The Secret Commonwealth Quotes

You're in a world full of color and you want to see it in black and white.

You won’t understand anything about the imagination until you realise that it’s not about making things up, it’s about perception.

Had reason ever created a poem, or a symphony, or a painting? If rationality can’t see things like the secret commonwealth, it’s because rationality’s vision is limited. The secret commonwealth is there. We can’t see it with rationality any more than we can weigh something with a microscope: it’s the wrong sort of instrument. We need to imagine as well as measure ...

The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you’ll be willing to do anything to bring about the end you want. It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ’em.

What is the world of the spirits? It is nothing I know about. I don't know what spirit is." "Spirit is what matter does.

You won't understand anything about imagination until you realise that it's not about making things up, it's about perception.

But then she remembered what the gyptians had said: Include things, don’t leave them out. Look at things in their context. Include everything.

Kai’s date to the Commonwealth’s ball last year, and it had been … terrifying. But also extraordinary. The people of Earth still weren’t sure what to do with the fact that one of their beloved leaders was not so secretly dating a Lunar, and a cyborg Lunar at that.

Mr. Scoresby...told me there were truthtellers, and they needed to know what the truth was, so as to tell it. And there were liars, and they needed to know what the truth was, so they could change it or avoid it. And there were bullshitters, who didn't care about the truth at all. They weren't interested. What they spoke wasn't the truth and it wasn't lies; it was bullshit. All they were interested in was their own performance.

Keep away from the literal-minded folk, and ignore the scoffers.

Knowledge is like water: it always finds gaps to leak through. There are too many people, too many journals, too many places of learning, who already know something about it.

She couldn't get any further at that point. The sky full of stars seemed dead and cold, everything in it the result of the mechanical, indifferent interactions of molecules and particles that would continue for the rest of time whether Lyra lived or died, whether human beings were conscious or unconscious: a vast silent empty indifference, all quite meaningless. Reason had brought her to this state. She had exalted reason over every other faculty. The result had been - was now - the deepest unhappiness she had ever felt.

We need to imagine as well as measure.

It was nothing more than what it was.

Lyra bent over the open vessel and found the concentrated fragrance of every rose that had ever bloomed: a sweetness and power so profound that it moved beyond sweetness altogether and out of the other side of its own complexity into a realm of clear and simple purity and beauty. It was the smell of sunlight itself.

But we shouldn't believe things because it makes us happy to, she thought. We should believe things because they're true, and if that makes us unhappy, that's very unfortunate, but it's not the reason of fault.

You used to be optimistic. You used to think that whatever we did would turn out well. Even after we came back from the north, you used to think that. Now you're cautious, you're anxious… You're pessimistic." She knew he was right, but it wasn't right that he should speak to her accusingly, as if it was something to blame her for. "I used to be young," was all she could find to say.

It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ’em.

She’d hardly been aware of feeling anxious, but that was because anxiety was everywhere, built into the very molecules of the world, or so it had seemed.

they have separated their intelligences from their other faculties. And that is not an intelligent thing to do.

Then excuse me, Miss Silver, but they have separated their intelligences from their other faculties. And that is not an intelligent thing to do.

That’s interesting,” said Dr. Lieberson. “History’s not over, you see. It’s happening all the time.

with his lumpish sow dæmon sprawled on the ground beside him, gnawing a turnip.

What’s the secret commonwealth?” “The world of fairies, and ghosts, and the jacky lanterns.

She felt so alone. She felt as if her life had gone into a kind of hibernation, as if part of her were asleep and maybe dreaming the rest. She let herself be passive; she accepted whatever happened.

But we shouldn't believe things because it makes us happy, she thought. We should believe things because they're true, and if that makes us unhappy that's very unfortunate, but it's not the fault of reason.

Have you ever heard the term ‘the secret commonwealth’ ?” “No. What does it refer to?” “To the world of half-seen things and half heard whispers. To things that are regarded by clever people as superstition. To fairies, spirits, hauntings, things of the night.

