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I've Never Discussed My Writing With Others Much, But I Don't Believe It Can Do Any Harm. I Don't Think That There's Any Risk That Ideas Or Materials Will Evaporate.

-Aldous Huxley

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I've Never Discussed My

Aldous Huxley

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I've Never Discussed My Writing With Others Much, But I Don't Believe It Can Do Any Harm. I Don't Think That There's Any Risk That Ideas Or Materials Will Evaporate.

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Every Civilization Is, Among Other Things, An Arrangement For Domesticating The Passions And Setting Them To Do Useful Work.

I Will Have No Parsons Around Me But Such As Drink Deep, Ride To Hounds And Caress The Wives And Daughters Of Their Parishioners.a Virtuous Parson Does Nothing To Test Or Exercise The Faith Of His Flock.

Only One More Indispensable Massacre Of Capitalists Or Communists Or Fascists Or Christians Or Heretics, And There We Are In The Golden Future.

Like Every Man Of Sense And Good Feeling, I Abominate Work.

People Are Much Too Solemn About Things - I'm All For Sticking Pins Into Episcopal Behinds.

The Snapshots Had Become Almost As Dim As Memories.

And Along With Indifference To Space, There Was An Even More Complete Indifference To Time. "there Seems To Be Plenty Of It", Was All I Would Answer When The Investigator Asked Me To Say What I Felt About Time. Plenty Of It, But Exactly How Much Was Entirely Irrelevant. I Could, Of Course, Have Looked At My Watch But My Watch I Knew Was In Another Universe. My Actual Experience Had Been, Was Still, Of An Indefinite Duration. Or Alternatively, Of A Perpetual Present Made Up Of One Continually Changing Apocalypse.

If Most Of Us Remain Ignorant Of Ourselves, It Is Because Self-knowledge Is Painful And We Prefer The Pleasures Of Illusion.

A Man Can Smile And Smile And Be A Villain.

Hamlet And Ophelia

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.

Cleanliness Is Next To Fordliness.

Man Is An Amphibian Who Lives Simultaneously In Two Worlds-the Given And The Home-made, The World Of Matter, Life And Consciousness And The World Of Symbols.

The Author Of The Iliad Is Either Homer Or, If Not Homer, Somebody Else Of The Same Name.

The Gods Are Just. No Doubt. But Their Code Of Law Is Dictated, In The Last Resort, By The People Who Organize Society; Providence Takes Its Cue From Men.

Brave New World

One Of The Great Attractions Of Patriotism

War Is Often Described As A Law Of Nature-this Is Not True: Among The Lower Animals, War Is Unknown.

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.

Brave New World

All That Is Needed Is Money And A Candidate Who Can Be Coached To Look Sincere. Political Principles And Plans For Specific Action Have Come To Lose Most Of Their Importance. The Personality Of The Candidate, The Way He Is Projected By The Advertising Experts, Are The Things That Really Matter.

But A Priest's Life Is Not Supposed To Be Well-rounded; It Is Supposed To Be One-pointed - A Compass, Not A Weathercock.

Wherever We Turn We Find That The Real Obstacles To Peace Are Human Will And Feeling, Human Convictions, Prejudices, Opinions. If We Want To Get Rid Of War We Must Get Rid First Of All Of Its Psychological Causes. Only When This Has Been Done Will The Rulers Of The Nations Even Desire To Get Rid Of The Economic And Political Causes.

Silence Is As Full Of Potential Wisdom And Wit As The Unshown Marble Of Great Sculpture. The Silent Bear No Witness Against Themselves.

We Live Together, We Act On, And React To, One Another; But Always And In All Circumstances We Are By Ourselves. [...] By Its Very Nature Every Embodied Spirit Is Doomed To Suffer And Enjoy In Solitude. Sensations, Feelings, Insights, Fancies - All These Are Private And, Except Through Symbols And At Second Hand, Incommunicable.

"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.

Men Make Use Of Their Illnesses At Least As Much As They Are Made Use Of By Them.

Man Is An Intelligence In Servitude To His Organs.

Henri Iv's Feet And Armpits Enjoyed An International Reputation.

