Background Image

...

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

-Aldous Huxley

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

We Can Only Love

Aldous Huxley

...

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

Views: 62439

Topic

More From Aldous Huxley

And What Strange Voices They Have! Sometimes Like The Complaining Of Small Children; Sometimes Like The Noise Of Lambs.

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

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

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

It Is Natural To Believe In God When You're Alone-- Quite Alone, In The Night, Thinking About Death.

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.

Thanks To Words, We Have Been Able To Rise Above The Brutes; And Thanks To Words, We Have Often Sunk To The Level Of The Demons.

Most Human Beings Have An Almost Infinite Capacity For Taking Things For Granted.

In The World Of Ideas Everything Was Clear; In Life All Was Obscure, Embroiled.

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 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.

Science In Itself Is Morally Neutral; It Becomes Good Or Evil According As It Is Applied.

We Live Together, We Act On, And React To One Another; But Always, And In All Circumstances, We Are By Ourselves.

Doors Of Perception

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.

When The Individual Feels, The Community Reels.

Brave New World

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 Course Of Every Intellectual, If He Pursues His Journey Long And Unflinchingly Enough, Ends In The Obvious, From Which The Non-intellectuals Have Never Stirred.

Consider The Problem Of Over-population. Rapidly Mounting Human Numbers Are Pressing Ever More Heavily On Natural Resources. What Is To Be Done?... The Annual Increase Of Numbers Should Be Reduced. But How? We Are Given Two Choices -- Famine, Pestilence And War On The One Hand, Birth Control On The Other. Most Of Us Choose Birth Control.

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

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.

A Love Of Nature Keeps No Factories Busy.

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

There Is No Substitute For Talent. Industry And All Its Virtues Are Of No Avail.

Man Is Hypnotized By The Glitter Of His Own Gadgetry

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.

In Life, Man Proposes, God Disposes.

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

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.'

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.

The Silent Bear No Witness Against Themselves.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A Gramme Is Better Than A Damn.

Every Gain Made By Individuals Or Society Is Almost Instantly Taken For Granted.

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.

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.

I Wanted To Change The World. But I Have Found That The Only Thing One Can Be Sure Of Changing Is Oneself.

The Fact That People Are Shocked Is The Best Proof That They Need Shocking.

When One Individual Comes Into Intimate Contact With Another, She—or He, Of Course, As The Case May Be—must Almost Inevitably Receive Or Inflict Suffering.

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.

Children Are Nowhere Taught, In Any Systematic Way, To Distinguish True From False, Or Meaningful From Meaningless, Statements. Why Is This So? Because Their Elders, Even In The Democratic Countries, Do Not Want Them To Be Given This Kind Of Education.

Can You Say Something About Nothing?

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.

The Christian Idea Of A Perfect Heaven That Is Something Other Than A Non-existence Is A Contradiction In Terms.

For In Spite Of Language, In Spite Of Intelligence And Intuition And Sympathy, One Can Never Really Communicate Anything To Anybody.

Universal Happiness Keeps The Wheels Steadily Turning, Truth And Beauty Can't.

Brave New World

Books Have Their Destinies Like Men. And Their Fates, As Made By Generations Of Readers, Are Very Different From The Destinies Foreseen For Them By Their Authors. Gulliver's Travels, With A Minimum Of Expurgation, Has Become A Children's Book; A New Illustrated Edition Is Produced Every Christmas. That's What Comes Of Saying Profound Things About Humanity In Terms Of A Fairy Story.

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.

The Poet Is Born With The Capacity Of Arranging Words In Such A Way That Something Of The Quality Of The Graces And Inspirations He Has Received Can Make Itself Felt To Other Human Beings In The White Spaces, So To Speak, Between The Lines Of His Verse. This Is A Great And Precious Gift; But If The Poet Remains Content With His Gift, If He Persists In Worshipping The Beauty In Art And Nature Without Going On To Make Himself Capable, Through Selflessness, Of Apprehending Beauty As It Is In The Divine Ground, Then He Is Only An Idolater.

I Am Entirely On The Side Of Mystery. I Mean, Any Attempt To Explain Away The Mystery Is Ridiculous. I Believe In The Profound And Unfathomable Mystery Of Life Which Has A Sort Of Divine Quality About It.

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

One Right-thinking Man Thinks Like All Other Right-thinking Men Of His Time That Is To Say, In Most Cases, Like Some Wrong-thinking Man Of Another Time.

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.

Experience Is Not A Matter Of Having Actually Swum The Hellespont, Or Danced With The Dervishes, Or Slept In A Doss-house. It Is A Matter Of Sensibility And Intuition, Of Seeing, And Hearing The Significant Thing, Of Paying Attention At The Right Moments, Of Understanding And Coordinating. Experience Is Not What Happens To A Man; It Is What A Man Does With What Happens To Him.