The moon was climbing the sky, and the vast sweep of the milky way stretched above, every one of those minute specks a sun in its own system, lighting and warming planets, maybe, and life, maybe, and some kind of wondering being, maybe, looking out at the little star that was her sun, and at this world, and at Lyra.

Reason had brought her to this state. She had exalted reason over every other faculty. The result had been—was now—the deepest unhappiness she had ever felt.

maybe from other experiences as well, that there are more ways than one, more than two, of seeing things and perceiving their meanings.

but knowing that she could do it wasn’t the same as being able to do it just then.

I am their father.

All these things that are changing…like ice breaking under your feet.

The strength was draining out of him minute by minute. Maybe he’d never move again.

She was not beautiful—she would never be that, nor pretty, nor conventionally attractive…

She felt light-headed, as if part of her were somewhere else and dreaming of this, and she’d wake up soon and find everything normal.

She felt half inclined to lie down and die. But her body wanted food and drink, and she took this as a sign that her body at least wanted to go on living.

Spirit is what matter does.

What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! … The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

There were areas of her life about which she cared passionately and which he was indifferent to or simply unaware of.

But just now she lacked inventiveness, or energy, or chutzpah. She was tired and lonely and frightened.

Then she felt dizzy. This was all impossible, and it was all happening.

All she could do was hope, and she kept trying to do that in spite of the fear and loneliness.

They gave her another image: she was enticing monsters out of the darkness of herself.

But he was a human being, or part of one, and he felt just as Lyra did: unhappy, and guilty, and wretchedly lonely.

…and it would all go back to the way it used to be. At the same time, he knew it wouldn’t, but he had to hold on to something in the dark nights, and imagination was all he had.

Being invisible was hard work, unrewarding, soul-crushing work.

Thoughts that didn’t bear thinking kept crowding in and shouldering aside her pretended passivity.

The question was, she thought, was the universe alive or dead?

Le soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

In Geneva, Olivier Bonneville was becoming frustrated.

Jill, the time’s come. They’re going to close us down. Tell all the Heads of Section that Christabel is now in operation.

In Malcolm’s view the story was almost insufferable,

La nature est un temple où de vivants piliers / Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles.

The Simurgh?

he sent a note to Lyra inviting her to dine with him in the Master’s lodging on the evening after the Founder’s Feast. She was a little puzzled, but not much concerned.

The meaning of something is its connection to something else

In the world of the spirits your name is famous.

He’s saying that everything you know is going to change. Things that you are familiar with will become strange and alien, and things you have never imagined will become normal.

Every thing possible to be believ’d is an image of truth. —William Blake

The magician arrived. He was called Johannes Agrippa, and he looked at us, at me and Dinessa, and went to my father’s study to talk in private.

Leave it on the desk. Have you spoken to anyone else about this?” “No, monsieur.

Phantoms. Ghasts of this kind or that. Emissaries of the Evil One." "Do you believe that?" "Of course. It would be an intellectual failure to do anything else.

But events have consequences, and sometimes the effects of what we once did take a long time to become fully apparent.

As darkness was falling at the edge of the Fens, rain started to fall too.

Marcel Delamare asked the question with enormous and unconcealed patience.

Ik wist niet eens dat u Alice heette. - Lyra

De blik die hij zich zo goed herinnerde van toen hij haar lesgaf, die uitdrukking van blanco, ongenaakbaar verzet, schuilde achter haar ogen.

Dingen veranderen, Lyra. - Alice

Ze zijn ingetogen in hun kleding, en hebben de houding van panters. Jij kunt dat. Je doet het al, alleen weet je het niet. - Farder Coram tegen Lyra

but he wondered how many others had seen the loneliness in her expression when she wasn’t guarding it.

jeunesse dorée

like a little thorn that catches for a moment on a traveler’s sleeve, only to pull out when the traveler walks on.

Or had she imagined it, and was her imagination just a spindrift of falsity?

He picked up a book that lay on the floor. “Are you reading this?” he said. It was Simon Talbot’s The Constant Deceiver. “Yes,” she said. “I’m not sure about it.” “That should please him.

Lives had been spent here—people had loved one another and eaten and drunk and laughed and betrayed and been afraid of death—and not a single fragment of that remained. White stones, black shadows.