You Never See Animals Going Through The Absurd And Often Horrible Fooleries Of Magic And Religion. . . . Dogs Do Not Ritually Urinate In The Hope Of Persuading Heaven To Do The Same And Send Down Rain. Asses Do Not Bray A Liturgy To Cloudless Skies. Nor Do Cats Attempt, By Abstinence From Cat's Meat, To Wheedle The Feline Spirits Into Benevolence. Only Man Behaves With Such Gratuitous Folly. It Is The Price He Has To Pay For Being Intelligent But Not, As Yet, Quite Intelligent Enough.

Deprived Of Their Newspapers Or A Novel, Reading-addicts Will Fall Back Onto Cookery Books, On The Literature Which Is Wrapped Around Bottles Of Patent Medicine, On Those Instructions For Keeping The Contents Crisp Which Are Printed On The Outside Of Boxes Of Breakfast Cereals. On Anything.

The Lion Will Lay Down With The Lamb...but Every Morning They'll Have To Provide A New Lamb. Maybe This World Is Another Planet's Hell.

The History Of Any Nation Follows An Undulatory Course. In The Trough Of The Wave We Find More Or Less Complete Anarchy; But The Crest Is Not More Or Less Complete Utopia, But Only, At Best, A Tolerably Humane, Partially Free And Fairly Just Society That Invariably Carries Within Itself The Seeds Of Its Own Decadence.

Abused As We Abuse It At Present, Dramatic Art Is In No Sense Cathartic; It Is Merely A Form Of Emotional Masturbation.

And There's Always Soma To Calm Your Anger, To Reconcile You To Your Enemies, To Make You Patient And Long-suffering. In The Past, You Could Only Accomplish These Things By Making A Great Effort And After Years Of Hard Moral Training. Now, You Swallow Two Or Three Half-gramme Tablets, And There You Are. Anybody Can Be Virtuous Now. You Can Carry At Least Half Your Morality About In A Bottle. Christianity Without Tears-that's What Soma Is.

Brave New World

One Of The Many Reasons For The Bewildering And Tragic Character Of Human Existence Is The Fact That Social Organization Is At Once Necessary And Fatal. Men Are Forever Creating Such Organizations For Their Own Convenience And Forever Finding Themselves The Victims Of Their Home-made Monsters.

Addiction Is An Increasing Desire For An Act That Gives Less And Less Satisfaction

There Was A Thing Called Heaven; But All The Same They Used To Drink Enormous Quantities Of Alcohol.

Enormous Quantities

I'm Claiming The Right To Be Unhappy.

Knowledge Is Porportionate To Being... You Know In Virtue Of What You Are.

To Be A Fool At The Right Time Is Also An Art.

People Often Ask Me What Is The Most Effective Technique For Transforming Their Life. It Is A Little Embarrassing That After Years And Years Of Research And Experimentation, I Have To Say That The Best Answer Is - Just Be A Little Kinder.

Nobody Can Have The Consolations Of Religion Or Philosophy Unless He Has First Experienced Their Desolations.

[...] 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.

The Most Intractable Of Our Experiences Is The Experience Of Time-the Intuition Of Duration, Combined With The Thought Of Perpetual Perishing.

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?

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.

The More Powerful And Original A Mind, The More It Will Incline Towards The Religion Of Solitude.

Great Is Truth, But Still Greater, From A Practical Point Of View, Is Silence About Truth.

Brave New World

The Legs, For Example, Of That Chair--how Miraculous Their Tubularity, How Supernatural Their Polished Smoothness! I Spent Several Minutes--or Was It Several Centuries?--not Merely Gazing At Those Bamboo Legs, But Actually Being Them---or Rather Being Myself In Them; Or, To Be Still More Accurate (for "i" Was Not Involved In The Case, Nor In A Certain Sense Were "they") Being My Not-self In The Not-self Which Was The Chair.

If We Must Play The Theological Game, Let Us Never Forget That It Is A Game. Religion, It Seems To Me, Can Survive Only As A Consciously Accepted System Of Make-believe.

Half At Least Of All Morality Is Negative And Consists In Keeping Out Of Mischief. The Lords Prayer Is Less Than 50 Words Long, And 6 Of Those Words Are Devoted To Asking God Not To Lead Us Into Temptation.

Perhaps Dirt Is The Necessary Condition Of Beauty.... Perhaps Hygiene And Art Can Never Be Bedfellows. No Verdi, After All, Without Spitting Into Trumpets. No Duse Without A Crowd Of Malodorous Bourgeois Giving One Another Their Coryzas. And Think Of The Inexpugnable Retreats For Microbes Prepared By Michelangelo In The Curls Of Moses' Beard!

