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The Man Who Comes Back Through The Door In The Wall Will Never Be Quite The Same As The Man Who Went Out. He Will Be Wiser But Less Sure, Happier But Less Self-satisfied, Humbler In Acknowledging His Ignorance Yet Better Equipped To Understand The Relationship Of Words To Things, Of Systematic Reasoning To The Unfathomable Mystery Which It Tries, Forever Vainly, To Comprehend

-Aldous Huxley

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The Man Who Comes

Aldous Huxley

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The Man Who Comes Back Through The Door In The Wall Will Never Be Quite The Same As The Man Who Went Out. He Will Be Wiser But Less Sure, Happier But Less Self-satisfied, Humbler In Acknowledging His Ignorance Yet Better Equipped To Understand The Relationship Of Words To Things, Of Systematic Reasoning To The Unfathomable Mystery Which It Tries, Forever Vainly, To Comprehend

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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.

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

If Humans Were In Fact The Members Of A Truly Social Species, And If Their Individual Differences Were Trifling And Could Be Completely Ironed Out By Appropriate Conditioning, Then, Obviously, There Would Be No Need For Liberty And The State Would Be Justified In Persecuting The Heretics Who Demanded It.

Individual Differences

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.

Experience Teaches Only The Teachable.

Idealism Is The Noble Toga That Political Gentlemen Drape Over Their Will To Power.

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.

...wordless Conditioning Is Crude And Wholesale; Cannot Bring Home The Finer Distinctions, Cannot Inculcate The More Complex Courses Of Behavior. For That There Must Be Words, But Words Without Reason... Not So Much Like Drops Of Water, Though Water, It Is True, Can Wear Holes In The Hardest Granite; Rather, Drops Of Liquid Sealing-wax, Drops That Adhere, Encrust, Incorporate Themselves With What They Fall On, Till Finally The Rock Is All One Scarlet Blob.

I Have Spoken So Far Only Of The Blissful Visionary Experience? But Visionary Experience Is Not Always Blissful. It's Sometimes Terrible. There Is Hell As Well As Heaven.

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.

I Think That Fiction And, As I Say, History And Biography Are Immensely Important, Not Only For Their Own Sake, Because They Provide A Picture Of Life Now And Of Life In The Past, But Also As Vehicles For The Expression Of General Philosophic Ideas, Religious Ideas, Social Ideas.

Modern Man No Longer Regards Nature As In Any Sense Divine And Feels Perfectly Free To Behave Toward Her As An Overweening Conqueror And Tyrant.

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.'

I'm Sick. I've Eaten Civilisation And I'm Sick.

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.

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.

That We Are Not Much Sicker And Much Madder Than We Are Is Due Exclusively To That Most Blessed And Blessing Of All Natural Graces, Sleep.

Sixty Two Thousand Four Hundred Repetitions Make One Truth. Idiots!

Brave New World

Never Have So Many Been Manipulated So Much By So Few.

It Is Only When We Have Renounced Our Preoccupation With "i," "me," "mine," That We Can Truly Possess The World In Which We Live. Everything, Provided That We Regard Nothing As Property. And Not Only Is Everything Ours; It Is Also Everybody Else's.

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.

Try Lsd, 100mg Intramuscular... I Thought So.

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

Proverbs Are Always Platitudes Until You Have Personally Experienced The Truth Of Them.

In Regard To Propaganda The Early Advocates Of Universal Literacy And A Free Press Envisaged Only Two Possibilities: The Propaganda Might Be True, Or The Propaganda Might Be False. They Did Not Foresee What In Fact Has Happened, Above All In Our Western Capitalist Democracies - The Development Of A Vast Mass Communications Industry, Concerned In The Main Neither With The True Nor The False, But With The Unreal, The More Or Less Totally Irrelevant. In A Word, They Failed To Take Into Account Man's Almost Infinite Appetite For Distractions.

Words Are Magical In The Way They Affect The Minds Of Those Who Use Them.

Armaments, Universal Debt, And Planned Obsolescence - Those Are The Three Pillars Of Western Prosperity. If War, Waste, And Moneylenders Were Abolished, You'd Collapse. And While You People Are Overconsuming The Rest Of The World Sinks More And More Deeply Into Chronic Disaster.

