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
knowledge discovery self
If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.
love men race
If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.
bad book english-novelist good labour sincerely
A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
consistency consistent people
The only completely consistent people are the dead.
arts cash heaven owes pay perish solid starving thank tribute
If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay -- in solid cash -- the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.
account address amends behaved behaving best classic next rolling task
Classic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. ROLLING IN THE MUCK IS NOT THE BEST WAY OF GETTING CLEAN.
beauty beholder both holder worse
Beauty is worse than wine; it intoxicates both the holder and the beholder
age engine golden industrial iron man mental revolution revolving uniform wheel wonder
Industrial man --a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement.
themselves work
They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are
boring curiously english-novelist somebody
I can sympathise with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.
action answered asked contribute final greatest interfere life number possible questions
The first questions to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievements, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?
doors known perception
There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception
funny positive happiness
Happiness is like coke — something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.
gun fire way
The best way to find things out is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun - bang it goes