As Political And Economic Freedom Diminishes, Sexual Freedom Tends Correspondingly To Increase. And The Dictator Will Do Well To Encourage That Freedom...it Will Help To Reconcile His Subjects To The Servitude Which Is Their Fate.

If You Look Up 'intelligence' In The New Volumes Of The Encyclopeadia Britannica, You'll Find It Classified Under The Following Three Heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence, Military. My Stepfather's A Perfect Specimen Of Intelligence, Military.

I Don't Think There Is Any Incompatibility Between Science And Mysticism . . . Immanent Religion Is The Only Form Of Religion In Which There Is No Conflict At All, That I Can See, Between Science And Religion.

De Sade Is The One Completely Consistent And Thoroughgoing Revolutionary Of History.

A Gramme Is Better Than A Damn.

If You Want To Write, Keep Cats.

Drinking Can Not Be Sacramentalised Except In Religions Which Set No Store On Decorum. The Worship Of Dionysos Or The Celtic God Of Beer Was A Loud And Disorderly Affair.

All Gods Are Homemade, And It Is We Who Pull Their Strings, And So, Give Them The Power To Pull Ours.

Literary Or Scientific, Liberal Or Specialist, All Our Education Is Predominantly Verbal And Therefore Fails To Accomplish What It Is Supposed To Do. Instead Of Transforming Children Into Fully Developed Adults, It Turns Out Students Of The Natural Sciences Who Are Completely Unaware Of Nature As The Primary Fact Of Experience, It Inflicts Upon The World Students Of The Humanities Who Know Nothing Of Humanity, Their Own Or Anyone Else's.

Morality Is Always The Product Of Terror; Its Chains And Strait-waistcoats Are Fashioned By Those Who Dare Not Trust Others, Because They Dare Not Trust Themselves, To Walk In Liberty.

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.

‎"but That's The Price We Have To Pay For Stability. You've Got To Choose Between Happiness And What People Used To Call High Art. We've Sacrificed The High Art.

Brave New World

Nothing — The Only Perfection, The Only Absolute. Infinite And Eternal Nothing.

Successfully (whatever That May Mean) Or Unsuccessfully, We All Overact The Part Of Our Favorite Character In Fiction.

And No Wonder; For The New Technique Of "subliminal Projection," As It Was Called, Was Intimately Associated With Mass Entertainment, And In The Life Of Civilized Human Beings Massed Entertainment Now Plays A Part Comparable To That Played In The Middle Ages Be Religion.

The Ductless Glands Secrete Among Other Things Our Moods, Our Aspirations, Our Philosophy Of Life.

I Used To Think I Had No Will To Power. Now I Perceive That I Vented It On Thoughts, Rather Than People. Conquering An Unknown Province Of Knowledge. Getting The Better Of A Problem. Forcing Ideas To Associate Or Come Apart. Bullying Recalcitrant Words To Assume A Certain Pattern. All The Fun Of Being A Dictator Without Any Risks And Responsibilities.

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.

The Best Way To Find Things Out Is Not To Ask Questions At All. If You Fire Off A Question, It Is Like Firing Off A Gun - Bang It Goes

Most Loverspicture To Themselves, In Their Mistresses, A Secret Reality, Beyond And Different From What They See Every Day. They Are In Love With Somebody Else--their Own Invention. And Sometimes There Is A Secret Reality; And Sometimes Reality And Appearance Are The Same. The Discovery, In Either Case, Is Likely To Cause A Shock.

This Concern With The Basic Condition Of Freedom -- The Absence Of Physical Constraint -- Is Unquestionably Necessary, But Is Not All That Is Necessary. It Is Perfectly Possible For A Man To Be Out Of Prison And Yet Not Free -- To Be Under No Physical Constraint And Yet To Be A Psychological Captive, Compelled To Think, Feel And Act As The Representatives Of The National State, Or Of Some Private Interest Within The Nation, Want Him To Think, Feel And Act.

All Conditioning Aims At That: Making People Like Their Inescapable Social Destiny.

Brave New World

Real Progress Is Progress In Charity, All Other Advances Being Secondary Thereto.

Hug Me Till You Drug Me, Honey; Kiss Me Till I'm In A Coma.

Brave New World

By Comparison With A Night-club, Churches Are Positively Gay.

