Aldous Huxley

“Only times and places, only names and ghosts.”

“Time moved for you not in quotidian beats, but in the slow rhythm the ages keep –”

“Nothing could assuage the secular grief that was your heritage.”

“We can never dispense with language and the other symbol systems; for it is by means of them, and only by their means, that we have raised ourselves above the brutes, to the level of human beings. But we can easily become the victims as well as the beneficiaries of these systems. We must learn how to handle words effectively; but at the same time we must preserve and, if necessary, intensify our ability to look at the world directly and not through that half opaque medium of concepts, which distorts every given fact into the all too familiar likeness of some generic label or explanatory abstraction.”

“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.”

“Call it the fault of civilization. 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.”

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”

“في الحب، هناك دائما من يحب وآخر يدع الأول يحبه”

“The physique of a Messiah. But too clever to believe in God or be convinced of his own mission. And too sensitive, even if he were convinced, to carry it out. His muscles would like to act and his feelings would like to believe; but his nerve-endings and his cleverness won't allow it.”

“You're assuming,' said Dr. Robert, 'that the brain producesconsciousness. I'm assuming that it transmits consciousness. And myexplanation is no more farfetched than yours. How on earth can a set ofevents belonging to one order be experienced as a set of events belongingto an entirely different and incommensurable order? Nobody has thefaintest idea. All one can do is to accept the facts and concoct hypotheses.And one hypothesis is just about as good, philosophically speaking, asanother. You say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silentareas of the brain which causes them to produce a set of subjective eventsto which people have given the name 'mystical experience.' I say that themoksha-medicine does something to the silent areas of the brain whichopens some kind of neurological sluice and so allows a larger volume ofMind with a large 'M' to flow into your mind with a small 'm.' You can'tdemonstrate the truth of your hypothesis, and I can't demonstrate the truthof mine. And even if you could prove that I'm wrong, would it make anypractical difference?”

“Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.”

“As a victim, the Savage possessed, for Bernard, this enormous superiority over the others: that he was accessible. One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments what we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.”

“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.”

“Oh Ford, oh Ford!”

“Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today.”

“In the world of ideas everything was clear in life all was obscure, embroiled.”

“life is short and information endless: nobody has time for everything”

“Your true traveler 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.”

“Chastity: The most unnatural of the sexual perversions.”

“The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace,The prurient ape's defiling touch:And do you like the human race?No, not much.”

“Mais je n'en veux pas, du confort. Je veux Dieu, je veux de la poésie, je veux du danger véritable, je veux de la liberté, je veux de la bonté. Je veux du pêché.”

“Dieu: Quelque chose qui reste et qui ne trompe pas.”

“Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement.”

“... the moral is plain. Avoid, if possible, being bored yourself or boring others.”

“Si l’on est différent, il est fatal qu’on soit seul.”

“It isn't a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.”

“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.”

“Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.”

“And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn.”

“Her face brightened with a sudden flash of mischief, and without warning she punched him, surprisingly hard, in the ribs. “There!” she said. “Now I feel much better.”

“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.”

“Oh you the creator, you the destroyer, you who sustain and make an end,Who in sunlight dance among the birds and the children at their play,Who at midnight dance among corpses in the burning grounds,You Shiva, you dark and terrible Bhairava,You Suchness and Illusion, the Void and All Things,You are the lord of life, and therefore I have brought you flowers;You are the lord of death, and therefore I have brought you my heart—This heart that is now your burning ground.Ignorance there and self shall be consumed with fire.That you may dance, Bhairava, among the ashes.That you may dance, Lord Shiva, in a place of flowers,And I dance with you.”

“Věcí vlády je zasedat, nikoli mlátit. Vládne se hlavou a zadkem, nikoli pěstí.”

“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.”

“He rubbed his hands. For, of course, they didn't content themselves with merely hatching out embryos: any cow could do that. "We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future..." He was going to say "future World Controllers", but correcting himself, said "future Directors of Hatcheries" instead.”

“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.”

“Community, Identity, Stability”

“With the ferrule of his walking-stick Denis began to scratch the boar's long bristly back. The animal moved a little so as to bring himself within easier range of the instrument that evoked in him such delicious sensations; then he stood stock still, softly grunting his contentment. The mud of years flaked off his sides in a grey powdery scurf. "What a pleasure it is," said Denis, "to do somebody a kindness. I believe I enjoy scratching this pig quite as much as he enjoys being scratched. If only one could always be kind with so little expense or trouble...”

“Toţi oamenii care ştiu să citească au puterea de a se depăşi pe ei înşişi, de a multiplica în mod creator modurile lor de existenţă, au puterea să facă în aşa fel încît viaţa lor să fie interesantă şi plină de semnificaţie.”

“What a hideous colour khaki is”

“All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There was also a thing called God.”

“Shearwater sighed, like a whale in the night.”

“Éste es el secreto de la felicidad: amar lo que uno tiene que hacer.[...] lograr que la gente ame su inevitable destino social.”

“The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul.”

“The proper study of mankind is...books.”

“Brave new world”

“Porque los detalles, como todos sabemos, conducen a la virtud y la felicidad, en tanto que las generalidades son intelectualmente males necesarios.”

“The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.”

“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. ”

“Science [is] that wonderfully convenient personification of the opinions, at a certain date, of Professors X, Y, and Z....”