Significant Things

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

Children Are Remarkable For Their Intelligence And Ardor, For Their Curiosity, Their Intolerance Of Shams, The Clarity And Ruthlessness Of Their Vision.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Industrialization

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

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.

Several Excuses Are Always Less Convincing Than One.

Only A Person With A Best Seller Mind Can Write Best Sellers.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Goal In Life Is To Discover That You’ve Always Been Where You Were Supposed To Be.

Procrustes In Modern Dress, The Nuclear Scientist Will Prepare The Bed On Which Mankind Must Lie; And If Mankind Doesn’t Fit—well, That Will Be Just Too Bad For Mankind. There Will Have To Be Some Stretching And A Bit Of Amputation—the Same Sort Of Stretching And Amputations As Have Been Going On Ever Since Applied Science Really Got Going Into Its Stride, Only This Time They Will Be A Good Deal More Drastic Than In The Past. These Far From Painless Operations Will Be Directed By Highly Centralized Totalitarian Governments.

Single-mindedness Is All Very Well In Cows Or Baboons; In An Animal Claiming To Belong To The Same Species As Shakespeare, It Is Simply Disgraceful.

We Tend To Think And Feel In Terms Of The Art We Like; And If The Art We Like Is Bad Then Our Thinking And Feeling Will Be Bad. And If The Thinking And Feeling Of Most Of The Individuals Composing A Society Is Bad, Is Not That Society In Danger?

We Shall Be Permitted To Live On This Planet Only For As Long As We Treat All Nature With Compassion And Intelligence.

I'm Claiming The Right To Be Unhappy.

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.

When People Are Suspicious With You, You Start Being Suspicious With Them.

Brave New World Happiness

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

I Want To Know What Passion Is. I Want To Feel Something Strongly.

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.

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

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.

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.

[...] 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.

Amour Is The One Human Activity Of Any Importance In Which Laughter And Pleasure Preponderate, If Ever So Slightly, Over Misery And Pain.

Indifference To All The Refinements Of Life--it's Really Shocking. Just Calvinism, That's All. Calvinism Without The Excuse Of Calvin's Theology.

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

Man Approaches The Unattainable Truth Through A Succession Of Errors.

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.

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

Round Pegs In Square Holes Tend To Have Dangerous Thoughts About The Social System And Tend To Infect Others With Their Discontents.

To Be Excited Is Still To Be Unsatisfied.

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

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

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

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.

No Social Stability Without Individual Stability.

Brave New World

Katy Was Neither A Methodist Nor A Masochist. She Was A Goddess And The Silence Of Goddesses Is Genuinely Golden. None Of Your Superficial Plating. A Solid, Twenty-two-carat Silence All The Way Through. The Olympian's Trap Is Kept Shut, Not By An Act Of Willed Discretion, But Because There's Really Nothing To Say. Goddesses Are All Of One Piece. There's No Internal Conflict In Them. Whereas The Lives Of People Like You And Me Are One Long Argument. Desires On One Side, Woodpeckers On The Other. Never A Moment Of Real Silence.

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.

Did You Ever Feel, As Though You Had Something Inside You That Was Only Waiting For You To Give It A Chance To Come Out? Some Sort Of Extra Power That You Aren't Using - You Know, Like All The Water That Goes Down The Falls Instead Of Through The Turbines?

Brave New World

Art Is One Of The Means Whereby Man Seeks To Redeem A Life Which Is Experienced As Chaotic, Senseless, And Largely Evil.

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.

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

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

Who Lives Longer? The Man Who Takes Heroin For Two Years And Dies, Or A Man Who Lives On Roast Beef, Water And Potatoes 'till 95? One Passes His 24 Months In Eternity. All The Years Of The Beefeater Are Lived Only In Time.

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.

Only Times And Places, Only Names And Ghosts.

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

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

Life's So Ordinary That Literature Has To Deal With The Exceptional. Exceptional Talent, Power, Social Position, Wealth.... Dramabegins Where There's Freedom Of Choice. And Freedom Of Choice Begins When Social Or Psychological Conditions Are Exceptional. That's Why The Inhabitants Of Imaginative Literature Have Always Been Recruited From The Pages Of Who's Who.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Brave New World

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

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.

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.

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.

The Vast Majority Of Human Beings Dislike And Even Actually Dread All Notions With Which They Are Not Familiar... Hence It Comes About That At Their First Appearance Innovators Have Generally Been Persecuted, And Always Derided As Fools And Madmen.

Happiness Is Never Grand.

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.

