Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxleywas an English writer, novelist, philosopher, and prominent member of the Huxley family. He graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a first in English literature...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 July 1894
cells body may
The social body persists although the component cells may change.
men origin-of-life irrelevance
Men have always been a prey to distractions, which arethe original sins of the mind; but never before today has an attempt been made to organize and exploit distractions, to make of them, because of their economic importance, the core and vital center of human life, to idealize them as the highest manifestations of mental activity. Ours is an age of systematized irrelevances, and the imbecile within us has become one of the Titans, upon whose shoulders rests the weight of the social and economic system
giving-up humility reality
Good action and thoughts produce consequences which tend to neutralize, or put a stop to, the result of evil thoughts and actions. For as we give up the life of self (and note that, like forgiveness, repentance and humility are also special cases of giving), as we abandon what the German mystics called "the I, me, mine," we make ourselves progressively capable of receiving grace. By grace we are enabled to know reality more completely, and this knowledge of reality helps us to give up more of the life of selfhood - and so on, in a mounting spiral of illumination and regeneration.
disappointment holiday
No holiday is ever anything but a disappointment.
war animal law
War is often described as a law of nature-this is not true: Among the lower animals, war is unknown.
letting-go art order
Results only come to those who master the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, of letting go as a person in order that the immanent and transcendent unknown quantity may take hold. We cannot make ourselves understand; the most we can do is to foster a state of mind in which understanding may come to us.
prayer stink prayer-works
Work is prayer. Work is also stink. Therefore stink is prayer.
art mean men
Art is one of the means whereby man seeks to redeem a life which is experienced as chaotic, senseless, and largely evil.
lying ignorance order
We lie to ourselves in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes.
knowledge virtue knows
Knowledge is porportionate to being... You know in virtue of what you are.
behaviour ease matter
"Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual- and after all, wha is an individual? ". . . ." We can make a new one with the greatest of ease- as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself."
music art composer
Since Mozart's day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual.
art emotional abuse
Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation...
artist influence
What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time.