darkness also. None but God hates evil and understands it.

Something was gone from her, which then first, by its absence, she knew to have been with her every moment of her wicked years. The source of life had withdrawn itself;

with my eyes I saw the face of a live death! She knew life only to know that it was dead, and that, in her, death lived. It was not merely that life had ceased in her, but that she was consciously a dead thing.

She had killed her life, and was dead⁠—and knew it.

She must death it forever and ever! She had tried her hardest to unmake herself, and could not! she was a dead life! she could not cease! she must be!

“A slave thou art that shall one day be a child!” answered Mara.—“Verily, thou shalt die, but not as thou thinkest.

Thou shalt die out of death into life.

Now is the Life for, that never was against thee!”

“Look at the rivers of the sky!” said Mara. “See how they come down to wake up the waters under the earth!

Soon will the rivers be flowing everywhere, merry and loud, like thousands and thousands of happy children.

Oh, how glad they will make you, Little Ones! You have never seen any, and do not know how lovely is the water!”

“

They are the juice inside the juice,

” answered Mara.

“Not one.

The nests are too full of lovely dreams for one cat to get in.

”

“You are welcome everyone,” she answered. “

Sooner or later all will be little ones, for all must sleep in my house!

It is well with those that go to sleep young and willing!—My husband is even now preparing her couch for Lilith. She is neither young nor quite willing, but it is well indeed that she is come.”

“Death is even now on his way to lead thee to Him. Thou knowest neither Death nor the Life that dwells in Death! Both befriend thee.

I am dead, and would see thee dead, for I live and love thee.

Thou art weary and heavy-laden: art thou not ashamed? Is not the being thou hast corrupted become to thee at length an evil thing? Wouldst thou yet live on in disgrace eternal? Cease thou canst not: wilt thou not be restored and be?”

Each of the Little Ones had by this time, except three of the boys, found at least an unobjecting bedfellow, and lay still and white beside a still, white woman.

The little orphans had adopted mothers!

One tiny girl had chosen a father to sleep with, and that was mine. A boy lay by the side of the beautiful matron with the slow-healing hand. On the middle one of the three couches hitherto unoccupied, lay Lona.

“I may not be old enough to desire to die, but I am young enough to desire to live indeed! Therefore I go now to learn if she will at length take me in.

You wish to die because you do not care to live: she will not open her door to you, for no one can die who does not long to live.

”

And as I sat, there grew in me such a sense of loneliness as never yet in my wanderings had I felt.

Thousands were near me, not one was with me!

True, it was I who was dead, not they; but, whether by their life or by my death, we were divided! They were alive, but I was not dead enough even to know them alive: doubt would come.

“Because here was I, born to look after my brothers and sisters!” answered Mara with a smile.

“Every creature must one night yield himself and lie down,” answered Adam: “he was made for liberty, and must not be left a slave!”

“It will be late, I fear, ere all have lain down!” I said.

“There is no early or late here,” he rejoined. “

For him the true time then first begins who lays himself down.

Men are not coming home fast; women are coming faster. A desert, wide and dreary, parts him who lies down to die from him who lies down to live. The former may well make haste, but here is no haste.”

I would write songs to make their hearts swell, and tales to make them glow! I would turn the forces of the world into such channels of invention as to make them laugh with the joy of wonder!

Love possessed me! Love was my life! Love was to me, as to him that made me, all in all!

Suddenly I found myself in a solid blackness, upon which the ghost of light that dwells in the caverns of the eyes could not cast one fancied glimmer. But my heart, which feared nothing and hoped infinitely, was full of peace.

“Alas! when I but dream how am I to know it?

The dream best dreamed is the likest to the waking truth!

”

“When you are quite dead, you will dream no false dream.

The soul that is true can generate nothing that is not true, neither can the false enter it.

”

“

Thou doubtest because thou lovest the truth.

Some would willingly believe life but a phantasm, if only it might forever afford them a world of pleasant dreams: thou art not of such! Be content for a while not to know surely.

Trials yet await thee, heavy, of a nature thou knowest not now. Remember the things thou hast seen. Truly thou knowest not those things, but thou knowest what they have seemed, what they have meant to thee! Remember also the things thou shalt yet see.

Truth is all in all; and the truth of things lies, at once hid and revealed, in their seeming.

”

I stretched forth my hands to find him, but no answering touch met their seeking. I was alone—alone in the land of dreams! To myself I seemed wide awake, but I believed I was in a dream, because he had told me so.

Even in a dream, however, the dreamer must do something!

he cannot sit down and refuse to stir until the dream grow weary of him and depart: I took up my wandering, and went on.

I went back to the library.

There the books were hateful to me⁠—for I had once loved them.

That night I lay awake from down-lying to uprising, and the next day renewed my endeavours with the mystic door. But all was yet in vain. How the hours went I cannot think. No one came nigh me;

“

He is at least clothed-upon with Death, which is the radiant garment of Life

,” said Adam.

“you have died into life, and will die no more; you have only to keep dead. Once dying as we die here, all the dying is over. Now you have only to live, and that you must, with all your blessed might.

The more you live, the stronger you become to live.

”

“It needs but the will, and the strength is there!” said the Mother. “Pure life has no weakness to grow weary withal. The Life keeps generating ours.—

Those who will not die, die many times, die constantly, keep dying deeper, never have done dying; here all is upwardness and love and gladness.

”

“It needs but the will, and the strength is there!” said the Mother. “

Pure life has no weakness to grow weary withal.

The Life keeps generating ours.—Those who will not die, die many times, die constantly, keep dying deeper, never have done dying; here all is upwardness and love and gladness.”

“I told you, brother, all would be well!—

When next you would comfort, say, ‘What will be well, is even now well.’

”

“

All the night long the morning is at hand

,” said Adam.