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The Essay Is A Literary Device For Saying Almost Everything About Almost Anything
-Aldous Huxley
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The Essay Is A

Aldous Huxley
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The Essay Is A Literary Device For Saying Almost Everything About Almost Anything

Understanding the Quote: "the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost..."

This quote by Aldous Huxley reflects deeply on the theme of literature. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Literature, Literary Devices, Devices, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Aldous Huxley interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley is celebrated for insightful thoughts on literature and literary devices. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Literature
Literary Devices
Devices
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It Takes Two To Make A Murder. There Are Born Victims, Born To Have Their Throats Cut, As The Cut-throats Are Born To Be Hanged.
Cutting
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It's With Bad Sentiments That One Makes Good Novels.
Writing
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Our Conviction That The World Is Meaningless Is Due In Part To The Fact (discussed In A Later Paragraph) That The Philosophy Of Meaningless Lends Itself Very Effectively To Furthering The Ends Of Political And Erotic Passion; In Part To A Genuine Intellectual Error - The Error Of Identifying The World Of Science, A World From Which All Meaning Has Deliberately Been Excluded, With Ultimate Reality.
Philosophy
Passion
Reality
In Life, Man Proposes, God Disposes.
Life
Men
Propose
There Is Only One Corner Of The Universe You Can Be Certain Of Improving, And That's Your Own Self.
Inspirational
Motivational
Positive
The Trouble With Fiction," Said John Rivers, "is That It Makes Too Much Sense. Reality Never Makes Sense.
Reality
Rivers
Fiction
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.
Art
Character
Exercise
Amour Is The One Human Activity Of Any Importance In Which Laughter And Pleasure Preponderate, If Ever So Slightly, Over Misery And Pain.
Laughter
Pain
Emotional
...it Is Not What One Has Experienced But What One Does With What One Has Experienced That Matters.
Doe
Matter
Grace Is Always Sufficient, Provided We Are Ready To Cooperate With It.
Grace
Doing Your Best
Ready
A Gramme Is Better Than A Damn.
Damn
And What Strange Voices They Have! Sometimes Like The Complaining Of Small Children; Sometimes Like The Noise Of Lambs.
Children
Cat
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Every Individual Is At Once The Beneficiary And The Victim Of The Linguistic Tradition Into Which He Has Been Born - The Beneficiary Inasmuch As Language Gives Access To The Accumulated Records Of Other People's Experience, The Victim In So Far As It Confirms Him In The Belief That Reduced Awareness Is The Only Awareness And As It Bedevils His Sense Of Reality, So That He Is All Too Apt To Take His Concepts For Data, His Words For Actual Things.
Communication
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The Natural Rhythm Of Human Life Is Routine Punctuated By Orgies.
Life
Routine
Natural
Societies Are Composed Of Individuals And Are Good Only Insofar As They Help Individuals To Realize Their Potentialities And To Lead A Happy And Creative Life.
Creative
Helping
Realizing
This Really Revolutionary Revolution Is To Be Achieved, Not In The External World, But In The Souls And Flesh Of Human Beings.
Soul
World
Flesh
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.
Men
Thinking
Mind
Dictators Can Always Consolidate Their Tyranny By An Appeal To Patriotism.
Dictator
Appeals
Tyranny
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.
Love
Reality
Discovery
Unlike The Masses, Intellectuals Have A Taste For Rationality And An Interest In Facts.
Taste
Facts
Mass
Technological Progress Has Merely Provided Us With More Efficient Means For Going Backwards.
Mean
Technology
Progress
But The Nature Of The Universe Is Such That Ends Can Never Justify Means. On The Contrary, The Means Always Determine The End.
Mean
Ends
Determine
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.
Past
Brave New World
Years
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.
Death
Suicide
Unique
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.
Art
Wall
Doors
In Regard To Man's Final End, All The Higher Religions Are In Complete Agreement. The Purpose Of Human Life Is The Discovery Of Truth, The Unitive Knowledge Of The Godhead.
Men
Discovery
Finals
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?
Death
Dying
Lasts
There Will Be, In The Next Generation Or So, A Pharmacological Method Of Making People Love Their Servitude, And Producing Dictatorship Without Tears, So To Speak, Producing A Kind Of Painless Concentration Camp For Entire Societies, So That People Will In Fact Have Their Liberties Taken Away From Them, But Will Rather Enjoy It.
