Aldous Huxley

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

“Take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.” (Pg 177)

“How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world…” (Pg 209)

“Happiness is never grand.” (Pg 221)

“The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg – eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.” (Pg 223)

“But God doesn’t change.”

“Men do, though.”

“What difference does that make?”

“All the difference in the world.” (Pg 231)

“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. We are God’s property.” (Pg 232)

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” (Pg 240)

Island - Aldous Huxley

“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.” (Pg 12)

“If his absence was so constantly present, that was to remind her that henceforward she must love for two, live for two, take thought for two, must perceive and understand not merely with her own eyes and mind but with the mind and eyes that had been his and, before the catastrophe, hers too in a communion of delight and intelligence.” (Pg 28)

“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.” (Pg 30)

“I don’t care where I’m from, nor where I’m going. From hell to hell.” (Pg 32)

“Floating on the surface between the real and the imagined, between what comes to us from the outside and what comes to us from within, from deep, deep down in here.” (Pg 34)

“Somehow or other one finds the necessary strength.” (Pg 38)

“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.” (Pg 41)

“The beings who are merely good are not Good Beings; they are just pillars of society.” (Pg 41)

“Good Being is knowing who in fact we are; and in order to know who in fact we are, we must first know, moment by moment, who we think we are and what this bad habit of thought compels us to feel and do.” (Pg 42)

“Good Being is in the knowledge of who in fact one is in relation to all experiences.” (Pg 42)

“Faith is something very different from belief.  Belief is the systematic taking of unanalyzed words much too seriously.” (Pg 43)

“Nothing happens by accident. There’s a Great Plan, and within the Great Plan innumerable little plans. A little plan for each and every one of us.” (Pg 56)

“I could no more do without meditation than I could do without food.” (Pg 60)

“So long as it remains out of touch with the rest of the world, an ideal society can be a viable society.” (Pg 66)

“You’re proposing to make them miserable in the hope that this will restore their faith in God. Well’ that’s one way of producing a conversion.” (Pg 67)

“Don’t try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We’re all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat – and the boat is perpetually sinking.” (Pg 76)

“There’s no single cure for what can never have a single cause.” (Pg 78)

“Look at their idea of what’s normal. Believe it or not, a normal human bing is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to his society.” (Pg 80)

“Begetting is merely postponed assassination.” (Pg 98)

“One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.” (Pg 102)

“Clinging isn’t equated with loving – isn’t regarded as anything particularly creditable.” (Pg 105)

“Why call it anything? Names are such question-beggars. Why not be content with just knowing that it happened?” (Pg 111)

“Two people, two separate individuals – but they add up to something like a new creation. And then suddenly half of this new creature is amputated; but the other half doesn’t die – can’t die, mustn’t die.” (Pg 117)

“It wouldn’t be right if you could take away all the pain of a bereavement; you’d be less than human.” (Pg 117)

“Pity, not compassion. Compassion is suffering – with, and what I wanted at all costs was to spare myself the pain her suffering caused me, and avoid the painful sacrifices by which I could put an end to her suffering. Pity was my answer, being sorry for her from the outside, if you see what I mean.” (Pg 123)

“It isn’t a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.” (Pg 128)

“One has no right to inflict one’s sadness on other people. And no right, of course, to pretend that one isn’t sad. One just has to accept one’s grief and one’s absurd attempts to be a stoic.” (Pg 129)

“Which would you rather be eaten by – a wolf or a tiger? So far as the lamb is concerned, it hardly seems to matter.” (Pg 134)

“When in doubt, always act on the assumption that people are more honorable than you have any solid reason for supposing they are.” (Pg 134)

“People ought to take their religion warm from the cow, if you see what I mean. Not skimmed or pasteurized or homogenized. Above all not canned in any kind of theological or liturgical container.” (Pg 135)

“Perfect faith is defined as something that produces perfect peave of mind. But perfect peace of mind is something that practically nobody possesses.” (Pg 137)

“Somebody ought to make a historical study of – the relation between theology and corporal punishment in childhood. I have a theory that, wherever little boys and girls are systematically flagellated, the victims grow up to think of God as ‘wholly other’ – isn’t that the fashionable argot in your part of the world? Wherever, on the contrary, children are brought up without being subjected to physical violence, God is immanent. A people’s theology reflects the state of its children’s bottoms.” (Pg 139)

“Major premise: God is wholly other. Minor premise: man is totally depraved. Conclusion: Do to your children’s bottoms what was done to yours, what your Heavenly Father has been doing to the collective bottom of humanity ever since the fall: whip, whip, whip! (Pg 140)

“He was the sort of man who always goes his own way, but doesn’t advertise the fact, doesn’t argue with people who prefer another road.” (Pg 145)

“It’s wonderful what your body will do for you if you only give it a chance.” (Pg 151)

“People, he was beginning to understand, are at once the beneficiaries and the victims of their culture.” (Pg 154)

“Stupid fools get nowhere; it’s only the knowledgeable and clever ones whose folly can make them wise or produce good results.” (Pg 156)

“Every writer needs a literature as his frame of reference; a set of models to conform to or depart from.” (Pg 158)

“Yes, even you will have to die one day – maybe fifty years from now, maybe tomorrow. Who knows? But it’s going to happen, and one’s a fool if  one doesn’t prepare for it.” (Pg 170)

“Nothing short of everything will really do.” (Pg 172)

“What we would really like is a God who never destroys what he has created. Or if there must be pain and death, let them be meted out by a God of righteousness, who will punish the wicked and reward the good with everlasting happiness. But in fact the good get hurt, the innocent suffer. Then let there be a God who sympathizes and brings comfort.” (Pg 205)

“Dualism… Without it there can hardly be good literature. With it, there most certainly can be no good life.” (Pg 215)

“We neither encourage nor discourage. We accept it. Accept it as we accept that spiderweb up there on the cornice. Given the nature of spiders, webs are inevitable. And given the nature of human beings, so are religions. Spiders can’t help making fly traps, and men can’t help making symbols. That’s what the human brain is there for – to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols.” (Pg 219-220)

“Treat Nature well, and Nature will treat you well. Hurt or destroy Nature, and Nature will soon destroy you.” (Pg 261)

“We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.” (Pg 261)

“Her love was like a kind of physical radiation, something one could almost sense as heat or light.” (Pg 289)

“People may stand by while you’re suffering and dying; but they’re standing by in another world. In your world you’re absolutely alone. Alone in your suffering and your dying, just as you’re alone in love, alone even in the most completely shared pleasure.” (Pg 290)

“Believing in eternal life never helped anybody to live in eternity. Nor, of course, did disbelieving. So stop all your pro-ing and con-ing and get on with the job.” (Pg 291)

“Start by being fully aware of what you thing you are. It’ll help you to become aware of what you are in fact.” (Pg 292)

“If you can get out of your own way, you won’t be in anyone else’s.” (Pg 294)

“Life knows more than one note.” (Pg 304)

“The suffering of the stupid is as real as any other suffering.” (Pg 305)

“I think we’ve all come out of the same light, and we’re all going back into the same light.” (Pg 315)

“Lightly, child, lightly. You’ve got to learn to do everything lightly. Think lightly, act lightly, even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly, let things happen lightly and lightly cope with them.” (Pg 318)

“Throw away all your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet. Trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling. On tiptoes; and no luggage, not even a sponge bag. Completely unencumbered.” (Pg 319)

“Even in the worst society an individual retains a little freedom. One perceives in private, one remembers and imagines in private, one loves in private, and one dies in private.” (Pg 323)