Uncontrolled, The Hunger And Thirst After God May Become An Obstacle, Cutting Off The Soul From What It Desires. If A Man Would Travel Far Along The Mystic Road, He Must Learn To Desire God Intensely But In Stillness, Passively And Yet With All His Heart And Mind And Strength.

A Poor Degenerate From The Ape, Whose Hands Are Four, Whose Tail's A Limb, I Contemplate My Flaccid Shape And Know I May Not Rival Him Save With My Mind.

People Will Come To Love Their Oppression, To Adore The Technologies That Undo Their Capacities To Think.

Armaments, Universal Debt And Planned Obsolescence - Those Are The Three Pillars Of Western Prosperity.

I Have Always Found That Angels Have The Vanity To Speak Of Themselves As The Only Wise.

Intellectuals ... Regard Over-simplification As The Original Sin Of The Mind And Have No Use For The Slogans, The Unqualified Assertions And Sweeping Generalizations.

The Moral Peril To Humanity Of Thoughtlessly Accepting These Conveniences [of Materialism] (with Their Inherent Disadvantages) As Constituting A Philosophy Of Life Is Now Becoming Apparent. For The Implications Of This Disruptive Materialism... Are That Human Beings Are Nothing But Bodies, Animals, Machines.

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.

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

Modern Man's Besetting Temptation Is To Sacrifice His Direct Perceptions And Spontaneous Feelings To His Reasoned Reflections; To Prefer In All Circumstances The Verdict Of His Intellect To That Of His Immediate Intuitions.

On No Account Brood Over Your Wrongdoing. Rolling In The Muck Is Not The Best Way Of Getting Clean.

Brave New World

To See Ourselves As Others See Us Is A Most Salutary Gift. Hardly Less Important Is The Capacity To See Others As They See Themselves.

Only Times And Places, Only Names And Ghosts.

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.

To The Exponents Of The Perennial Philosophy, The Question Whether Progress Is Inevitable Or Even Real Is Not A Matter Of Primary Importance. For Them, The Important Thing Is That Individual Men And Women Should Come To The Unitive Knowledge Of The Divine Ground, And What Interests Them In Regard To The Social Environment Is Not Its Progressiveness Or Non-progressiveness (whatever Those Terms May Mean), But The Degree To Which It Helps Or Hinders Individuals In The Their Advance Towards Man's Final End.

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.

Individual Insanity Is Immune To The Consequences Of Collective Insanity

In Any Race Between Human Numbers And Natural Resources, Time Is Against Us.

Civilization Is Sterilization.

The Creation By Word-power Of Something Out Of Nothing--what Is That But Magic? And, May I Add, What Is That But Literature?

I Ate Civilization. It Poisoned Me; I Was Defiled. And Then," He Added In A Lower Tone, "i Ate My Own Wickedness.

But The Quiet Grows And Grows. Beautifully And Unbearably.

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

Parodies And Caricatures Are The Most Penetrating Of Criticisms.

Writers Write To Influence Their Readers, Their Preachers, Their Auditors, But Always, At Bottom, To Be More Themselves.

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.

The Social Body Persists Although The Component Cells May Change.

The Indispensible Is Not Necessarily The Desirable.

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.

They're Old; They're About God Hundreds Of Years Ago. Not About God Now" "but God Doesn't Change" "men Do Though

Brave New World Happiness

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

Liberty? Why It Doesn't Exist. There Is No Liberty In This World, Just Gilded Cages.

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

... One Reads, Above All, To Prevent Oneself Thinking.

"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.

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

Several Excuses Are Always Less Convincing Than One.

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

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.

Habit Converts Luxurious Enjoyments Into Dull And Daily Necessities.

There Are Confessable Agonies, Sufferings Of Which One Can Positively Be Proud. Of Bereavement, Of Parting, Of The Sense Of Sin And The Fear Of Death The Poets Have Eloquently Spoken. They Command The World's Sympathy. But There Are Also Discreditable Anguishes, No Less Excruciating Than The Others, But Of Which The Sufferer Dare Not, Cannot Speak. The Anguish Of Thwarted Desire, For Example.

One Cubic Centimeter Cures Ten Gloomy Sentiments.

The Nature Of Oratory Is Such That There Has Always Been A Tendency Among Politicians And Clergymen To Oversimplify Complex Matters. From A Pulpit Or A Platform Even The Most Conscientious Of Speakers Finds It Very Difficult To Tell The Whole Truth.

