Quotes from Aldous Huxley

Something of the same kind may happen in the posthumous state. After having had a glimpse of the unbearable splendor of ultimate Reality, and after having shuttled back and forth between heaven and hell, most souls find it possible to retreat into that more reassuring region of the mind, where they can use their own and other people's wishes, memories and fancies to construct a world very like that in which they lived on earth.

La mayoría de los hombres y las mujeres llevan vidas tan penosas en el peor de los casos y tan monótonas, pobres y limitadas en el mejor, que el afán de escapar, el ansia de trascender de sí mismo aunque sólo sea por breves momentos es, y ha sido siempre, uno de los principales apetitos del alma.

Soma may make you lose a few years in time,' the doctor went on. 'But think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Every soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity... Of course' Dr Shaw went on, 'you can't allow people to go popping off into eternity if they've got any serious work to do.

they're old; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now. But God doesn't change. Men do though. What difference does that make? All the difference in the world

Enormous stores of vital energy accumulate in unemployed women of sanguine temperament, which vent themselves in ways that are generally deplorable: in interfering with other people's affairs, in working up emotional scenes, in thinking about love and making it, and in bothering men till they cannot get on with their work.

one of Huxley's points: in a world in which everything is available, nothing has any meaning.

There are many thoughts and feelings, but only a few gestures; and the mask has only half a dozen grimaces to express a thousand meanings

The mind is its own place, and the places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience. To

Un centímetro cúbico cura 10 sentimientos melancólicos

There are things known and things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Hubo discursos sobre la libertad, a propósito de ello. Libertad para ser consciente y desgraciado. Libertad para ser una clavija redonda en un agujero cuadrado.

Vijaya nodded. "Pala is probably the only country in which an animal theologian would have no reason for believing in devils. For animals everywhere else, Satan, quite obviously, is Homo sapiens.

But the need for frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain.

Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science.

Ford help him!

La felicidad real siempre aparece escuálida por comparación con las compensaciones que ofrece la desdicha. Y, naturalmente, la estabilidad no es, ni con mucho, tan espectacular como la inestabilidad. Estar satisfecho de todo no posee el encanto que supone mantener una lucha justa contra la infelicidad, ni el pintoresquismo del combate contra la tentación o contra una pasión fatal o una duda. La felicidad nunca tiene grandeza.

The mental climate of our age is not favorable to visionaries.

The worth of a gift lies as much in the way it is offered as in its intrinsic value.

We can't leave the world any longer to the direction of chance. We can't allow dangerous maniacs like Luther, mad about dogma, like Napoleon, mad about himself, to go on casually appearing and turning everything upside down.

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly – they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That

I am I, and I wish I wasn't

The Russian technique for infecting water supplies was particularly ingenious." Back

Still, if one has to suffer in order to be beautiful, one must also expect to be ugly in order not to suffer.

He liked women; love was an indispensable enjoyment. But nobody was worth involving oneself in tiresome complications for, nothing was worh messing up one's life for. With the women who hadn't been sensible and had taken love too seriously, John Bidlake had been ruthlessly cruel. It was the battle of 'All for love' against 'anything for his quiet life.' John Bidlake always won. Fighting for his quiet life, he drew the line at no sort of frightfulness.