Lyra was so tired, she felt on the verge of delirium. She wanted to sleep quite desperately, but she knew that if she gave in and put her head down, she wouldn’t wake up till the morning was filling the sky.

…in a little adventure that had culminated in her thinking that everything meant something, if only she could read it. The universe had seemed alive then. There were messages to be read everywhere you looked.

But everyone will know...' 'So what? It's nothing to be ashamed of. Things happen to people's families all the time and it's not their fault. If you cope with it by being brave, people will admire you for it.

Pan hated seeing people die, because of what happened to their dæmons: they vanished like a candle flame going out. He wanted to console this poor creature, who knew she was going to disappear, but all she wanted to do was feel a last touch of the warmth she’d found in her man’s body all their lives together. The man took a shallow, rasping breath, and then the pretty hawk dæmon drifted out of existence altogether.

Yes, the secret commonwealth…You don’t hear much talk about that these days. When I was young, there wasn’t a single bush, not a single flower nor a stone, that didn’t have its own proper spirit. You had to have a mind to your manners around them, to ask for pardon, or for permission, or give thanks….Just to acknowledge that they were there, them spirits, and they had their proper rights to recognition and courtesy.

I can’t do that anymore. That was just fancy. I was spinning tales out of the air, nothing more than that; there was nothing solid in them. Maybe Pan was right, and I haven’t got a real imagination. I was bullshitting.

Malcolm was watching everything, looking around unobtrusively, and as the speaker began again, he noticed something: the armed police had quietly vanished. There’d been a man at each of the six exits. Now there were none.

it must have been the case that there had been an angel among the hostages, that he’d struck down the leader as punishment for shooting the farmer, and then vanished, probably flown back to heaven.” “No doubt.” “Or to Calvi’s.

Since coming home to Oxford after that strange adventure, they had told no one about it, and exercised the most scrupulous care to keep it a secret; but sometimes, and more often recently, they simply had to get away from each other.

an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ’em.

And she found herself thinking about roses and Dust. The street below her was saturated in Dust. Human lives were generating it, being sustained and enriched by it; it made everything glow as if it was touched by gold. She could almost see it. It brought with it a mood that she hadn't felt for so long that it was unfamiliar, and she welcomed it almost apprehensively: it was a quiet conviction, underlying every circumstance, that all was well and that the world was her true home, as if there were great secret powers that would see her safe.

She gathered the little cards together with an automatic hand. That was the phrase that came to her, as if her hand were purely mechanical, not alive at all, as if the messages from her skin and her nerves were changes in the anbaric current along a copper wire, not anything conscious. With that vision of her body as something dead and mechanical came a sense of listless desolation. She felt not only as if she were dead now, but that she’d always been dead, and had only dreamed of being alive, and that there was no life in the dream either: it was only the meaningless and indifferent jostling of particles in her brain, and nothing more. But that little chain of ideas provoked a spasm of reaction, and she thought, No! That’s a lie! That’s slander! I don’t believe it! Except that she did believe it, just then, and it was killing her.

Well, she thought, what was the secret commonwealth, anyway? It was a state of being that had no place in the world of Simon Talbot, or the different world of Gottfried Brande. It was quite invisible to everyday vision. If it existed at all, it was seen by the imagination, whatever that was, and not by logic. It included ghosts, fairies, gods and goddesses, nymphs, night-ghasts, devils, jacky lanterns, and other such entities. They were neither well- nor ill-disposed to human beings by nature, but sometimes their purposes intersected or coincided with human ones. They had a certain power over human lives, but they could be defeated too, as the fairy of the Thames had been tricked by Malcolm when she had wanted to keep Lyra with her and not let her go….

You used to be optimistic. You used to think that whatever we did would turn out well. Even after we came back from the north, you used to think that. Now you’re cautious, you’re anxious…you’re pessimistic.” She knew he was right, but it wasn’t right that he should speak to her so accusingly, as if it was something to blame her for. “I used to be young,” was all she could find to say.