Every Significant Artist Is A Metaphysician, A Propounder Of Beauty-truths And Form-theories.

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

Defined In Psychological Terms, A Fanatic Is A Man Who Consciously Over-compensates A Secret Doubt.

Medical Science Has Made Such Tremendous Progress That There Is Hardly A Healthy Human Left.

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.

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.

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.

In The Course Of Evolution Nature Has Gone To Endless Trouble To See That Every Individual Is Unlike Every Other Individual....physically And Mentally, Each One Of Us Is Unique. Any Culture Which, In The Interests Of Efficiency Or In The Name Of Some Political Or Religious Dogma, Seeks To Standardize The Human Individual, Commits An Outrage Against Man's Biological Nature.

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.

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.

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.

Unlike The Masses, Intellectuals Have A Taste For Rationality And An Interest In Facts.

It's A Very Salutary Thing To Realize That The Rather Dull Universe In Which Most Of Us Spend Most Of Our Time Is Not The Only Universe There Is. I Think It's Healthy That People Should Have This Experience.

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

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

The Poet's Place, It Seems To Me, Is With The Mr. Hydes Of Human Nature.

[...] 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.

Every Man's Memory Is His Private Literature.

An Ideal Is Merely The Projection, On An Enormously Enlarged Scale, Of Some Aspect Of Personality.

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.

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

Consistency Is Contrary To Nature, Contrary To Life. The Only Completely Consistent People Are Dead.

People Will Insist On Treating The Mons Veneris As Though It Were Mount Everest. Too Silly!

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.

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.

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.

No Holiday Is Ever Anything But A Disappointment.

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

It’s Embarrassing To Tell You This, But It Seems To Come Down Mostly To Just Learning To Be Kinder.

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

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

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

For Some Strange Reason Murder Has Always Seemed More Respectable Than Fornication. Few People Are Shocked When They Hear God Described As The God Of Battles; But What An Outcry There Would Be If Anyone Spoke Of Him As The God Of Brothels.

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.

Ending Is Better Than Mending.

I Had Motives For Not Wanting The World To Have Meaning; Consequently Assumed That It Had None, And Was Able Without Any Difficulty To Find Satisfying Reasons For This Assumption ... For Myself, As No Doubt, For Most Of My Contemporaries, The Philosophy Of Meaninglessness Was Essentially An Instrument Of Liberation. The Liberation We Desired Was Simultaneous Liberation From A Certain Political And Economic System, And Liberation From A Certain System Of Morality. We Objected To The Morality Because It Interfered With Our Sexual Freedom.

The Vast Majority Of Human Beings Are Not Interested In Reason Or Satisfied With What It Teaches.

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.

Words Form The Thread On Which We String Our Experiences.

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.

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.

Good Action And Thoughts Produce Consequences Which Tend To Neutralize, Or Put A Stop To, The Result Of Evil Thoughts And Actions. For As We Give Up The Life Of Self (and Note That, Like Forgiveness, Repentance And Humility Are Also Special Cases Of Giving), As We Abandon What The German Mystics Called "the I, Me, Mine," We Make Ourselves Progressively Capable Of Receiving Grace. By Grace We Are Enabled To Know Reality More Completely, And This Knowledge Of Reality Helps Us To Give Up More Of The Life Of Selfhood - And So On, In A Mounting Spiral Of Illumination And Regeneration.

Impulse Arrested Spills Over, And The Flood Is Feeling, The Flood Is Passion, The Flood Is Even Madness: It Depends On The Force Of The Current, The Height And Strength Of The Barrier. The Unchecked Stream Flows Smoothly Down Its Appointed Channels Into A Calm Well Being.

Words Form The Thread On Which We String Our Experiences. [therefore Be Careful How You Interpret Your Life. Don't Think Or Speak Negatively Lest Your Subconscious And Others Take You At Your Word And You Are Hung By Your Own Tongue!]

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

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.

A Man May Be A Pessimistic Determinist Before Lunch And An Optimistic Believer In The Will's Freedom After It.

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

Brave New World

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.

There Are So Many Intellectual And Moral Angels Battling For Rationalism, Good Citizenship, And Pure Spirituality; So Many And Such Eminent Ones, So Very Vocal And Authoritative! The Poor Devil In Man Needs All The Support And Advocacy He Can Get. The Artist Is His Natural Champion. When An Artist Deserts To The Side Of The Angels, It Is The Most Odious Of Treasons.

