Zenith Book Quotes

Ah, what a morning this is, awakening me to life's stupidity. [98 - Zenith trans.]

Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't wish to be, and don't even wish to be taken for being. Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us. [23](Zenith trans.)

At this stage of the game, I don’t have the time for patience and tolerance. Ten years ago, even five years ago, I would have listened to people ask their questions, explained to them, mollified them. No more. That time is past. Now, as Norman Mailer said in Naked and the Dead, ‘I hate everything which is not in myself.’ If it doesn’t have a direct bearing on what I’m advocating, if it doesn’t augment or stimulate my life and thinking, I don’t want to hear it. It has to add something to my life. There’s no more time for explaining and being ecumenical anymore. No more time. That’s a characteristic I share with the new generation of Satanists, which might best be termed, and has labeled itself in many ways, an ‘Apocalypse culture.’ Not that they believe in the biblical Apocalypse—the ultimate war between good and evil. Quite the contrary. But that there is an urgency, a need to get on with things and stop wailing and if it ends tomorrow, at least we’ll know we’ve lived today. It’s a ‘fiddle while Rome burns’ philosophy. It’s the Satanic philosophy. If the generation born in the 50’s grew up in the shadow of The Bomb and had to assimilate the possibility of imminent self destruction of the entire planet at any time, those born in the 60’s have had to reconcile the inevitability of our own destruction, not through the bomb but through mindless, uncontrolled overpopulation. And somehow resolve in themselves, looking at what history has taught us, that no amount of yelling, protesting, placard waving, marching, wailing—or even more constructive avenues like running for government office or trying to write books to wake people up—is going to do a damn bit of good. The majority of humans have an inborn death wish—they want to destroy themselves and everything beautiful. To finally realize that we’re living in a world after the zenith of creativity, and that we can see so clearly the mechanics of our own destruction, is a terrible realization. Most people can’t face it. They’d rather retreat to the comfort of New Age mysticism. That’s all right. All we want, those few of us who have the strength to realize what’s going on, is the freedom to create and entertain and share with each other, to preserve and cherish what we can while we can, and to build our own little citadels away from the insensitivity of the rest of the world.

back home.. the tablecloth of civilization makes us forget the already painted pine it covers! ([50], Zenith trans.)

Give me your hand, a human hand, so that you can hold me to the earth with it, for whirling veins of fire swoop me up, and exultant longing tears me toward the zenith.

Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith.

Thus we on this our earth say that the earth is the center, and all the philosophers ancient and modern, of whatsoever sect, will say, this is the center, according to their own principles, just as we say, we are in the center of the great circular horizon of our own ethereal region, which remains a circular, equidistant boundary wherever we stand, so we regard ourselves as standing in the center. In the same way, those on the moon would with no less justification assume that they were in the center of their own horizon which encircles their land, and the sun and every other star will also believe they stand amidst the radii of their own horizon, but they are no more the center than is the earth or any of the other mundane spheres; and they are no more the certain poles than is the earth a certain pole for them; all are likewise, from different perspectives, each the center point of some circumference, and a pole, and a zenith for somewhere else. The earth, therefore, is not the absolute center of the universe, but only the center as seen from our location.

No other writer ever achieved such a direct transference of self to paper. The Book of Disquiet is the world’s strangest photograph, made out of words, the only material capable of capturing the recesses of the soul it exposes. Richard Zenith, 2001 NOTES

Reflected in a rippling pool of gutter water a metal hawk razored across the midday sky, belching a long trailing shriek as she crossed zenith and descended talons-first into her nearby nest on the horizon. The prophet Austin’s shined black loafer described a high arc over the pool and onto the waydrive of a one-story dwelling. Close behind followed his brother in Christ, Chad, though his loafer did crash into the pool-water and split the image of the metal bird asunder.

Alexandria’s buildings reflected the breadth of its intellectual life. Here were the magnificent library and the Mouseion – in effect a great academy, unequalled throughout the empire, with its four faculties of medicine, literature, astronomy and mathematics; the obtaining of dining rights here was a fiercely contested honour. Among the presidents of the Mouseion had been Julia Balbilla’s grandfather, Claudius Balbillus. The library contained half a million books and at its zenith it was said that it held a copy of every available manuscript in the world.

Like a brilliant shooting star, she had almost reached her zenith when her light was extinguished.

For every scientist who dedicates his life to helping humanity, there are ten thousand fools who are just as willing to destroy. —PTOLEMY, Zenith Archives

The nineties were (and shall always remain) the absolute zenith for bands whose goal was selling records.

Since there’s no liquor in the house, I concoct for myself a backache, filching a few of the blue valiums Warren rarely takes for his—truly bad—back. They’re for sleep, I tell myself. (My creative skill reaches its zenith at prescription interpretation, i.e., the codeine cough syrup bottle seems to read: Take one or two swigs when you feel like it. I take three.) In February I decide I’m under too much stress to quit booze cold turkey. Full sobriety as a concept recedes with the holidays. I’ll cut down, I think. But all the control schemes that reined me in during past years are now unfathomably failing. Only drink beer. Only drink wine. Only drink weekends. Only drink after five. At home. With others. When I only drink with meals, I cobble together increasingly baroque dinners, always uncorking some medium-shitty vintage at about three in the afternoon while Dev plays on the kitchen floor. The occasional swig is culinary duty, right? Some nights I’m into my second bottle before Warren comes in with frost on his glasses and a book bag a mule should’ve toted. Maybe he doesn’t notice, since I’m a champion at holding my liquor. Nonetheless, by the end of March, I have to unbutton my waistbands.

Osiris will rise in splendor from the dead and rule the world through those sages and philosophers in whom wisdom has become incarnate. —Manly P. Hall, 33rd-Degree Freemason   The World will soon come to us for its Sovereigns and Pontiffs. We shall constitute the equilibrium of the Universe, and be rulers over the Masters of the World. —Albert Pike, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry   I am Yesterday and I am Today; and I have the power to be born a second time. —Statement of Osiris from the Egyptian Book of the Dead

The fifth day was the zenith of the festival. After prayers, and exorcisms of evil spirits, the priest-king was ritually humiliated in private before the gods. He was stripped of his kingly symbols of crown, ring, scepter, and mace, and then slapped by a sesgallu priest. He was then re-established in his kingship by having the kingly elements returned to him by Anu himself. This enthronement ritual of reversion to chaos and renewal of order was then followed by the arrival of the other gods into the temple of Anu.

APRIL 30 NOWADAYS THE WORLD is becoming increasingly materialistic, and mankind is reaching towards the very zenith of external progress, driven by an insatiable desire for power and vast possessions. Yet by this vain striving for perfection in a world where everything is relative, they wander ever further away from inward peace and happiness of the mind. This we can all bear witness to, living as we do plagued by unremitting anxiety in this dreadful epoch of mammoth weapons. It becomes more and more imperative that the life of the spirit be avowed as the only firm basis upon which to establish happiness and peace.