Taken
Nwo
People
Her Cheeks Were Flushed. She Caught Hold Of The Savage's Arm And Pressed It, Limp, Against Her Side. He Looked Down At Her For A Moment, Pale, Pained, Desiring, And Ashamed Of His Desire. He Was Not Worthy, Not... Their Eyes For A Moment Met. What Treasures Hers Promised! A Queen's Ransom Of Temperament. Hastily He Looked Away, Disengaged His Imprisoned Arm. He Was Obscurely Terrified Lest She Should Cease To Be Something He Could Feel Himself Unworthy Of.
Queens
Eye
Desire
The Silent Bear No Witness Against Themselves.
Bears
Silent
Witness
A Majority Of Young People Seem To Develop Mental Arteriosclerosis Forty Years Before They Get The Physical Kind.
Years
People
Majority
Knowledge Is An Affair Of Symbols And Is, All Too Often, A Hindrance To Wisdom, The Uncovering Of The Self From Moment To Moment
Self
Affair
Moments
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.
Christian
Mistake
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"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.
Thinking
Self
Feelings
Every Man's Memory Is His Private Literature.
Memories
Men
Literature
Assemble A Mob Of Men And Women Previously Conditioned By A Daily Reading Of The Newspapers; Treat Them To Amplified Band Music, Bright Lights...and In Next To No Time You Can Reduce Them To A State Of Almost Mindless Subhumanity. Never Before Have So Few Been In A Position To Make Fools, Maniacs, Or Criminals Of So Many.
Money
Reading
Men
Civilization Is Sterilization.
Civilization
Sterilization
The Most Valuable Of All Education Is The Ability To Make Yourself Do The Thing You Have To Do, When It Has To Be Done, Whether You Like It Or Not.
Inspiring
Education
Procrastination
Democracy Can Hardly Be Expected To Flourish In Societies Where Political And Economic Power Is Being Progressively Concentrated And Centralized. But The Progress Of Technology Has Led And Is Still Leading To Just Such A Concentration And Centralization Of Power.
Power
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Writers Write To Influence Their Readers, Their Preachers, Their Auditors, But Always, At Bottom, To Be More Themselves.
Writing
Individuality
Literature
The Older Dictators Fell Because They Could Never Supply Their Subjects With Enough Bread, Enough Circuses, Enough Miracles, And Mysteries. Under A Scientific Dictatorship, Education Will Really Work' With The Result That Most Men And Women Will Grow Up To Love Their Servitude And Will Never Dream Of Revolution. There Seems To Be No Good Reason Why A Thoroughly Scientific Dictatorship Should Ever Be Overthrown.
Dream
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Men
All Conditioning Aims At That: Making People Like Their Inescapable Social Destiny.
Brave New World
Destiny
People
Silence Is As Full Of Potential Wisdom And Wit As The Unshown Marble Of Great Sculpture. The Silent Bear No Witness Against Themselves.
Wisdom
Silence
Sculpture
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.
Thinking
Two
Self
A Physical Shortcoming Could Produce A Kind Of Mental Excess. The Process, It Seemed, Was Reversible. Mental Excess Could Produce, For Its Own Purposes, The Voluntary Blindness And Deafness Of Deliberate Solitude, The Artificial Impotence Of Asceticism.
Solitude
Purpose
Excess
Cynical Realism Is The Intelligent Man's Best Excuse For Doing Nothing In An Intolerable Situation.
Intelligent
Men
Cynical
All Democracies Are Based On The Proposition That Power Is Very Dangerous And That It Is Extremely Important Not To Let Any One Person Or Small Group Have Too Much Power For Too Long A Time
Long
Democracy
Important
Great Is Truth, But Still Greater, From A Practical Point Of View, Is Silence About Truth.
Freedom
Brave New World
Views
The Finest Works Of Art Are Precious, Among Other Reasons, Because They Make It Possible For Us To Know, If Only Imperfectly And For A Little While, What It Actually Feels Like To Think Subtly And Feel Nobly.
Art
Thinking
Littles
How Difficult It Is To Sound Persuasive At The Top Of One's Voice!
Voice
Sound
Persuasive
I Want To Know What Passion Is. I Want To Feel Something Strongly.