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.

Pageantry Is A Visionary Art Which Has Been Used, From Time Immemorial, As A Political Instrument.

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

Seated Upon The Convex Mound Of One Vast Kidney, Jonah Prays And Sings His Canticles And Hymns, Making The Hollow Vault Resound God's Goodness And Mysterious Ways, Till The Great Fish Spouts Music As He Swims.

Good Is That Which Makes For Unity. Evil Is That Which Makes For Separateness.

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

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

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

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

Nothing Short Of Everything Will Really Do.

The Amelioration Of The World Cannot Be Achieved By Sacrifices In Moments Of Crisis; It Depends On The Efforts Made And Constantly Repeated During The Humdrum, Uninspiring Periods, Which Separate One Crisis From Another, And Of Which Normal Lives Mainly Consist.

If Men And Women Took Their Pleasures As Noisily As The Cats, What Londoner Could Ever Hope To Sleep Of Nights?

Chastity - The Most Unnatural Of All The Sexual Perversions.

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.

Suppose It Were Perfectly Certain That The Life And Fortune Of Each Of Us Would Some Day Depend Upon Our Winning Or Losing A Game Of Chess. Do You Not Think That We Should All Consider It To Be Our Primary Duty To Learn At Least The Names Of The Pieces And How To Position Them On The Chessboard?

My Sympathies Are, Of Course, With The Government Side, Especially The Anarchists ; For Anarchism Seems To Me More Likely To Lead To Desirable Social Change Than Highly Centralized, Dictatorial Communism .

Actual Happiness Always Looks Pretty Squalid In Comparison With The Over-compensations For Misery.

Brave New World

In Actual Life A Downward Movement May Sometimes Be Made The Beginning Of An Ascent.

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.

"all Right Then," Said The Savage Defiantly, I'm Claiming The Right To Be Unhappy." "not To Mention The Right To Grow Old And Ugly And Impotent; The Right To Have Syphilis And Cancer; The Right To Have Too Little To Eat, The Right To Be Lousy; The Right To Live In Constant Apprehension Of What May Happen Tomorrow; The Right To Catch Typhoid; The Right To Be Tortured By Unspeakable Pains Of Every Kind." There Was A Long Silence. "i Claim Them All," Said The Savage At Last.

To Those Who Think That Liberty Is A Good Thing, And That It May Someday Be Possible For People To Live In A Society Fit For Free, Fully Human Individuals, A Thorough Education In The Nature Of Language, Its Uses And Abuses, Seems Indispensable.

The Only Truly Consistent Are The Dead.

The Advertisement Is One Of The Most Interesting And Difficult Of Modern Literary Forms.

The Pleasures Of Ignorance Are As Great, In Their Way, As The Pleasures Of Knowledge.

Stupidity And Ignorance

For Particulars, As Everyone Knows, Make For Virtue And Happiness; Generalities Are Intellectually Necessary Evils. Not Philosophers But Fretsawyers And Stamp Collectors Compose The Backbone Of Society.

Brave New World

When Life Appears To Be Working Against You, When Your Luck Is Down, When The Supposedly Wrong People Show Up, Or When You Slip Up And Return To Old, Self-defeating Habits, Recognize The Signs That You're Out Of Harmony With Intention.

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

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

I Am I, And I Wish I Weren't.

That’s What The Human Brain Is There For—to Turn The Chaos Of Given Experience Into A Set Of Manageable Symbols. Sometimes The Symbols Correspond Fairly Closely To Some Of The Aspects Of The External Reality Behind Our Experience; Then You Have Science And Common Sense. Sometimes, On The Contrary, The Symbols Have Almost No Connection With External Reality; Then You Have Paranoia And Delirium. More Often There’s A Mixture, Part Realistic And Part Fantastic; That’s Religion.

In Books, The Proportion Of Exceptional To Commonplace People Is High; In Reality, Very Low.

In The Contexts Of Religion And Politics, Words Are Not Regarded As Standing, Rather Inadequately, For Things And Events; On The Contrary Things And Events Are Regarded As Particular Illustrations Of Words.

Religion And Politics

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?

Generalized Intelligence And Mental Alertness Are The Most Powerful Enemies Of Dictatorship And At The Same Time The Basic Conditions Of Effective Democracy.

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

Brave New World

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.

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.

