Aldous Huxley Quotes

Grace is always sufficient, provided we are ready to cooperate with it.

I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness.

Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, who have made up in their minds to be content with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.

Since Mozart's day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual.

A gramme is better than a damn.

For every traveller who has any taste of his own, the only useful guidebook will be the one which he himself has written.

People travel for the same reason as they collect works of art: because the best people do it.

Pully, hauly, tug with a will; the gods wiggle waggle, but the sky stands still.

A type of revolutionary novelty may be extremely beautiful in itself; but, for the creatures of habit that we are, its very novelty tends to make it illegible, at any rate to begin with.

Nothing — the only perfection, the only absolute. Infinite and eternal nothing.

One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.

What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time.

The lunatic fringe is more like a Spanish shawl, where the fringe makes up the entire garment.

In regard to man's final end, all the higher religions are in complete agreement. The purpose of human life is the discovery of Truth, the unitive knowledge of the Godhead.

Craving for power is not a vice of the body, consequently it knows none of the limitations imposed by a tired or satiated physiology upon gluttony, intemperance and lust

When truth is nothing but truth, it's unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world.

Every significant artist is a metaphysician, a propounder of beauty-truths and form-theories.

I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

Ultimate Reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended except by those who have made themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit.

I dread the inevitable acceleration of American world domination which will be the result of it all...Europe will no longer be Europe.

Given a fair chance, human beings can govern themselves, and govern themselves better

Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory - all these have served, in H. G. Wells's phrase, as Doors in the Wall.

Blood of the world, time staunchless flows; The wound is mortal and is mine.

When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, it is the most odious of treasons.

Chaos and ineptitude are anti-human; but so too is a superlatively efficient government, equipped with all the products of a highly developed technology.

When one individual comes into intimate contact with another, she—or he, of course, as the case may be—must almost inevitably receive or inflict suffering.

I think we have to prepare the mind in one way or another to accept the great uprush or downrush, whichever you like to call it, of the greater non-self.

Most kings and priests have been despotic, and all religions have been riddled with superstition.

The artists who the world has always recognized as the greatest are those with the widest sympathy. The greatness of the great artist depends precisely on the width and the intensity of his sympathy.

And what strange voices they have! Sometimes like the complaining of small children; sometimes like the noise of lambs.

Today we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution, the final revolution, where man can act directly on the mind-body of his fellows.

And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else

Wild inside; raging, writhing—yes, "writhing" was the word, writhing with desire. But outwardly he was hopelessly tame; outwardly—baa, baa, baa.

he had been making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in particular

Indifference to all the refinements of life--it's really shocking. Just Calvinism, that's all. Calvinism without the excuse of Calvin's theology.

In life, man proposes, God disposes.

Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof - that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.

Isn't it remarkable how everyone who knew [D.H.] Lawrence has felt compelled to write about him? Why, he's had more books written about him than any writer since Byron!

Henri IV's feet and armpits enjoyed an international reputation.

Drinking can not be sacramentalised except in religions which set no store on decorum. The worship of Dionysos or the Celtic god of beer was a loud and disorderly affair.

Reality, no matter how utopian, seems to be something people need to frequently take a holiday from.

Dying is almost the least spiritual of our acts, more strictly carnal even than the act of love. There are Death Agonies that are like the strainings of the Costive at stool.

Our vanity makes us exaggerate the importance of human life; the individual is nothing; Nature cares only for the species.

The poet's place, it seems to me, is with the Mr. Hydes of human nature.

These are the sort of things people ought to look at. Things without pretensions, satisfied to be merely themselves.

I've never discussed my writing with others much, but I don't believe it can do any harm. I don't think that there's any risk that ideas or materials will evaporate.

It had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife. (Sebastian Barnack assessing a Roederer 1916 champagne in Time Must Have a Stop)

Religion is always a patron of the arts, but its taste is by no means impeccable.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

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