Passion
Want
Feels
Hug Me Till You Drug Me, Honey; Kiss Me Till I'm In A Coma.
Kissing
Brave New World
Drug
The Greater A Man's Talents, The Greater His Power To Lead Astray.
Brave New World
Men
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I Know Quite Well That One Needs Ridiculous, Mad Situations Like That; One Can't Write Really Well About Anything Else. Why Was That Old Fellow Such A Marvelous Propaganda Technician? Because He Had So Many Insane, Excruciating Things To Get Excited About. You've Got To Be Hurt And Upset; Otherwise You Can't Think Of The Really Good, Penetrating, X-rayish Phrases.
Hurt
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Thinking
If The Men Of The Middle Ages... Lived In Filth And Discomfort, It Was Not For Any Lack Of Ability To Change Their Mode Of Life; It Was Because They Chose To Live This Way, Because Filth And Discomfort Fitted In With Their Principles And Prejudices, Political, Moral, And Religious.... It Was In The Power Of Medieval... Craftsmen To Create Armchairs And Sofas That Might Have Rivaled In Comfort Those Of Today
Religious
Men
Political
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.
Spiritual
Agony
Dying
Successfully (whatever That May Mean) Or Unsuccessfully, We All Overact The Part Of Our Favorite Character In Fiction.
Character
Mean
Fiction
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.
Believe
Games
Play
Our Goal Is To Discover That We Have Always Been Where We Ought To Be
Goal
Ought
It Is A Bit Embarrassing To Have Been Concerned With The Human Problem All One's Life And Find At The End That One Has No More To Offer By Way Of Advice Than 'try To Be A Little Kinder.'
Peace
Kindness
Advice
We Don't Want To Change. Every Change Is A Menace To Stability.
Want
Menace
Stability
Like Every Man Of Sense And Good Feeling, I Abominate Work.
Work
Men
Feelings
Every Civilization Is, Among Other Things, An Arrangement For Domesticating The Passions And Setting Them To Do Useful Work.
Passion
Civilization
Settings
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.
Two
Twenties
Done
To Talk About Religion Except In Terms Of Human Psychology Is An Irrelevance.
Irrelevance
Psychology
Term
Thought Must Be Divided Against Itself Before It Can Come To Any Knowledge Of Itself.
Ideas
Literature
Huxley
Hell Is The Incapacity To Be Other Than The Creature One Finds Oneself Ordinarily Behaving As.
Hell
Incapacity
Creatures
Most Human Beings Have An Almost Infinite Capacity For Taking Things For Granted.
Thankful
Gratitude
Appreciation
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.
Religious
War
Buddhism
If Most Of Us Remain Ignorant Of Ourselves, It Is Because Self-knowledge Is Painful And We Prefer The Pleasures Of Illusion.
Knowledge
Emotional
Discovery
If We Evolved A Race Of Isaac Newtons, That Would Not Be Progress. For The Price Newton Had To Pay For Being A Supreme Intellect Was That He Was Incapable Of Friendship, Love, Fatherhood, And Many Other Desirable Things. As A Man He Was A Failure; As A Monster He Was Superb.
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Failure
Math
Individual Insanity Is Immune To The Consequences Of Collective Insanity
Insanity
Individual
Collectives
Experience Teaches Only The Teachable.
Inspirational
Teaching
Experience
We Live Together, We Act On, And React To One Another; But Always, And In All Circumstances, We Are By Ourselves.
Together
Doors Of Perception
Circumstances
In The Course Of History Many More People Have Died For Their Drink And Their Dope Than Have Died For Their Religion Or Their Country.
Country
Dope
People
All Gods Are Homemade, And It Is We Who Pull Their Strings, And So, Give Them The Power To Pull Ours.
Fear
Giving
Religion
The Thin And Precarious Crust Of Decency Is All That Separates Any Civilization, However Impressive, From The Hell Of Anarchy Or Systematic Tyranny Which Lie In Wait Beneath The Surface .
Lying
Civilization
Waiting
Since Mozart's Day Composers Have Learned The Art Of Making Music Throatily And Palpitatingly Sexual.
Music
Art
Composer
On No Account Brood Over Your Wrongdoing. Rolling In The Muck Is Not The Best Way Of Getting Clean.
