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
brave-new-world eight water
The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.
life death nature
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
character fighting self
Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning.
sunset dark obscurity
I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
nasty being-myself brave-new-world-happiness
I like being myself. Myself and nasty.
happiness struggle passion
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.
past matter remember
It isn't a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.
strong men air
A man may have strong humanitarian and democratic principles, but if he happens to have been brought up as a bath-taking, shirt-changing lover of fresh air, he will have to overcome certain physical repugnance before he can bring himself to put those principles into practice.
meditation soul grace
The present moment is the only aperture through which the soul can pass out of time into eternity, through which grace can pass out of eternity into the soul, and through which love can pass from one soul in time to another soul in time.
hands solitude feelings
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. [...] By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.
differences liberty facts
If humans were in fact the members of a truly social species, and if their individual differences were trifling and could be completely ironed out by appropriate conditioning, then, obviously, there would be no need for liberty and the State would be justified in persecuting the heretics who demanded it.
brave-new-world looks misery
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.
ignorance home journey
So the journey is over and I am back again where I started, richer by much experience and poorer by many unexploded certainties. For convictions and certainties are too often the concomitants of ignorance. Those who like to feel they are always right and who attached a high importance to their own opinions should stay at home. When one is traveling, convictions are mislaid as easily as spectacles; but unlike spectacles, they are not easily replaced.
compassion long planets
We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.