An Unexciting Truth May Be Eclipsed By A Thrilling Lie.

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.

The Effects Which Follow Too Constant And Intense A Concentration Upon Evil Are Always Disastrous. Those Who Crusade, Not For God In Themselves, But Against The Devil In Others, Never Succeed In Making The World Better, But Leave It Either As It Was, Or Sometimes Even Perceptibly Worse Than It Was, Before The Crusade Began. By Thinking Primarily Of Evil We Tend, However Excellent Our Intentions, To Create Occasions For Evil To Manifest Itself.

Marble, I Perceive, Covers A Multitude Of Sins.

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.

If You Don't Gamble, You'll Never Win.

All War Propaganda Consists, In The Last Resort, In Substituting Diabolical Abstractions For Human Beings. Similarly, Those Who Defend War Have Invented A Pleasant Sounding Vocabulary Of Abstractions In Which To Describe The Process Of Mass Murder.

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

A Gramme Is Better Than A Damn.

I Was Born Wandering Between Two Worlds, One Dead, The Other Powerless To Be Born, And Have Made, In A Curious Way, The Worst Of Both.

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.

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.

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.

[i Am Not] The Captain Of My Soul; I Am Only Its Noisiest Passenger.

Fate And Destiny

Those Who Meant Well Behaved In The Same Way As Those Who Meant Badly.

Industrial Man—a Sentient Reciprocating Engine Having A Fluctuating Output, Coupled To An Iron Wheel Revolving With Uniform Velocity. And Then We Wonder Why This Should Be The Golden Age Of Revolution And Mental Derangement.

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.

Beware Of Being Too Rational. In The Country Of The Insane, The Integrated Man Doesn't Become King. He Gets Lynched.

The Propagandist's Purpose Is To Make One Set Of People Forget That Certain Other Sets Of People Are Human.

A Competent Portraitist Knows How To Imply The Profile In The Full Face.

At This Point We Find Ourselves Confronted By A Very Disquieting Question: Do We Really Wish To Act Upon Our Knowledge?

So The Journey Is Over And I Am Back Again Where I Started, Richer By Much Experience And Poorer By Many Unexploded Certainties. For Convictions And Certainties Are Too Often The Concomitants Of Ignorance. Those Who Like To Feel They Are Always Right And Who Attached A High Importance To Their Own Opinions Should Stay At Home. When One Is Traveling, Convictions Are Mislaid As Easily As Spectacles; But Unlike Spectacles, They Are Not Easily Replaced.

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

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.'

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.

When Truth Is Nothing But Truth, It's Unnatural, It's An Abstraction That Resembles Nothing In The Real World.

Work Is Prayer. Work Is Also Stink. Therefore Stink Is Prayer.

Blood Of The World, Time Staunchless Flows; The Wound Is Mortal And Is Mine.

The Natural Rhythm Of Human Life Is Routine Punctuated By Orgies.

At Their First Appearance Innovators Have Always Been Derided As Fools And Mad Men.

Nonsense Is An Assertion Of Man's Spiritual Freedom In Spite Of All The Oppressions Of Circumstance.

‎"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

I Think We Have To Prepare The Mind In One Way Or Another To Accept The Great Uprush Or Downrush, Whichever You Like To Call It, Of The Greater Non-self.

There Is Only One Corner Of The Universe You Can Be Certain Of Improving, And That Is Your Own Self. So You Have To Begin There, Not Outside, Not On Other People. That Comes Afterwards, When You Have Worked On Your Own Corner.

Unless We Choose To Decentralize And To Use Applied Science, Not As The End To Which Human Beings Are To Be Made The Means, But As The Means To Producing A Race Of Free Individuals, We Have Only Two Alternatives To Choose From: Either A Number Of National

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

If Human Beings Were Shown What They're Really Like, They'd Either Kill One Another As Vermin, Or Hang Themselves.

Being Cared For When One Is Dead Is Less Satisfactory Than Being Cared For When One Is Alive.

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.

You All Remember, I Suppose, That Beautiful And Inspired Saying Of Our Ford's: History Is Bunk.

Brave New World

The Optimum Population Is Modeled On The Iceberg- Eight-ninths Below The Water Line, One-ninth Above.

Brave New World

Cynical Realism Is The Intelligent Man's Best Excuse For Doing Nothing In An Intolerable Situation.

A Love Of Nature Keeps No Factories Busy.

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