Brave New World
Guilt
Rolling
It Takes A Certain Amount Of Intelligence And Imagination To Realize The Extraordinary Queerness And Mysteriousness Of The World In Which We Live.
Imagination
World
Realizing
Art, I Suppose, Is Only For Beginners, Who Have Made Up In Their Minds To Be Content With Symbols Rather Than With What They Signify, With The Elegantly Composed Recipe In Lieu Of Actual Dinner.
Art
Mind
Beginners
Never Give Children A Chance Of Imagining That Anything Exists In Isolation. Make It Plain From The Very Beginning That All Living Is Relationship. Show Them Relationships In The Woods, In The Fields, In The Ponds And Streams, In The Village And In The Country Around It. Rub It In.
Country
Children
Giving
The Critics Don't Interest Me Because They're Concerned With What's Past And Done, While I'm Concerned With What Comes Next.
Past
Done
Next
I'm Claiming The Right To Be Unhappy.
Unhappy
What’s The Point Of Truth Or Beauty Or Knowledge When Anthrax Bombs Are Popping All Around You?
Brave New World
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Anthrax
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
Opposites
Heaven
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.
Book
Men
Two
God Isn't Compatible With Machinery And Scientific Medicine And Universal Happiness. You Must Make Your Choice. Our Civilization Has Chosen Machinery And Medicine And Happiness.
Civilization
Medicine
Choices
The Real Hopeless Victims Of Mental Illness Are To Be Found Among Those Who Appear To Be Most Normal. Many Of Them Are Normal Because They Are So Well Adjusted To Our Mode Of Existence, Because Their Human Voice Has Been Silenced So Early In Their Lives That They Do Not Even Struggle Or Suffer Or Develop Symptoms As The Neurotic Does. They Are Normal Not In What May Be Called The Absolute Sense Of The Word; They Are Normal Only In Relation To A Profoundly Abnormal Society.
Real
Struggle
Voice
A Life-worshipper's Philosophy Is Comprehensive. He Is At One Moment A Positivist And At Another A Mystic: Now Haunted By The Thought Of Death And Now A Dionysian Child Of Nature; Now A Pessimist And Now, With A Change Of Lover Or Liver Or Even The Weather, An Exuberant Believer That God's In His Heaven And All's Right With The World.
Love
Children
Philosophy
No Social Stability Without Individual Stability.
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Individual
Social
But Every One Belongs To Every One Else
Brave New World
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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?
Art
Suffering
Literature
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.
Stars
Hate
Men
The Condition Of Being Forgiven Is Self-abandonment. The Proud Man Prefers Self-reproach, However Painful --because The Reproached Self Isn't Abandoned; It Remains Intact.
Forgiveness
Men
Self
The Only Consistent People Are The Dead
People
Consistent
Grace Is Always Sufficient, Provided We Are Ready To Cooperate With It. If We Fail To Do Our Share, But Rather Choose To Rely On Self-will And Self-direction, We Shall Not Only Get No Help From The Graces Bestowed On Us, We Shall Actually Make It Impossible For Further Graces To Be Given.
Self
Grace
Helping
Industrialization Is The Systemic Exploitation Of Wasting Assets. In All Too Many Cases, The Thing We Call Progress Is Merely An Acceleration In The Rate Of That Exploitation.
Progress
Industrialization
Assets
Universal Happiness Keeps The Wheels Steadily Turning, Truth And Beauty Can't.
Happiness
Brave New World
Joy
Those Who Meant Well Behaved In The Same Way As Those Who Meant Badly.
Way
Wells
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.
Bullying
Fun
Responsibility
One Of The Principal Functions Of A Friend Is To Suffer (in A Milder And Symbolic Form) The Punishments That We Should Like, But Are Unable, To Inflict Upon Our Enemies.
Brave New World
Punishment
Enemy
People Will Insist On Treating The Mons Veneris As Though It Were Mount Everest. Too Silly!
Silly
People
Lust
If You Have Behaved Badly, Repent, Make What Amends You Can And Address Yourself To The Task Of Behaving Better Next Time.
Brave New World
Tasks
Addresses
All Right Then," Said The Savage Defiantly, "i'm Claiming The Right To Be Unhappy.
Brave New World
Unhappy
Syphilis
Words Can Be Like X-rays If You Use Them Properly -- They’ll Go Through Anything. You Read And You’re Pierced.
