"Tonight I am going to speak of practically the greatest obstacle to occult Wisdom, spiritual attainment and mystical progress. That obstacle is Conventionality in whatever form it may take, be it in relation to morals or religion. The New Testament writers portrayed the Pharisees as its most typical adherents, and Jesus is reported to have said that the harlots were nearer the kingdom of Heaven than these Pharisees- which, allowing for Oriental hyperbole, is in accordance with fact."

“...in speaking of religion and perfection we must not forget there are certain unreflective persons who imagine that to be perfect means of necessity to be tedious at the same time; they quite fail to realise that dullness is an attribute of imperfection rather than perfection, and that they might with equal lack of rectitude say... that to live in the Nirvana of perpetual bliss would be to live in the tedium of a perpetual hell.”

“We are not learning the occult alphabet; most of us have done all that before we came here. I used to read for about three or four hours a day before I met M.H.-not as a duty, but because I liked it. When you’ve extracted all the knowledge you can out of books, then the Master appears.”

“In a word, show people what they cannot understand and immediately they will ascribe it to something they can understand — for that is ever the tendency of the ignorant.”

“Let us then try to imagine a human being, devoid of the weaknesses and drawbacks of the ordinary person; a being who is utterly beyond the feelings of selfishness, vanity, jealousy, anger, hatred, and other "vices" of a kindred nature; moreover a being who possesses a consciousness so intense, so infinitely alive as to warrant the expression superconsciousness...”

“From what seeds does this weed of conventionality grow? From mental laziness, fear- of what others will think; vanity- or the capacity to be hurt by what they will say; and superstition- or the false notion that what the majority think must be right.”

“If some people are not disposed to believe that morals change with the times, then let them look into the book held most sacred by all the peoples of the West, and read how at one time the idea of Justice was ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ Or look further back still and read of King Solomon, said to be the wisest- which surely also implies the most moral - man who ever lived.”