Human Contacts Have Been So Highly Valued In The Past Only Because Reading Was Not A Common Accomplishment.... The World, You Must Remember, Is Only Just Becoming Literate. As Reading Becomes More And More Habitual And Widespread, An Ever-increasing Number Of People Will Discover That Books Will Give Them All The Pleasures Of Social Life And None Of Its Intolerable Tedium.

You Shall Know The Truth, And The Truth Shall Make You Mad.

Reality, However Utopian, Is Something From Which People Feel The Need Of Taking Pretty Frequent Holidays.

Brave New World

There Isn't Any Formula Or Method. You Learn To Love By Loving - By Paying Attention And Doing What One Thereby Discovers Has To Be Done.

Too Much Consistency Is As Bad For The Mind As For The Body.

Something That Had Been A Single Cell, A Cluster Of Cells, A Little Sac Of Tissue, A Kind Of Worm, A Potential Fish With Gills, Stirred In Her Womb And Would One Day Become A Man--a Grown Man, Suffering And Enjoying, Loving And Hating, Thinking, Remembering, Imagining. And What Had Been A Blob Of Jelly Within Her Body Would Invent A God And Worship; What Had Been A Kind Of Fish Would Create, And, Having Created, Would Become The Battleground Of Disputing Good And Evil; What Had Blindly Lived In Her As A Parasitic Worm Would Look At The Stars, Would Listen To Music, Would Read Poetry.

This Power Elite Directly Employs Several Millions Of The Country´s Working Force In Its Factories, Offices And Stores, Controls Many Millions More By Lending Them The Money To Buy Its Products, And, Through Its Ownership Of The Media Of Mass Communication, Influences The Thoughts, The Feelings And The Actions Of Virtually Everybody. To Parody The Words Of W. Churchill, Never Have So Many Been Manipulated So Much By Few.

Reality Cannot Be Ignored Except At A Price; And The Longer The Ignorance Is Persisted In, The Higher And More Terrible Becomes The Price That Must Be Paid.

You Can't Make Flivers Without Steel - And You Can't Make Tragedies Without Social Instability. The World's Stable Now. People Are Happy; They Get What They Want, And They Never Want What They Can't Get. They're Well Off; They're Safe; They're Never Ill; They're Not Afraid Of Death; They're Blissfully Ignorant Of Passion And Old Age; They're Plagued With No Mothers Or Fathers; They've Got No Wives, Or Children, Or Lovers To Feel Strongly About; They're So Conditioned That They Pratically Can't Help Behaving As They Ought To Behave.

Experience Is Not What Happens To You; It's What You Do With What Happens To You.

Jehovah, Allah, The Trinity, Jesus, Buddha, Are Names For A Great Variety Of Human Virtues, Human Mystical Experiences, Human Remorses, Human Compensatory Fantasies, Human Terrors, Human Cruelties. If All Men Were Alike, All The World Would Worship The Same God.

A Child-like Man Is Not A Man Whose Development Has Been Arrested; On The Contrary, He Is A Man Who Has Given Himself A Chance Of Continuing To Develop Long After Most Adults Have Muffled Themselves In The Cocoon Of Middle-aged Habit And Convention.

What Is Absurd And Monstrous About War Is That Men Who Have No Personal Quarrel Should Be Trained To Murder One Another In Cold Blood.

Specialized Meaninglessness Has Come To Be Regarded, In Certain Circles, As A Kind Of Hallmark Of True Science.

Alpha Children Wear Grey. They Work Much Harder Than We Do, Because They're So Frightfully Clever. I'm Awfully Glad I'm A Beta, Because I Don't Work So Hard. And Then We Are Much Better Than The Gammas And Deltas. Gammas Are Stupid. They All Wear Green, And Delta Children Wear Khaki. Oh No, I Don't Want To Play With Delta Children. And Epsilons Are Still Worse. They're Too Stupid To Be Able To Read Or Write. Besides They Wear Black, Which Is Such A Beastly Color. I'm So Glad I'm A Beta.

It's Dark Because You Are Trying Too Hard. Lightly Child, Lightly. Learn To Do Everything Lightly. Yes, Feel Lightly Even Though You're Feeling Deeply. Just Lightly Let Things Happen And Lightly Cope With Them. So Throw Away 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.

Civilization Is Sterilization.

You Should Hurry Up And Acquire The Cigar Habit. It's One Of The Major Happinesses. And So Much More Lasting Than Love, So Much Less Costly In Emotional Wear And Tear.