Reading
Book
Writing
We Are All Geniuses Up To The Age Of Ten.
50th Birthday
Age
Genius
Slowly, Very Slowly, Like Two Unhurried Compass Needles, The Feet Turned Towards The Right; North, North-east, East, South-east, South, South-south-west; Then Paused, And After A Few Seconds, Turned As Unhurriedly Back Towards The Left. South-south-west, South, South-east, East.
Two
Feet
East
Where Beauty Is Worshipped For Beauty's Sake As A Goddess, Independent Of And Superior To Morality And Philosophy, The Most Horrible Putrefaction Is Apt To Set In. The Lives Of The Aesthetes Are The Far From Edifying Commentary On The Religion Of Beauty.
Life
Beauty
God
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.
Space
Watches
Answers
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.
Judging
World
Wells
The Third Petition Of The Lord's Prayer Is Repeated Daily By Millions Who Have Not The Slightest Intention Of Letting Anyone's Will Be Done But Their Own.
Prayer
Done
Lord
But Then People Don't Read Literature In Order To Understand; They Read It Because They Want To Re-live The Feelings And Sensations Which They Found Exciting In The Past. Art Can Be A Lot Of Things; But In Actual Practice, Most Of It Is Merely The Mental Equivalent Of Alcohol And Cantharides.
Art
Truth
Past
The Really Important Facts Were That Spatial Relationships Had Ceased To Matter Very Much And That My Mind Was Perceiving The World In Terms Of Other Than Spatial Categories. At Ordinary Times The Eye Concerns Itself With Such Problems As Where? — How Far? — How Situated In Relation To What? In The Mescaline Experience The Implied Questions To Which The Eye Responds Are Of Another Order. Place And Distance Cease To Be Of Much Interest. The Mind Does Its Perceiving In Terms Of Intensity Of Existence, Profundity Of Significance, Relationships Within A Pattern.
Distance
Eye
Order
... 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.
Truth
Freedom
Knowledge
Eating, Drinking, Dying - Three Primary Manifestations Of The Universal And Impersonal Life. Animals Live That Impersonal And Universal Life Without Knowing Its Nature. Ordinary People Know Its Nature But Don't Live It And, If They Think Seriously About It, Refuse To Accept It. An Enlightened Person Knows It, Lives It, And Accepts It Completely. He Eats, He Drinks, And In Due Course He Dies - But He Eats With A Difference, Drinks With A Difference, Dies With A Difference.
Drinking
Animal
Thinking
Music Is An Ocean, But The Repertory Is Hardly Even A Lake; It Is A Pond.
Ocean
Lakes
Ponds
Generalized Intelligence And Mental Alertness Are The Most Powerful Enemies Of Dictatorship And At The Same Time The Basic Conditions Of Effective Democracy.
Powerful
Enemy
Democracy
Liberty? Why It Doesn't Exist. There Is No Liberty In This World, Just Gilded Cages.
Liberty
World
Cages
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.
Motivation
Men
Past
Sixty Two Thousand Four Hundred Repetitions Make One Truth. Idiots!
Truth
Brave New World
Two
The Artists Who The World Has Always Recognized As The Greatest Are Those With The Widest Sympathy. The Greatness Of The Great Artist Depends Precisely On The Width And The Intensity Of His Sympathy.
Artist
Greatness
World
Ending Is Better Than Mending.
Mending
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
Masters
Supreme
The Most Intractable Of Our Experiences Is The Experience Of Time-the Intuition Of Duration, Combined With The Thought Of Perpetual Perishing.
Time
Intuition
Duration
People Travel For The Same Reason As They Collect Works Of Art: Because The Best People Do It.
Art
People
Reason
Every Significant Artist Is A Metaphysician, A Propounder Of Beauty-truths And Form-theories.
Artist
Significant
Form
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.
Dog
Atheist
Fear
To Write Fiction, One Needs A Whole Series Of Inspirations About People In An Actual Environment, And Then A Whole Lot Of Work On The Basis Of Those Inspirations.
Inspiration
Writing
People
Real Progress Is Progress In Charity, All Other Advances Being Secondary Thereto.
Real
Progress
Charity
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.
Believe
Humble
Men
Every Idol, However Exalted, Turns Out, In The Long Run, To Be A Moloch, Hungry For Human Sacrifice.
