Aldous Huxley Quotes - Page 8

• Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

  Aldous Huxley

  Happiness, Struggle, Passion

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

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• Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

  Aldous Huxley

  Death, Dying, Lasts

  Aldous Huxley (2015). “Time Must Have a Stop”, p.181, Random House

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• Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them.

  Aldous Huxley

  Mind, Use, Way

  Aldous Huxley (1940). “Words and their meanings”

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• We lie to ourselves in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes.

  Aldous Huxley

  Lying, Ignorance, Order

  Aldous Huxley (2001). “Complete Essays: 1936-1938”, Ivan R Dee

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• Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts.

  Aldous Huxley

  Solemn, Cease

  Aldous Huxley (1970). “Collected Works: Do what you will”

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• If you want to write, keep cats.

  Aldous Huxley

  Writing, Cat, Want

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• No man ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese tomcat when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife.

  Aldous Huxley

  Cat, Men, Wife

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

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• The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more.

  Aldous Huxley

  Taste, Acquire

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

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• We live together, we act on, and react to one another; but always, and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves.

  Aldous Huxley

  Together, Doors Of Perception, Circumstances

  Aldous Huxley (2009). “The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell”, p.10, Harper Collins

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• For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

  Aldous Huxley

  Intuition, Language, Spite

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

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• In all activities of life, the secret of efficiency lies in an ability to combine two seemingly incompatible states: a state of maximum activity and a state of maximum relaxation.

  Aldous Huxley

  Lying, Two, Relaxation

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• At their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and mad men.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Mad, Fool

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• Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.

  Aldous Huxley

  Love, Soul, Principles

  "The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell".

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• In a few years, no doubt, marriage licences will be sold like dog licences, good for 12 months.

  Aldous Huxley

  Dog, Years, Doubt

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• Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy.

  Aldous Huxley

  Powerful, Enemy, Democracy

  Aldous Huxley (1999). “Moksha: Aldous Huxley's Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience”, p.187, Simon and Schuster

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• If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do is to study the words of those who were.

  Aldous Huxley

  Learning, Saint, Sage

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• Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom.

  Aldous Huxley

  Peace, Long, Hypocrisy

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

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• We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.

  Aldous Huxley

  Want, Menace, Stability

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

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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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• The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth. However elegant and memorable, brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to all the facts of a complex situations. On such a theme one can be brief only by omission and simplification. Omission and simplification help us to understand - but help is, in many cases, to understand the wrong thing; for our comprehension may be only of the abbreviator's neatly formulated notions, not of the vast, ramifying reality from which these notions have been so arbitrarily abstracted.

  Aldous Huxley

  Real, Memorable, Omission

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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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• Results only come to those who master the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, of letting go as a person in order that the immanent and transcendent unknown quantity may take hold. We cannot make ourselves understand; the most we can do is to foster a state of mind in which understanding may come to us.

  Aldous Huxley

  Letting Go, Art, Order

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• The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.

  Aldous Huxley

  Fear, Innovation, Atheism

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• Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right

  Aldous Huxley

  Life, Running, Motivation

  Aldous Huxley, Grover Cleveland Smith (1969). “Letters of Aldous Huxley”

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• Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Doe, Existence

  1932 Texts and Pretexts, introduction.

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