The Mockery Made Him Feel An Outsider; And Feeling An Outsider He Behaved Like One, Which Increased The Prejudice Against Him And Intensified The Contempt And Hostility Aroused By His Physical Defects. Which In Turn Increased His Sense Of Being Alien And Alone. A Chronic Fear Of Being Slighted Made Him Avoid His Equals, Made Him Stand, Where His Inferiors Were Concerned, Self-consciously On His Dignity.

One Thinks One's Something Unique And Wonderful At The Center Of The Universe, When In Fact One's Just A Slight Interruption In The Ongoing March Of Entropy.

Dying Is Almost The Least Spiritual Of Our Acts, More Strictly Carnal Even Than The Act Of Love. There Are Death Agonies That Are Like The Strainings Of The Costive At Stool.

Pully, Hauly, Tug With A Will; The Gods Wiggle Waggle, But The Sky Stands Still.

Grace Is Always Sufficient, Provided We Are Ready To Cooperate With It.

Doing Your Best

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.

Sons Have Always A Rebellious Wish To Be Disillusioned By That Which Charmed Their Fathers.

Facts Are Ventriloquist’s Dummies. Sitting On A Wise Man’s Knee They May Be Made To Utter Words Of Wisdom; Elsewhere, They Say Nothing, Or Talk Nonsense, Or Indulge In Sheer Diabolism.

The Secret Of Genius Is To Carry The Spirit Of The Child Into Old Age, Which Mean Never Losing Your Enthusiasm.

Asceticism, It Is Evident, Has A Double Motivation. If Men And Women Torment Their Bodies, It Is Not Only Because They Hope In This Way To Atone For Past Sins And Avoid Future Punishments; It Is Also Because They Long To Visit The Mind's Antipodes And Do Some Visionary Sightseeing.

The Victim Of Mind-manipulation Does Not Know That He Is A Victim. To Him, The Walls Of His Prison Are Invisible, And He Believes Himself To Be Free.

Both Of Us Victims Of The Same Twentieth-century Plague. Not The Black Death, This Time; The Gray Life.

The Most Shocking Fact About War Is That Its Victims And Its Instruments Are Individual Human Beings, And That These Individual Beings Are Condemned By The Monstrous Conventions Of Politics To Murder Or Be Murdered In Quarrels Not Their Own.

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.

A Squat Grey Building Of Only Thirty-four Stories. Over The Main Entrance The Words, Central London Hatchery And Conditioning Centre, And, In A Shield, The World State's Motto, Community, Identity, Stability.

Complete Prohibition Of All Chemical Mind Changers Can Be Decreed, But Cannot Be Enforced, And Tends To Create More Evils Than It Cures.

The Instinct Of Acquisitiveness Has More Perverts, I Believe, Than The Instinct Of Sex. At Any Rate, People Seem To Me Odder About Money Than About Even Their Amours.

Isn't It Remarkable How Everyone Who Knew [d.h.] Lawrence Has Felt Compelled To Write About Him? Why, He's Had More Books Written About Him Than Any Writer Since Byron!

Why Do You Love The Woman You're In Love With? Because She Is. And That, After All, Is God's Own Definition Of Himself; I Am That I Am. The Girl Is Who She Is. Some Of Her Isness Spills Over And Impregnates The Entire Universe. Objects And Events Cease To Be Mere Representations Of Classes And Become Their Own Uniqueness; Cease To Be Illustrations Of Verbal Abstractions And Become Fully Concrete. Then You Stop Being In Love, And The Universe Collapses, With An Almost Audible Squeak Of Derision, Into Its Normal Insignificance.

Liberate Yourselves From Everything You Know And Look With Complete Innocence At This Infinitely Improbable Thing Before You.

So Now You Can Let Go, My Darling...let Go...let Go Of This Poor Old Body. You Don't Need It Anymore. Let It Fall Away From You. Leave It Lying There Like A Pile Of Worn-out Clothes...go On, My Darling, Go On Into The Light, Into The Peace, Into The Living Peace Of The Clear Light.

Can We Unite Against Ourselves For Our Own Higher Interest?

For The Born Traveller, Travelling Is A Besetting Vice. Like Other Vices, It Is Imperious, Demanding Its Victim's Time, Money, Energy And The Sacrifice Of Comfort.