Running
Sacrifice
Idols
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
Men
Irrelevance
Origin Of Life
There Are Few Who Would Not Rather Be Taken In Adultery Than In Provocation.
Marriage
Taken
Adultery
The Ductless Glands Secrete Among Other Things Our Moods, Our Aspirations, Our Philosophy Of Life.
Philosophy
Philosophical
Science
Habit Converts Luxurious Enjoyments Into Dull And Daily Necessities.
Luxury
Literature
Dull
Hitler's Vast Propaganda Successes Were Accomplished With Little More Than The Radio And Loudspeaker, And Without Tv And Tape And Video Recording . . . Today The Art Of Mind Control Is In The Process Of Becoming A Science.
Art
Mind
Littles
We Are So Anxious To Achieve Some Particular End That We Never Pay Attention To The Psycho-physical Means Whereby That End Is To Be Gained. So Far As We Are Concerned, Any Old Means Is Good Enough. But The Nature Of The Universe Is Such That Ends Can Never Justify The Means. On The Contrary, The Means Always Determine The End.
Mean
Attention
Pay
Hinduism The Perennial Philosophy That Is At The Core Of All Religions.
Philosophy
Hinduism
Core
Men Make Use Of Their Illnesses At Least As Much As They Are Made Use Of By Them.
Health
Men
Use
I Have Discovered The Most Exciting, The Most Arduous Literary Form Of All, The Most Difficult To Master, The Most Pregnant In Curious Possibilities. I Mean The Advertisement. It Is Far Easier To Write Ten Passably Effective Sonnets, Good Enough To Take In The Not Too Inquiring Critic, Than One Effective Advertisement That Will Take In A Few Thousand Of The Uncritical Buying Public.
Business
Writing
Mean
At This Very Moment,... The Most Frightful Horrors Are Taking Place In Every Corner Of The World. People Are Being Crushed, Slashed, Disembowelled, Mangled; Their Dead Bodies Rot And Their Eyes Decay With The Rest. Screams Of Pain And Fear Go Pulsing Through The Air At The Rate Of Eleven Hundred Feet Per Second. After Travelling For Three Seconds They Are Perfectly Inaudible. These Are Distressing Facts; But Do We Enjoy Life Any The Less Because Of Them? Most Certainly We Do Not.
Sympathy
Pain
Eye
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 - The Turn The Chaos Of Given Experience Into A Set Of Manageable Symbols.
Men
Brain
Spiders
So Long As Men Worship The Caesars And Napoleons, Caesars And Napoleons Will Duly Arise And Make Them Miserable.
Men
Long
Political
Addiction Is An Increasing Desire For An Act That Gives Less And Less Satisfaction
Giving
Addiction
Desire
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.
Country
Nature
Class
Generalities Are Intellectually Necessary Evils.
Evil
Necessary Evil
Chaos
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.
Anarchy
Utopia
Wave
The Proper Study Of Mankind Is Books.
Reading
Book
Study
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.
Ideas
Mind
Important
The Charm Of History And Its Enigmatic Lesson Consist In The Fact That, From Age To Age, Nothing Changes And Yet Everything Is Completely Different.
Inspirational
Birthday
History
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.
Self
Legs
Example
To Travel Is To Discover That Everyone Is Wrong About Other Countries.
Inspirational
Country
Travel
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!
Book
Writing
Byron
People Intoxicate Themselves With Work So They Won't See How They Really Are.
Work
Reality
People
A Democracy Which Makes Or Even Effectively Prepares For Modern, Scientific War Must Necessarily Cease To Be Democratic. No Country Can Be Really Well Prepared For Modern War Unless It Is Governed By A Tyrant, At The Head Of A Highly Trained And Perfectly Obedient Bureaucracy.
Country
War
Tyrants
In A Few Years, No Doubt, Marriage Licences Will Be Sold Like Dog Licences, Good For 12 Months.
Dog
Years
Doubt
Nothing Is More Dreadful Than A Cold, Unimpassioned Indulgence. And Love Infallibly Becomes Cold And Unimpassioned When It Is Too Lightly Made.
Love
Cold
Made
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.
Dirty
Mouths
Soap
A Large City Cannot Be Experientially Known; Its Life Is Too Manifold For Any Individual To Be Able To Participate In It.
