Aldous Huxley Quotes (238 Quotes)


    Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson-paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.




    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.


    One egg, one embryo, one adult - normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where one grew before. Progress.


    All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.


    Pilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who were sexually mature at four and full grown at six and a half. A scientific triumph. But socially useless. Six-year-old men and women were too stupid to do even Epsilon work. And the process was an all-or-nothing one; either you failed to modify at all, or else you modified the whole way. They were still trying to find the ideal compromise between adults of twenty and adults of six. So far without success. Mr Foster sighed and shook his head.

    Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended--there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense.





    Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.


    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...



    If ever I hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference to a Sub-Centre-preferably to Iceland. Good morning.


    You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.

    And the present sheared asunder from the past, like an iceberg sheared off from its frozen parent cliffs, and went sailing out to sea in lonely pride. All the past ages had accomplished was as nothing.


    The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.


    As if one believed anything by instinct! 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.

    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.


    Nature, or anything that reminds me of nature, disturbs me; it is too large, too complicated, above all too utterly pointless and incomprehensible.




    The creation by word-power of something out of nothing--what is that but magic? And, may I add, what is that but literature?


    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.


    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.

    But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man- that it is an unnatural state- will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end



    Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman.


    It isn't only art that is incompatible with happiness, it's also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.


    God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.


    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.



    More Aldous Huxley Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Life - World - Science - People - Art - God - Work & Career - Countries - Mind - Facts - History - Truth - Love - Pleasure - Age - Sense & Perception - Thought & Thinking - Time - View All Aldous Huxley Quotations

    More Aldous Huxley Quotations (By Book Titles)


    - Brave New World
    - Crome Yellow
    - The Genius And The Goddess

    Related Authors


    Paulo Coelho - Franz Kafka - Ernest Hemingway - Tom Clancy - Thomas Wolfe - Robertson Davies - Katherine Dunn - J. R. R. Tolkien - Emily Bronte - Anne Bronte


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