Good Is A Product Of The Ethical And Spiritual Artistry Of Individuals; It Cannot Be Mass-produced.

Ironically Enough, The Only People Who Can Hold Up Indefinitely Under The Stress Of Modern War Are Psychotics. Individual Insanity Is Immune To The Consequences Of Collective Insanity.

Feasts Must Be Solemn And Rare, Or Else They Cease To Be Feasts.

Man Is Hypnotized By The Glitter Of His Own Gadgetry

We Can Only Love What We Know, And We Can Never Know Completely What We Do Not Love. Love Is A Mode Of Knowledge

The Innocence Of Those Who Grind The Faces Of The Poor, But Refrain From Pinching The Bottoms Of Their Neighbour's Wives! The Innocence Of Ford, The Innocence Of Rockefeller! The Nineteenth Century Was The Age Of Innocence--that Sort Of Innocence. With The Result That We're Now Almost Ready To Say That A Man Is Seldom More Innocently Employed Than When Making Love.

Habit Converts Luxurious Enjoyments Into Dull And Daily Necessities.

A Belief In Hell And The Knowledge That Every Ambition Is Doomed To Frustration At The Hands Of A Skeleton Have Never Prevented The Majority Of Human Beings From Behaving As Though Death Were No More Than An Unfounded Rumor.

The Critics Don't Interest Me Because They're Concerned With What's Past And Done, While I'm Concerned With What Comes Next.

Music Is An Ocean, But The Repertory Is Hardly Even A Lake; It Is A Pond.

Those Who Believe That They Are Exclusively In The Right Are Generally Those Who Achieve Something.

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.

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.

My Fate Cannot Be Mastered; It Can Only Be Collaborated With And Thereby, To Some Extent, Directed. Nor Am I The Captain Of My Soul; I Am Only Its Noisiest Passenger.

The Proper Study Of Mankind Is Books.

Somewhere In The Rain, There Will Always Be An Abandoned Dog That Prevents You From Being Happy.

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.

To Talk About Religion Except In Terms Of Human Psychology Is An Irrelevance.

In Spiritual Matters, Knowledge Is Dependent Upon Being; As We Are, So We Know.

If It Were Not For The Intellectual Snobs Who Pay - In Solid Cash - The Arts Would Perish With Their Starving Practitioners. Let Us Thank Heaven For Hypocrisy.

Orthodoxy Is The Diehard Of The World Of Thought. It Learns Not, Neither Can It Forget.

The Social Body Persists Although The Component Cells May Change.

Happiness Is A Hard Master, Particularly Other People's Happiness.

Words Form The Thread On Which We String Our Experiences.

Wherever The Choice Has Had To Be Made Between The Man Of Reason And The Madman, The World Has Unhesitatingly Followed The Madman.

Of Course The Dharma-body Of The Buddha Was The Hedge At The Bottom Of The Garden. At The Same Time, And No Less Obviously, It Was These Flowers, It Was Anything That I - Or Rather The Blessed Not-i - Cared To Look At.

Most Vices Demand Considerable Self-sacrifices. There Is No Greater Mistake Than To Suppose That A Vicious Life Is A Life Of Uninterrupted Pleasure. It Is A Life Almost As Wearisome And Painful -- If Strenuously Led -- As Christian's In The Pilgrim's Progress.

Dinted Dimpled Wimpled-his Mind Wandered Down Echoing Corridors Of Assonance And Alliteration Ever Further And Further From The Point. He Was Enamoured With The Beauty Of Words.

There's Only One Effectively Redemptive Sacrifice, The Sacrifice Of Self-will To Make Room For The Knowledge Of God.

... The Greater Part Of The Population Is Not Very Intelligent, Dreads Responsibility, And Desires Nothing Better Than To Be Told What To Do. Provided The Rulers Do Not Interfere With Its Material Comforts And Its Cherished Beliefs, It Is Perfectly Happy To Let Itself Be Ruled.

The Spiritual Journey Does Not Consist Of Arriving At A New Destination Where A Person Gains What He Did Not Have, Or Becomes What He Is Not. It Consists In The Dissipation Of One's Own Ignorance Concerning Oneself And Life, And The Gradual Growth Of That Understanding Which Begins The Spiritual Awakening. The Finding Of God Is A Coming To One?s Self.

Since Mozart's Day Composers Have Learned The Art Of Making Music Throatily And Palpitatingly Sexual.