Cities
Able
Life Is
Human Beings Act In A Great Variety Of Irrational Ways, But All Of Them Seem To Be Capable, If Given A Fair Chance, Of Making A Reasonable Choice In The Light Of Available Evidence. Democratic Institutions Can Be Made To Work Only If All Concerned Do Their Best To Impart Knowledge And To Encourage Rationality. But Today, In The World's Most Powerful Democracy, The Politicians And The Propagandists Prefer To Make Nonsense Of Democratic Procedures By Appealing Almost Exclusively To The Ignorance And Irrationality Of The Electors.
Powerful
Ignorance
Knowledge
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.
Art
Hypocrite
Hypocrisy
Culture Is Like The Sum Of Special Knowledge That Accumulates In Any Large United Family And Is The Common Property Of All Its Members. When We Of The Great Culture Family Meet, We Exchange Reminiscences About Grandfather Homer, And That Awful Old Dr. Johnson, And Aunt Sappho, And Poor Johnny Keats.
Aunt
Grandfather
Special
Most Ignorance Is Vincible Ignorance. We Don't Know Because We Don't Want To Know.
Ignorance
Justice
Diversity
Nothing Short Of Everything Will Really Do.
Family, Monogamy, Romance. Everywhere Exclusiveness, A Narrow Channelling Of Impulse And Energy.
Romance
Energy
Monogamy
Each Person Is At Each Moment Capable Of Remembering All That Has Ever Happened To Him And Of Perceiving Everything That Is Happening Everywhere In The Universe.
Remember
Moments
Doors Of Perception
There Is Something Curiously Boring About Somebody Else's Happiness.
Happiness
Happy
Boring
No Romeo-and-juliet Acts, No Nonsense About Love With A Large L, None Of That Popular Song Claptrap With Its Skies Of Blue, Dreams Come True, Heaven With You. Just Sensuality For Its Own Sake.
Love
Dream
Song
The Perennial Philosophy Is Expressed Most Succinctly In The Sanskrit Formula, Tat Tvam Asi ('that Art Thou'); The Atman, Or Immanent Eternal Self, Is One With Brahman, The Absolute Principle Of All Existence; And The Last End Of Every Human Being, Is To Discover The Fact For Himself, To Find Out Who He Really Is.
Art
Philosophy
Self
The Surest Way To Work Up A Crusade In Favor Of Some Good Cause Is To Promise People They Will Have A Chance Of Maltreating Someone. To Be Able To Destroy With Good Conscience, To Be Able To Behave Badly And Call Your Bad Behavior 'righteous Indignation' — This Is The Height Of Psychological Luxury, The Most Delicious Of Moral Treats.
Luxury
People
Promise
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.
Art
Philosophy
Simple
The Christian Idea Of A Perfect Heaven That Is Something Other Than A Non-existence Is A Contradiction In Terms.
Christian
Ideas
Perfect
I Am I, And I Wish I Weren't.
Wish
Chaos
We Now Spend A Good Deal More On Drink And Smoke Than We Spend On Education. This, Of Course, Is Not Surprising. The Urge To Escape From Selfhood And The Environment Is In Almost Everyone Almost All The Time.
Risk
Environment
Drink
We Objected To The Morality Because It Interfered With Our Sexual Freedom.
Morality
Creationism
Meaninglessness
Our Business Is To Wake Up. We Have To Find Ways In Which To Detect The Whole Of Reality In The One Illusory Part Which Our Self-centered Consciousness Permits Us To See. We Must Not Live Thoughtlessly, Taking Our Illusion For The Complete Reality, But At The Same Time We Must Not Live Too Thoughtfully In The Sense Of Trying To Escape From The Dream State. We Must Be Continuously On Watch For Ways In Which We May Enlarge Our Consciousness.
Dream
Reality
Self
Children Are Remarkable For Their Intelligence And Ardor, For Their Curiosity, Their Intolerance Of Shams, The Clarity And Ruthlessness Of Their Vision.
Children
Curiosity
Vision
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.
Lying
Two
Relaxation
For At Least Two Thirds Of Our Miseries Spring From Human Stupidity, Human Malice And Those Great Motivators And Justifiers Of Malice And Stupidity, Idealism, Dogmatism And Proselytizing Zeal On Behalf Of Religious Or Political Idols
Religious
Spring
Idols
Somewhere In The Rain, There Will Always Be An Abandoned Dog That Prevents You From Being Happy.
