Famous Quotes by Aldous Huxley
- I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to... More
- For Jeremy, direct, unmediated experience was always hard to take in, always more or less... More
- You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and... More
- Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something. More
- Civilization means food and literature all round. Beefsteaks and fiction magazines for all.... More
- The innocence of those who grind the faces of the poor, but refrain from pinching the bottoms of... More
- Life’s so ordinary that literature has to deal with the exceptional. Exceptional talent, power,... More
- Most lovers ... picture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and... More
- It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the... More
- In the field of politics the equivalent of a theorem is a perfectly disciplined army; of a sonnet... More
- Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hall-mark... More
- Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the... More
- Classic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have... More
- Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can’t be ignored any longer, have yourself... More
- If only people would realize that moral principles are like measles.... They have to be caught.... More
- There’s only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for... More
- Facts are ventriloquists’ dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter... More
- Industrial man—a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron... More
- The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however... More
- There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own... More
- Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer.... Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he... More
- To associate with other like-minded people in small, purposeful groups is for the great majority... More
- The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual... More
- Which is better: to have Fun with Fungi or to have Idiocy with Ideology, to have Wars because of... More
- I can sympathise with people’s pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something... More
- For Lawrence, existence was one continuous convalescence; it was as though he were newly reborn... More
- What’s the greatest enemy of Christianity to-day? Frozen meat. In the past only members of the... More
- De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history. More
- A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily... More
- Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of... More
- We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science,... More
- So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make... More
- Science and art are only too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage over booze... More
- The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us... More
- You should hurry up ... and acquire the cigar habit. It’s one of the major happinesses. And so... More
- Indifference to all the refinements of life—it’s really shocking. Just Calvinism, that’s... More
- The philosophy of action for action, power for the sake of power, had become an established... More
- Why any quick-witted and sensitive person should feel ashamed of having said good-by to politics,... More
- Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the... More
- Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and... More
- Give me Catholicism every time. Father Cheeryble with his thurible; Father Chatterjee with his... More
- Nobody who has any kind of creative imagination can possibly be anything but disappointed with... More
- Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying. More
- Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced. More
- The amelioration of the world cannot be achieved by sacrifices in moments of crisis; it depends... More
- Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from... More
- The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved. More
- The business of a seer is to see; and if he involves himself in the kind of God-eclipsing... More
- Suddenly to realise that one is sitting, damned, among the other damned—it is a most... More
- The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or... More
- Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common... More
- Oh, how desperately bored, in spite of their grim determination to have a Good Time, the majority... More
- Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts. More
- Isn’t it remarkable how everyone who knew Lawrence has felt compelled to write about him? Why,... More
- Thought is barred in this City of Dreadful Joy and conversation is unknown. More
- If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay—in solid cash—the tribute which... More
- Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them. More
- Cynical realism—it’s the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable... More
- Beauty for some provides escape,
Who gain a happiness in eyeing
The gorgeous buttocks of... More
- Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s... More
- If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as... More
- People will insist on treating the mons Veneris as though it were Mount Everest. Too silly! More
- It takes two to make a murder. There are born victims, born to have their throats cut, as the... More
- What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless... More
- I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. More
- There are few who would not rather be taken in adultery than in provincialism. More
- Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by generations of readers, are very... More
- One of the great triumphs of the nineteenth century was to limit the connotation of the word... More
- Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately,... More
- After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive... More
- Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if... More
- At this very moment,... the most frightful horrors are taking place in every corner of the world.... More
- Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking. More
- Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle.... More
- Happiness is a hard master—particularly other people’s happiness. More
- My dear young friend ... civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things... More
- God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must... More
- “To-morrow,” Mrs. Viveash interrupted him, “will be as awful as to-day.” She breathed it... More
- A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be... More
- All urbanization, pushed beyond a certain point, automatically becomes suburbanization.... Every... More
- Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that... More
- Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the... More
- Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those... More
- A life-worshipper’s philosophy is comprehensive.... He is at one moment a positivist and at... More
- A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s... More
- When truth is nothing but the truth, it’s unnatural, it’s an abstraction that resembles... More
- The whole story of the universe is implicit in any part of it. The meditative eye can look... More
- Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books. In a volume by Pierre Louys all the... More
- Drill and uniforms impose an architecture on the crowd. An army’s beautiful. But that’s not... More
- The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends... More
- The rush to books and universities is like the rush to the public house. People want to drown... More
- There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement,... More
- A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the... More
- Perhaps dirt is the necessary condition of beauty.... Perhaps hygiene and art can never be... More
- It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels. More
- Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power. More
- It had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife. More
- What drivel it all is!... A string of words called religion. Another string of words called... More
- Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof—that’s a drink that only the most hardened... More
- Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes,... More
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