People Travel For The Same Reason As They Collect Works Of Art: Because The Best People Do It.

Let Us Be Kinder To One Another.

The Man Who Has Successfully Solved The Problem Of His Relations With The Two Worlds Of Data And Symbols Is A Man Who Has No Beliefs. With Regard To The Problems Of Practical Life He Entertains A Series Of Working Hypotheses, Which Serve His Purposes, But Are Taken No More Seriously Than Any Other Kind Of Tool Or Instrument. In Other Words, Symbols Should Never Be Raised To The Rank Of Dogmas, Nor Should Any System Be Regarded As More Than A Provisional Convenience.

The Scent Organ Was Playing A Delightfully Refreshing Herbal Capriccio - Rippling Arpeggios Of Thyme And Lavender, Of Rosemary, Basil, Myrtle, Tarragon; A Series Of Daring Modulations Through The Spice Keys Into Ambergris; And A Slow Return Through Sandalwood, Camphor, Cedar And Newmown Hay (with Occasional Subtle Touches Of Discord - A Whiff Of Kidney Pudding, The Faintest Suspicion Of Pig's Dung) Back To The Simple Aromatics With Which The Piece Began. The Final Blast Of Thyme Died Away; There Was A Round Of Applause; The Lights Went Up.

The Survival Of Democracy Depends On The Ability Of Large Numbers Of People To Make Realistic Choices In The Light Of Adequate Information.

Primroses And Landscapes, He Pointed Out, Have One Grave Defect: They Are Gratuitous. A Love Of Nature Keeps No Factories Busy. It Was Decided To Abolish The Love Of Nature, At Any Rate Among The Lower Classes. . . . It Was Essential That They Should Keep On Going To The Country, Even Though They Hated It.

What Wonder, Then, If Human Beings In Their Search For The Divine Have Generally Preferred To Look Within!

Maybe This World Is Another Planet's Hell.

Visionary Experience Is Not The Same As Mystical Experience. Mystical Experience Is Beyond The Realm Of Opposites. Visionary Experience Is Still Within That Realm. Heaven Entails Hell, And 'going To Heaven' Is No More Liberation Than Is The Descent Into Horror. Heaven Is Merely A Vantage Point From Which The Divine Ground Can Be More Clearly Seen Than On The Level Of Ordinary Individual Experience.

Mystical Experiences

One Believes Things Because One Has Been Conditioned To Believe Them. Finding Bad Reasons For What One Believes For Other Bad Reasons-that's Philosophy. People Believe In God Because They've Been Conditioned To Believe In God.

One Believes Things Because One Has Been Conditioned To Believe Them.

Brave New World Technology

Thought Is Barred In This City Of Dreadful Joy And Conversation Is Unknown.

The Greater A Man's Talents, The Greater His Power To Lead Astray.

Brave New World

The Quality Of Moral Behavior Varies In Inverse Ratio To The Number Of Human Beings Involved.

That All Men Are Equal Is A Proposition To Which, At Ordinary Times, No Sane Human Being Has Ever Given His Assent.

All Urbanization, Pushed Beyond A Certain Point, Automatically Becomes Suburbanization.... Every Great City Is Just A Collection Of Suburbs. Its Inhabitantsdo Not Live In Their City; They Merely Inhabit It.

From Their Experience Or From The Recorded Experience Of Others (history), Men Learn Only What Their Passions And Their Metaphysical Prejudices Allow Them To Learn.

This Growing Poverty In The Midst Of Growing Population Constitutes A Permanent Menace To Peace. And Not Only To Peace, But Also To Democratic Institutions And Personal Liberty For Overpopulation Is Not Compatible With Freedom.

I Was Not Looking Now At An Unusual Flower Arrangement. I Was Seeing What Adam Had Seen On The Morning Of His Creation - The Miracle, Moment By Moment, Of Naked Existence.

Man Is Unique In Organizing The Mass Murder Of His Own Species.

To Travel Is To Discover That Everyone Is Wrong About Other Countries.

We Participate In A Tragedy; At A Comedy We Only Look.

Today We Are Faced, I Think, With The Approach Of What May Be Called The Ultimate Revolution, The Final Revolution, Where Man Can Act Directly On The Mind-body Of His Fellows.

Sleep Is The Most Blessed And Blessing Of All Natural Graces.