Dog
Rain
Pet
The Present Moment Is The Only Aperture Through Which The Soul Can Pass Out Of Time Into Eternity, Through Which Grace Can Pass Out Of Eternity Into The Soul, And Through Which Love Can Pass From One Soul In Time To Another Soul In Time.
Meditation
Grace
Soul
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.
Mean
Pay
Attention
Most Ignorances Are Vincible, And In The Greater Number Of Cases Stupidity Is What The Buddha Pronounced It To Be, A Sin. For, Consciously, Or Subconsciously, It Is With Deliberation That We Do Not Know Or Fail To Understand-because Incomprehension Allows Us, With A Good Conscience, To Evade Unpleasant Obligations And Responsibilities, Because Ignorance Is The Best Excuse For Going On Doing What One Likes, But Ought Not, To Do.
Ignorance
Responsibility
Numbers
Such Prosperity As We Have Known It Up To The Present Is The Consequence Of Rapidly Spending The Planet's Irreplaceable Capital.
Nature
Environment
Prosperity
We Participate In A Tragedy; At A Comedy We Only Look.
Tragedy
Looks
Comedy
And That," Put In The Director Sententiously, "that Is The Secret Of Happiness And Virtue — Liking What You've Got To Do. All Conditioning Aims At That: Making People Like Their Unescapable Social Destiny.
Happiness
Brave New World
Destiny
You Got Rid Of Them. Yes, That’s Just Like You. Getting Rid Of Everything Unpleasant Instead Of Learning To Put Up With It. Whether ‘tis Better In The Mind To Suffer The Slings And Arrows Of Outrageous Fortune, Or To Take Arms Against A Sea Of Troubles And By Opposing End Them… But You Don’t Do Either. Neither Suffer Nor Oppose. You Just Abolish The Slings And Arrows. It’s Too Easy.
Sea
Arrows
Mind
Pure Spirit, One Hundred Degrees Proof - That's A Drink That Only The Most Hardened Contemplation-guzzlers Indulge In. Bodhisattvas Dilute Their Nirvana With Equal Parts Of Love And Work.
Love
Indulge In
Degrees
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.
Real
Memorable
Omission
Words Are Good Servants But Bad Masters.
Passion
Masters
Water And Fire
The Inconveniences And Horrors Of The Pox Are Perfectly Well Known To Every One; But Still The Disease Flourishes And Spreads. Several Million People Were Killed In A Recent War And Half The World Ruined; But We All Busily Go On In Courses That Make Another Event Of The Same Sort Inevitable. Experientia Docet? Experientia Doesn't.
War
Learning
People
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.
Faith
Daughter
Exercise
The Essay Is A Literary Device For Saying Almost Everything About Almost Anything
Literature
Literary Devices
Devices
The Place Is Good. How Good, One Must Have Circumnavigated The Globe To Discover. Why Not Stay? Take Root? But Roots Are Chains. I Have A Terror Of Losing My Freedom. Free, Without Ties, Unpossessed By Any Possessions, Free To Do As One Will, To Go At A Moment's Notice Wherever The Fancy May Suggest--it Is Good. But So Is This Place. Might It Not Be Better? To Gain Freedom One Sacrifices Something [...] And All That These Things And People Signify. One Sacrifices Something--for A Greater Gain In Knowledge, In Understanding, In Intensified Living? I Sometimes Wonder.
Sacrifice
Roots
Ties
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.
Art
Sublime
Action
Parodies And Caricatures Are The Most Penetrating Of Criticisms.
Criticism
Parody
Caricatures
The Bhagavad-gita Is The Most Systematic Statement Of Spiritual Evolution Of Endowing Value To Mankind. It Is One Of The Most Clear And Comprehensive Summaries Of Perennial Philosophy Ever Revealed; Hence Its Enduring Value Is Subject Not Only To India But To All Of Humanity.
Spiritual
Philosophy
Humanity
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.
Fear
Liberty
Politics
Man Is So Intelligent That He Feels Impelled To Invent Theories To Account For What Happens In The World. Unfortunately, He Is Not Quite Intelligent Enough, In Most Cases, To Find Correct Explanations. So That When He Acts On His Theories, He Behaves Very Often Like A Lunatic.
Intelligent
Men
World
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