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Aldous Huxley Quotes - Page 22

All Quotes Abuse Addiction Advertising Age Alcohol Anarchy Art Atheism Belief Brave New World Chaos Character Children Choices Christianity Communication Consciousness Contemplation Country Culture Death Democracy Desire Destiny Dictator Doubt Dying Economics Education Effort Environment Evil Experience Fate Fear Feelings Freedom Funny Genius Giving God Goodness Grace Gratitude Happiness Health Heart Heaven Hell History Holiday Home Horror Humanity Humility Hurt Hypocrisy Ignorance Insanity Inspirational Inspiring Intuition Journey Joy Justice Kissing Knowledge Language Learning Liberty Life Listening Literature Love Lust Lying Madness Memories Morality Morning Motivational Music Nature Pain Passion Past Peace Personality Philosophy Pleasure Politics Positive Prayer Prejudice Progress Prosperity Purpose Quality Rage Reading Reality Religion Responsibility Risk Sacrifice Science Silence Sin Sleep Society Solitude Son Soul Study Suffering Talent Teaching Technology Temptation Time Tradition Travel Truth Tyranny Understanding Virtue Vision Wall War Water Wife Wine Wisdom Wit Work Worship Writing Yoga

The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.

The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.

Names, Iliad, Ifs

Aldous Huxley (1928). “Those barren leaves”

To those who think that liberty is a good thing, and that it may someday be possible for people to live in a society fit for free, fully human individuals, a thorough education in the nature of language, its uses and abuses, seems indispensable.

Thinking, People, Abuse

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

Community, Identity, Stories

Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

As late as the seventeenth century, monarchs owned so little furniture that they had to travel from palace to palace with wagon-loads of plate and bedspreads, of carpets and tapestries.

Littles, Palaces, Furniture

Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

There are few who would not rather be taken in adultery than in provocation.

Marriage, Taken, Adultery

'Antic Hay' (1923) ch. 10

Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well being.

Passion, Feelings, Height

Aldous Huxley (1950). “Brave New World”

The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.

Anarchy, Utopia, Wave

Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the debit is more or less equivalent to the credit. Except of course when it's more than equivalent, as it has been with universal education, for example, or wireless, or these damned aeroplanes. In which case, of course, your progress is a step backwards and downwards.

Education, Organization, Progress

Aldous Huxley (1953). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

Where beauty is worshipped for beauty's sake as a goddess, independent of and superior to morality and philosophy, the most horrible putrefaction is apt to set in. The lives of the aesthetes are the far from edifying commentary on the religion of beauty.

Life, Beauty, God

Aldous Huxley (1957). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

A life-worshipper's philosophy is comprehensive. He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic: now haunted by the thought of death and now a Dionysian child of nature; now a pessimist and now, with a change of lover or liver or even the weather, an exuberant believer that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.

Love, Children, Philosophy

Aldous Huxley (1970). “Collected Works: Do what you will”

The horror no less than the charm of real life consists precisely in the recurrent actualization of the inconceivable

Real, Horror, Charm

Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

The innocence of those who grind the faces of the poor, but refrain from pinching the bottoms of their neighbour's wives! The innocence of Ford, the innocence of Rockefeller! The nineteenth century was the Age of Innocence--that sort of innocence. With the result that we're now almost ready to say that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making love.

Men, Wife, Greed

Aldous Huxley (1955). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

Now, a corpse, poor thing, is an untouchable and the process of decay is, of all pieces of bad manners, the vulgarest imaginable. For a corpse is, by definition, a person absolutely devoid of savoir vivre.

Death, Dying, Decay

Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1930-1935”, Ivan R Dee

The artists who the world has always recognized as the greatest are those with the widest sympathy. The greatness of the great artist depends precisely on the width and the intensity of his sympathy.

Artist, Greatness, World

Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof - that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.

Love, Indulge In, Degrees

Aldous Huxley (2009). “Island”, p.269, Random House

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.

Philosophy, History, Firsts

No Romeo-and-Juliet acts, no nonsense about Love with a large L, none of that popular song claptrap with its skies of blue, dreams come true, heaven with you. Just sensuality for its own sake.

Love, Dream, Song

Aldous Huxley (1993). “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: A Novel”, p.158, Ivan R. Dee

Most kings and priests have been despotic, and all religions have been riddled with superstition.

Kings, Superstitions, Priests

Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

No less than war or statecraft, the history of Economics has its heroic ages.

War, Age, Heroic

Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2000). “Complete Essays: 1920-1925”, Ivan R Dee

Perhaps dirt is the necessary condition of beauty.... Perhaps hygiene and art can never be bedfellows. No Verdi, after all, without spitting into trumpets. No Duse without a crowd of malodorous bourgeois giving one another their coryzas. And think of the inexpugnable retreats for microbes prepared by Michelangelo in the curls of Moses' beard!

Art, Reality, Thinking

Aldous Huxley (1953). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

Faith, it is evident, may be relied on to produce sustained action and, more rarely, sustained contemplation.

May, Action, Contemplation

"Complete Essays: 1939-1956".

There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world's sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.

Agony, Bereavement, Suffering

Aldous Huxley “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

Procrustes in modern dress, the nuclear scientist will prepare the bed on which mankind must lie; and if mankind doesn’t fit—well, that will be just too bad for mankind. There will have to be some stretching and a bit of amputation—the same sort of stretching and amputations as have been going on ever since applied science really got going into its stride, only this time they will be a good deal more drastic than in the past. These far from painless operations will be directed by highly centralized totalitarian governments.

Lying, Past, Government

Industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.

Self, Civilization, Hygiene

Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

I'm pretty good at inventing phrases - you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopaedically* obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.

Sleep, Phrases, Enough

Aldous Huxley (1950). “Brave New World”

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