Aldous Huxley Quotes - Page 14

• In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.

  Aldous Huxley

  Believe, Humble, Men

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

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• Who lives longer? The man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beefeater are lived only in time.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Years, Two

  "The Shortcut: 20 Stories to Get You from Here to There". Book by Kevin A Fabiano, p. 179, 2006.

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• The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people.

  Aldous Huxley

  Religious, War, Buddhism

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• Oh, how desperately bored, in spite of their grim determination to have a Good Time, the majority of pleasure-seekers really are!

  Aldous Huxley

  Determination, Bored, Majority

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

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• The indispensible is not necessarily the desirable.

  Aldous Huxley

  Desirable

  Aldous Huxley (1961). “Selected Essays”

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• What drivel it all is!... A string of words called religion. Another string of words called philosophy. Half a dozen other stringscalled political ideals. And all the words either ambiguous or meaningless. And people getting so excited about them they'll murder their neighbours for using a word they don't happen to like. A word that probably doesn't mean as much as a good belch. Just a noise without even the excuse of gas on the stomach.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Mean, People

  Aldous Huxley (2015). “After Many a Summer”, p.54, Random House

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• Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

  Aldous Huxley

  Culture, World, Pay

  Aldous Huxley (2015). “Crome Yellow”, p.134, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes - ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

  Aldous Huxley

  Hero, Son, Thinking

  Aldous Huxley (1933). “Retrospect: an omnibus of Aldous Huxley's books”

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• I like being myself. Myself and nasty.

  Aldous Huxley

  Nasty, Being Myself, Brave New World Happiness

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• [...] Technology has tended to devaluate the traditional vision-inducing materials. The illumination of a city, for example, was once a rare event, reserved for victories and national holidays, for the canonization of saints and the crowning of kings. Now it occurs nightly and celebrates the virtues of gin, cigarettes and toothpaste.

  Aldous Huxley

  Kings, Holiday, Technology

  Aldous Huxley (1956). “Heaven and hell”

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• I know the outer world as well as you do, and I judge it. You know nothing of my inner world, and yet you presume to judge that world.

  Aldous Huxley

  Judging, World, Wells

  Aldous Huxley (1954). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Tasks, Addresses

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

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• Thought of the incomprehensible sequence of changes and chances that make up a life, all the beauties and horrors and absurdities whose conjunctions create the uninterpretable and yet divinely significant pattern of human destiny.

  Aldous Huxley

  Destiny, Patterns, Chance

  Aldous Huxley (2010). “Island”, p.24, Harper Collins

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• Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy.

  Aldous Huxley

  Romance, Energy, Monogamy

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• Industrial man—a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Iron, Age

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• The business of a seer is to see; and if he involves himself in the kind of God-eclipsing activities which make seeing impossible, he betrays the trust which his fellows have tacitly placed in him.

  Aldous Huxley

  Vision, Impossible, Kind

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

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• The old idea that words possess magical powers is false; but its falsity is the distortion of a very important truth. Words do have a magical effect - but not in the way that magicians supposed, and not on the objects they were trying to influence. Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them.

  Aldous Huxley

  Ideas, Mind, Important

  Quoted as the opening passage of "BOOK ONE: The Functions of Language" in "Language in Thought and Action" by S. I. Hayakawa, (p. 3), 1949.

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• The sum of evil, Pascal remarked, would be much diminished if men could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Evil, Would Be

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

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• What wonder, then, if human beings in their search for the divine have generally preferred to look within!

  Aldous Huxley

  Looks, Wonder, Divine

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

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• Real progress is progress in charity, all other advances being secondary thereto.

  Aldous Huxley

  Real, Progress, Charity

  "Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals".

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• Let us be kinder to one another.

  Aldous Huxley

  Friendship, Gratitude, Kindness

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• Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can't.

  Aldous Huxley

  Happiness, Brave New World, Joy

  Aldous Huxley (1933). “Retrospect: an omnibus of Aldous Huxley's books”

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• The whole story of the universe is implicit in any part of it. The meditative eye can look through any single object and see, as through a window, the entire cosmos. Make the smell of roast duck in an old kitchen diaphanous and you will have a glimpse of everything, from the spiral nebulae to Mozart's music and the stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. The artistic problem is to produce diaphanousness in spots, selecting the spots so as to reveal only the most humanly significant of distant vistas behind the near familiar object.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Eye, Ducks

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• "All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
  "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
  There was a long silence.
  "I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

  Aldous Huxley

  Pain, Cancer, Long

  "Brave New World". Book by Aldous Huxley. Chapter 17, 1932.

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• Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Suffering, Literature

  Aldous Huxley (1957). “Antic Hay: And The Gioconda Smile”

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