Procrastination

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

To Be Well Informed, One Must Read Quickly A Great Number Of Merely Instructive Books. To Be Cultivated, One Must Read Slowly And With A Lingering Appreciation The Comparatively Few Books That Have Been Written By Men Who Lived, Thought, And Felt With Style.

The Indispensible Is Not Necessarily The Desirable.

Hinduism The Perennial Philosophy That Is At The Core Of All Religions.

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.

Nothing Short Of Everything Will Really Do.

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!

I'm Afraid Of Losing My Obscurity. Genuineness Only Thrives In The Dark. Like Celery.

The Leech's Kiss, The Squid's Embrace, The Prurient Ape's Defiling Touch: And Do You Like The Human Race? No, Not Much.

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

When An Artist Deserts To The Side Of The Angels, It Is The Most Odious Of Treasons.

The World Is An Illusion, But An Illusion Which We Must Take Seriously.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Brave New World

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.

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

Enormous Quantities

Dedicated To All Those Who Say: "i Don't Have Time For Analytics" Or "i Don't Understand Analytics".

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

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

...two Thirds Of All Sorrow Is Homemade And, So Far As The Universe Is Concerned, Unnecessary.

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

Man Must Learn To Simplify, But Not To The Point Of Falsification.

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.

Champagne Had The Taste Of An Apple Peeled With A Steel Knife.

But The Nature Of The Universe Is Such That Ends Can Never Justify Means. On The Contrary, The Means Always Determine The End.

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.

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.

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

Brave New World

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.

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

Doing Your Best

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

A Type Of Revolutionary Novelty May Be Extremely Beautiful In Itself; But, For The Creatures Of Habit That We Are, Its Very Novelty Tends To Make It Illegible, At Any Rate To Begin With.

At Any Given Moment, Life Is Completely Senseless. But Viewed Over A Period, It Seems To Reveal Itself As An Organism Existing In Time, Having A Purpose, Trending In A Certain Direction.

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.

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

Almost All Of Us Long For Peace And Freedom; But Very Few Of Us Have Much Enthusiasm For The Thoughts, Feelings, And Actions That Make For Peace And Freedom.

Oh, How Desperately Bored, In Spite Of Their Grim Determination To Have A Good Time, The Majority Of Pleasure-seekers Really Are!

Give Us This Day Our Daily Faith, But Deliver Us, Dear God, From Belief.

We Objected To The Morality Because It Interfered With Our Sexual Freedom.

Meaninglessness

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

Happiness Is Not Achieved By The Conscious Pursuit Of Happiness; It Is Generally The By-product Of Other Activities.

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

Brave New World

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

Life Is Short And Information Endless: Nobody Has Time For Everything

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

The More Stitches, The Less Riches.

Brave New World

One Cubic Centimeter Cures Ten Gloomy Sentiments.

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.

A Man May Have Strong Humanitarian And Democratic Principles, But If He Happens To Have Been Brought Up As A Bath-taking, Shirt-changing Lover Of Fresh Air, He Will Have To Overcome Certain Physical Repugnance Before He Can Bring Himself To Put Those Principles Into Practice.

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.'

Nobody Needs To Go Anywhere Else. We Are All, If We Only Knew It, Already There. If I Only Knew Who In Fact I Am, I Should Cease To Behave As What I Think I Am; And If I Stopped Behaving As What I Think I Am, I Should Know Who I Am. What In Fact I Am, If Only The Manichee I Think I Am Would Allow Me To Know It, Is The Reconciliation Of Yes And No Lived Out In Total Acceptance And The Blessed Experience Of Not-two. 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.

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.

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

All Of Us Desire A Better State Of Society. But Society Cannot Become Better Before Two Great Tasks Are Performed.unless Peace Can Be Firmly Established And The Prevailing Obsession With Money And Power Profoundly Modified, There Is No Hope Of Any Desirable Change Being Made.

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.

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

Reality, No Matter How Utopian, Seems To Be Something People Need To Frequently Take A Holiday From.

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.

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.

Wild Inside; Raging, Writhing—yes, "writhing" Was The Word, Writhing With Desire. But Outwardly He Was Hopelessly Tame; Outwardly—baa, Baa, Baa.

From The Internal Reality, By Which I Means The Totality Of Psychological Experiences, It [science] Actually Separates Us. Art, For Example, Deals With Many More Aspects Of This Internal Reality Than Does Science, Which Confines Itself Deliberately And By Convention To The Study Of One Very Limited Class Of Experiences The Experiences Of Sense.

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.

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.

Words Can Be Like X-rays If You Use Them Properly -- They’ll Go Through Anything. You Read And You’re Pierced.

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

Fate And Destiny

Trending Author

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Category