Aldous Huxley Quotes - Page 15

• 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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• "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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• We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Masters, Supreme

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

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• Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard. The Savage nodded "I ate civilization.

  Aldous Huxley

  Civilization, Savages, Agree

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

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• Men have always been a prey to distractions, which arethe original sins of the mind; but never before today has an attempt been made to organize and exploit distractions, to make of them, because of their economic importance, the core and vital center of human life, to idealize them as the highest manifestations of mental activity. Ours is an age of systematized irrelevances, and the imbecile within us has become one of the Titans, upon whose shoulders rests the weight of the social and economic system

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Irrelevance, Origin Of Life

  Aldous Huxley (1992). “Huxley and God: essays”, Harpercollins

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• The traveller's-eye view of men and women is not satisfying. A man might spend his life in trains and restaurants and know nothing of humanity at the end. To know, one must be an actor as well as a spectator.

  Aldous Huxley

  Eye, Men, Views

  Aldous Huxley (1948). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• The thing that impresses me most about this country is its hopefulness. It is this which distinguishes it from Europe, where there is hopeless depression and fear.

  Aldous Huxley

  Country, Fear, Europe

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• Man has an almost infinite capacity for taking things and people for granted and thereby missing out on the pleasure of being grateful that things aren't worse and of praising and thereby lifting the spirits of others.

  Aldous Huxley

  Gratitude, Grateful, Men

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• We tend to think and feel in terms of the art we like; and if the art we like is bad then our thinking and feeling will be bad. And if the thinking and feeling of most of the individuals composing a society is bad, is not that society in danger?

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Thinking, Feelings

  Aldous Huxley (1959). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• There is no bad day that can’t be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet. This is just truth, plain and simple.

  Aldous Huxley

  Bad Day, Simple, Listening

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• To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large-This is the experience of inestimable value to everyone.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Animal, Mind

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

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• Teaching is the last refuge of feeble minds with a classical education.

  Aldous Huxley

  Education, Teaching, Mind

  Aldous Huxley (1957). “Antic Hay and the Gioconda Smile”

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• It is possible to argue that the really influential book is not that which converts ten millions of casual readers, but rather that which converts the very few who, at any given moment, succeed in seizing power. Marx and Sorel have been influential in the modern world, not so much because they were best-sellers (Sorel in particular was not at all a widely read author), but because among their few readers were two men, called respectively Lenin and Mussolini.

  Aldous Huxley

  Book, Men, Two

  Aldous Huxley (1947). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.

  Aldous Huxley

  Reading, Thinking, Self

  Aldous Huxley (2015). “Crome Yellow”, p.82, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.

  Aldous Huxley

  Wisdom, Silence, Sculpture

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• Everyone belongs to everyone else.

  Aldous Huxley

  Anthony Astrachan, Aldous Huxley (1984). “Aldous Huxley's Brave New World”, p.22, Barron's Educational Series

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• That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.

  Aldous Huxley

  Equality, Men, Literature

  Proper Studies (1927) "The Idea of Equality"

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• The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.

  Aldous Huxley

  Journey, Long, Intellectual

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

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• Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning.

  Aldous Huxley

  Character, Fighting, Self

  Aldous Huxley (1993). “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: A Novel”, p.111, Ivan R. Dee

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• What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Bombs, Anthrax

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

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• Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might be done in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundreds of hours, and what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt the precious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible.

  Aldous Huxley

  Two, Twenties, Done

  Aldous Huxley (2015). “Crome Yellow”, p.5, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be

  Aldous Huxley

  Goal, Ought

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

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• Suddenly to realise that one is sitting, damned, among the other damned--it is a most disquieting experience; so disquieting thatmost of us react to it by immediately plunging more deeply into our particular damnation in the hope, generally realized, that we may be able, at least for a time, to stifle our revolutionary knowledge.

  Aldous Huxley

  Damnation, Sitting, May

  Aldous Huxley (1956). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• The flower of the present rosily blossomed.

  Aldous Huxley

  Flower

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

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• For the first time in the history of the world, Buddhism proclaimed a salvation which each individual could gain from him or herself, in this world, during this life, without any least reference to God, or to gods either great or small.

  Aldous Huxley

  Buddhism, Atheism, World

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