Aldous Huxley

“As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I've no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you're a bore.”

“Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts.”

“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.”

“Self-government is in inverse ratio to numbers. The larger the constituency, the less the value of any par­ticular vote. When he is merely one of millions, the individual elector feels himself to be impotent, a neg­ligible quantity. The candidates he has voted into office are far away, at the top of the pyramid of power. Theoretically they are the servants of the people; but in fact it is the servants who give orders and the peo­ple, far off at the base of the great pyramid, who must obey.”

“Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.”

“Power and wealth increase in direct proportion to a man's distance from the material objects from which wealth and power are ultimately derived.”

“The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.”

“There's nothing like a re-creation of the event. Which is lucky. Think if one could fully remember perfume or kisses! How wearisome the reality of them would be!”

“Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.”

“Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner.”

“Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.”

“I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example...”

“Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.”

“Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.”

“Meanwhile, the self can stand in the way of the Not-Self, interfering with the free flow of spiritual grace, this maintaining the self in a state of blindness, and also with the flow of animal grace, which leads to the impairment of natural functions and, in the long run, of the slower processes called structure. For each individual human being, the main practical problems are these: How can I prevent my ego from eclipsing the inner light, synteresis, scintilla animae, and so perpetuating the state of unregenerate illusion and blindness? And these practical problems remain unchallenged, even if we abandon the notion of an entelechy or physiological intelligencer, of an atman or pneuma and think, instead, in terms [of] systems...”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence — either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous ‘embarkation’ and heroic conquest, or else to annihilate the persona and transcend the ego in an obscure rapture of sensuality, a frenzy of romantic passion, more creditably, in the mutual charity of the perfect marriage.”

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

“The trouble with fiction," said John Rivers, "is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.”

“All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.”

“Orthodoxy is the diehard of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget.”