Gradually, as Lyra watched, she found her mood lifting. She’d hardly been aware of feeling anxious, but that was because anxiety was everywhere, built into the very molecules of the world, or so it had seemed. But now it was disappearing, like heavy gray clouds thinning and dispersing and finding their great banks of vapor drifting into wisps that wafted away into invisibility, leaving the sky clear and open.

The other side's got an energy that our side en't got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you'll be willing to do anything to bring about the end you want. It's the oldest human problem, Lyra, an' it's the difference between good and evil. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it'd have to become evil to do 'em.

Maybe Pan was right, and I haven’t got a real imagination. I was bullshitting.” “You were what?” “That’s a word Mr. Scoresby taught me. He told me there were truth tellers, and they needed to know what the truth was, so as to tell it. And there were liars, and they needed to know what the truth was, so they could change it or avoid it. And there were bullshitters, who didn’t care about the truth at all. They weren’t interested. What they spoke wasn’t the truth and it wasn’t lies; it was bullshit. All they were interested in was their own performance.

She lay there trying not to think, but thought was like a tide coming in. Little trickles of awareness—an essay to finish, her clothes that needed washing, the knowledge that unless she got to the hall by nine o’clock there’d be no breakfast—kept flowing in from this direction or that and undermining the sandcastle of her sleepiness. And then the biggest ripple yet: Pan and their estrangement. Something had come between them, and neither of them knew fully what it was, and the only person each could confide in was the other, and that was the one thing they couldn’t do.

We heard the United States had a new president, that she was arranging for a loan from the Commonwealth to bail us out. We heard the White House was burning and the National Guard was fighting the Secret Service in the streets of DC. We heard there was no water left in Los Angeles, that hordes of people were trying to walk north through the drought-ridden Central Valley. We heard that the county to the east of us still had electricity and that the Third World was rallying to send us support. And then we heard that China and Russia were at war and the US had been forgotten. Although the Fundamentalists' predictions of Armageddon grew more intense, and everyone else complained with increasing bitterness about everything from the last of chewing gum to the closure of Redwood General Hospital, still, among most people there was an odd sense of buoyancy, a sort of surreptitious relief, the same feeling Eva and I used to have every few years when the river that flows through Redwood flooded, washing out roads and closing businesses for a day or two. We knew a flood was inconvenient and destructive At the same time we couldn't help but feel a peculiar sort of delight that something beyond us was large enough to destroy the inexorability of our routines.

Ahead of her the dead bones of the town lay almost white in the moonlight. Lives had been spent here—people had loved one another and eaten and drunk and laughed and betrayed and been afraid of death—and not a single fragment of that remained. White stones, black shadows. All around her, things were whispering, or it might only have been night-loving insects conversing together. Shadows and whispers. Here was the tumbled ruins of a little basilica: people had worshipped here. Nearby a single archway topped with a classical pediment stood between nothing and nothing. People had walked through the arch, driven donkey carts through, stood and gossiped in its shade in the heat of a long-dead day…

We are lovers of beauty without extravagance, and lovers of wisdom without unmanliness. Wealth to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degradation to make no effort to overcome.... Let us draw strength, not merely from twice-told arguments—how fair and noble a thing it is to show courage in battle—but from the busy spectacle of our great city's life as we have it before us day by day, falling in love with her as we see her, and remembering that all this greatness she owes to men with the fighter's daring, the wise man's understanding of his duty, and the good man's self-discipline in its performance—to men who, if they failed in any ordeal, disdained to deprive the city of their services, but sacrificed their lives as the best offerings on her behalf. So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all sepulchres, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by. For the whole earth is a sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. For you now it remains to rival what they have done and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy's onset.

The central question in the analysis of the UFO phenomenon has always been that of the controlling intelligence behind the objects' apparently purposeful behavior. For the time being, let me simply state again that the modern, global belief in flying saucers and their occupants is identical to an earlier belief in the Good People. The entities described as the pilots of the craft are indistinguishable from the elves, sylphs, and lutins of the Middle Ages. Through the observations of unidentified flying objects, we are concerned with an agency our ancestors knew well and regarded with awe: we are prying into the affairs of the Secret Commonwealth.

