Aldous Huxley Quotes - Page 11

• It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.

  Aldous Huxley

  World, Preoccupation, Regard

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• Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body.

  Aldous Huxley

  Wisdom, Consistency, Mind

  'Do What You Will' (1929) 'Wordsworth in the Tropics'

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• Well... ...That's what you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now.

  Aldous Huxley

  Mean, Pay, Attention

  Aldous Huxley (2010). “Island”, p.13, Harper Collins

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• What a gulf between impression and expression! That’s our ironic fate—to have Shakespearean feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to be Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors. We practice alchemy in reverse—touch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash.

  Aldous Huxley

  Fate, College, Expression

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• The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Philosophy, Simple

  Aldous Huxley (1954). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point”

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• Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am. What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two. In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soap.

  Aldous Huxley

  Dirty, Blessed, Acceptance

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• Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

  Aldous Huxley

  Communication, Humility, Reality

  "The Doors of Perception". Book by Aldous Huxley (p. 22-24), 1954.

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• It’s embarrassing to tell you this, but it seems to come down mostly to just learning to be kinder.

  Aldous Huxley

  Embarrassing, Kinder, Seems

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• Societies are composed of individuals and are good only insofar as they help individuals to realize their potentialities and to lead a happy and creative life.

  Aldous Huxley

  Creative, Helping, Realizing

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

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• It is natural to believe in God when you're alone-- quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.

  Aldous Huxley

  Believe, Night, Thinking

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “Brave New World”

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• Every gain made by individuals or society is almost instantly taken for granted.

  Aldous Huxley

  Taken, Progress, Gains

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• Grace is always sufficient, provided we are ready to cooperate with it.

  Aldous Huxley

  Grace, Doing Your Best, Ready

  Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith (2013). “The Divine Within: Selected Writings on Enlightenment”, p.17, Harper Collins

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• One of the great triumphs of the nineteenth century was to limit the connotation of the word "immoral" in such a way that, for practical purposes, only those were immoral who drank too much or made too copious love. Those who indulged in any or all of the other deadly sins could look down in righteous indignation on the lascivious and the gluttonous.... In the name of all lechers and boozers I most solemnly protest against the invidious distinction made to our prejudice.

  Aldous Huxley

  Names, Triumph, Prejudice

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• Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books. In a volume by Pierre Louys all the girls are young and their figures perfect; there's no hiccoughing or bad breath, no fatigue or boredom, no sudden recollections of unpaid bills or business letters unanswered, to interrupt the raptures. Art gives you the sensation, the thought, the feeling quite pure--chemically pure, I mean,... not morally.

  Aldous Huxley

  Girl, Art, Real

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• That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion.

  Aldous Huxley

  Reality, Common Sense, Brain

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• Art is one of the means whereby man seeks to redeem a life which is experienced as chaotic, senseless, and largely evil.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Mean, Men

  Aldous Huxley (1969). “Great Short Works of Aldous Huxley”

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• The only truly consistent are the dead.

  Aldous Huxley

  Consistent

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• Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Believe, Belief

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “Brave New World”

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• "Our kingdom go" is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is self, the less there is of God. The divine eternal fulness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing, and acting.

  Aldous Huxley

  Thinking, Self, Feelings

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• Science in itself is morally neutral; it becomes good or evil according as it is applied.

  Aldous Huxley

  Evil

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

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• ...two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.

  Aldous Huxley

  Two, Sorrow, Unnecessary

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• To travel is to discover that everybody is wrong. The philosophies, the civilizations which seem, at a distance, so superior to those current at home, all prove on a close inspection to be in their own way just as hopelessly imperfect.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Distance, Home

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1926-1929”, Ivan R Dee

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• Good action and thoughts produce consequences which tend to neutralize, or put a stop to, the result of evil thoughts and actions. For as we give up the life of self (and note that, like forgiveness, repentance and humility are also special cases of giving), as we abandon what the German mystics called "the I, me, mine," we make ourselves progressively capable of receiving grace. By grace we are enabled to know reality more completely, and this knowledge of reality helps us to give up more of the life of selfhood - and so on, in a mounting spiral of illumination and regeneration.

  Aldous Huxley

  Giving Up, Humility, Reality

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• Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

  Aldous Huxley

  Inspirational, Funny, Travel

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

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• Peace is a necessary condition of spirituality, no less than an inevitable result of it.

  Aldous Huxley

  God, Spiritual, Inner Peace

  Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith (2013). “The Divine Within: Selected Writings on Enlightenment”, p.15, Harper Collins

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