Aldous Huxley
326 quotes
Biography
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives and poems.
"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?"
"Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced."
"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad."
"You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It's one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear."
"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."
"Maybe this world is another planet’s hell."
"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."
"All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant."
"Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities."
"I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then,"he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness."
"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth."
"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."
"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . 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."
"A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul."
"The trouble with fiction,"said John Rivers, "is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense."
"An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood."
"Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself."
"He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.’‘A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,’ said the Savage promptly.‘Quite so…"
"La filosofía nos enseña a sentir incertidumbre ante las cosas que nos parecen evidentes. La propaganda, en cambio, nos enseña a aceptar como evidentes cosas sobre las que sería razonable suspender nuestro juicio o sentir dudas."
"I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand that one isn't insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which you won't allow one to have. I don't know what the devil ever induced me to marry you. It was all a damned stupid, practical joke. And now you go about saying I'm a murderer. I won't stand it."
"Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility every time."
"I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery."
"What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic."
"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong."
"Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them."