The Sixteen Conclusions of Reverend Kirk In the last half of the seventeenth century, a Scottish scholar gathered all the accounts he could find about the Sleagh Maith and, in 1691, wrote an amazing manuscript entitled The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. It was the first systematic attempt to describe the methods and organization of the strange creatures that plagued the farmers of Scotland. The author, Reverend Kirk, of Aberfoyle, studied theology at St. Andrews and took his degree of professor at Edinburgh. Later he served as minister for the parishes of Balquedder and Aberfoyle and died in 1692. Kirk invented the name "the Secret Commonwealth" to describe the organization of the elves. It is impossible to quote the entire text of his treatise, but we can summarize his findings about elves and other aerial creatures in the following way: 1. They have a nature that is intermediate between man and the angels. 2. Physically, they have very light and fluid bodies, which are comparable to a condensed cloud. They are particularly visible at dusk. They can appear and vanish at will. 3. Intellectually, they are intelligent and curious. 4. They have the power to carry away anything they like. 5. They live inside the earth in caves, which they can reach through any crevice or opening where air passes. 6. When men did not inhabit most of the world, the creatures used to live there and had their own agriculture. Their civilization has left traces on the high mountains; it was flourishing at a time when the whole countryside was nothing but woods and forests. 7. At the beginning of each three-month period, they change quarters because they are unable to stay in one place. Besides, they like to travel. It is then that men have terrible encounters with them, even on the great highways. 8. Their chameleon-like bodies allow them to swim through the air with all their household. 9. They are divided into tribes. Like us, they have children, nurses, marriages, burials, etc., unless they just do this to mock our own customsor to predict terrestrial events. 10. Their houses are said to be wonderfully large and beautiful, but under most circumstances they are invisible to human eyes. Kirk compares them to enchanted islands. The houses are equipped with lamps that burn forever and fires that need no fuel. 11. They speak very little. When they do talk among themselves, their language is a kind of whistling sound. 12. Their habits and their language when they talk to humans are similar to those of local people. 13. Their philosophical system is based on the following ideas: nothing dies; all things evolve cyclically in such a way that at every cycle they are renewed and improved. Motion is the universal law. 14. They are said to have a hierarchy of leaders, but they have no visible devotion to God, no religion. 15. They have many pleasant and light books, but also serious and complex books dealing with abstract matters. 16. They can be made to appear at will before us through magic. The similarities between these observations and the story related by Facius Cardan, which antedates Kirk's manuscript by exactly two hundred years, are clear. Both Cardan and Paracelsus write, like Kirk, that a pact can be made with these creatures and that they can be made to appear and answer questions at will. Paracelsus did not care to reveal what that pact was "because of the ills that might befall those who would try it." Kirk is equally discreet on this point. And, of course, to go deeper into this matter would open the whole field of witchcraft and ceremonial magic, which is beyond my purpose in the present book.

But Massachusetts was so much afraid of the spread of their principles, that they made a law in November that year, which said, “Forasmuch as experience hath plentifully and often proved, that since the first rising of the Anabaptists, about one hundred years since, they have been the incendiaries of the commonwealths, and the infectors of persons in main matters of religion, and the troubles of churches in all places where they have been, and that they who have held the baptizing of infants unlawful, have usually held other errors or heresies together therewith, though they have (as other heretics use to do) concealed the same till they spied out a fit advantage and opportunity to vent them, by way of question or scruple; and whereas divers of this kind have, since our coming to New England, appeared amongst ourselves, some whereof (as others before them) denied the ordinance of magistracy, and the lawfulness of making war, and others the lawfulness of magistrates, and their inspection into the breach of the first table; which opinions, if they should be connived at by us, are like to be increased amongst us, and so must necessarily bring guilt upon us, infection and trouble to the churches, and hazard to the whole commonwealth; it is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons, within this jurisdiction, shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the ministration of the ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy, or their lawful right and authority to make war, or to punish the outward breaches of the first table, and shall appear to the court willfully and obstinately to continue therein, after due time and means of conviction, every such person or persons shall be sentenced to banishment.