Craving For Power Is Not A Vice Of The Body, Consequently It Knows None Of The Limitations Imposed By A Tired Or Satiated Physiology Upon Gluttony, Intemperance And Lust

Happiness Has Got To Be Paid For. You're Paying For It, Mr. Watson–paying Because You Happen To Be Too Much Interested In Beauty. I Was Too Much Interested In Truth; I Paid Too.

Brave New World Happiness

Brave New World Freedom

The Lunatic Fringe Is More Like A Spanish Shawl, Where The Fringe Makes Up The Entire Garment.

Pleasure Cannot Be Shared; Like Pain, It Can Only Be Experienced Or Inflicted, And When We Give Pleasure To Our Lovers Or Bestow Charity Upon The Needy, We Do So, Not To Gratify The Object Of Our Benevolence, But Only Ourselves. For The Truth Is That We Are Kind For The Same Reason As We Are Cruel, In Order That We May Enhance The Sense Of Our Own Power.

Speed, It Seems To Me, Provides The One Genuinely Modern Pleasure.

Consciousness Is Only Possible Through Change; Change Is Only Possible Through Movement.

Death Is The Only Thing We Haven't Succeeded In Completely Vulgarizing.

Only Times And Places, Only Names And Ghosts.

Science Has Explained Nothing; The More We Know The More Fantastic The World Becomes And The Profounder The Surrounding Darkness.

The Trouble With Fiction," Said John Rivers, "is That It Makes Too Much Sense. Reality Never Makes Sense.

The Horror No Less Than The Charm Of Real Life Consists Precisely In The Recurrent Actualization Of The Inconceivable

Official Dignity Tends To Increase In Inverse Ratio To The Importance Of The Country In Which The Office Is Held.

I Write Everything Many Times Over. All My Thoughts Are Second Thoughts.

Second Thoughts

Did You Eat Something That Didn't Agree With You?" Asked Bernard. The Savage Nodded "i Ate Civilization.

Science Is Not Enough, Religion Is Not Enough, Art Is Not Enough, Politics And Economics Are Not Enough, Nor Is Love, Nor Is Duty, Nor Is Action However Disinterested, Nor, However Sublime, Is Contemplation. Nothing Short Of Everything, Will Really Do.

Most Kings And Priests Have Been Despotic, And All Religions Have Been Riddled With Superstition.

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.

Brave New World

The Impulse To Cruelty Is, In Many People, Almost As Violent As The Impulse To Sexual Love - Almost As Violent And Much More Mischievous.

God In The Safe And Ford On The Shelves.

Brave New World

Everyone Who Wants To Do Good To The Human Race Always Ends In Universal Bullying.

A Large City Cannot Be Experientially Known; Its Life Is Too Manifold For Any Individual To Be Able To Participate In It.

Our Goal Is To Discover That We Have Always Been Where We Ought To Be

The Consistent Thinker, The Consistently Moral Man, Is Either A Walking Mummy Or Else, If He Has Not Succeeded In Stifling All His Vitality, A Fanatical Monomaniac.

Abused As We Abuse It At Present, Dramatic Art Is In No Sense Cathartic; It Is Merely A Form Of Emotional Masturbation. It Is The Rarest Thing To Find A Player Who Has Not Had His Character Affected For The Worse By The Practice Of His Profession. Nobody Can Make A Habit Of Self-exhibition, Nobody Can Exploit His Personality For The Sake Of Exercising A Kind Of Hypnotic Power Over Others, And Remain Untouched By The Process.

...most Men And Women Will Grow Up To Love Their Servitude And Will Never Dream Of Revolution.

Now, A Corpse, Poor Thing, Is An Untouchable And The Process Of Decay Is, Of All Pieces Of Bad Manners, The Vulgarest Imaginable. For A Corpse Is, By Definition, A Person Absolutely Devoid Of Savoir Vivre.

Art And Religion, Carnivals And Saturnalia, Dancing And Listening To Oratory - All These Have Served, In H. G. Wells's Phrase, As Doors In The Wall.

I Met, Not Long Ago, A Young Man Who Aspired To Become A Novelist. Knowing That I Was In The Profession, He Asked Me To Tell Him How He Should Set To Work To Realize His Ambition. I Did My Best To Explain. 'the First Thing,' I Said, 'is To Buy Quite A Lot Of Paper, A Bottle Of Ink, And A Pen. After That You Merely Have To Write.'

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