Aldous Huxley

In the world of ideas everything was clear in life all was obscure, embroiled.

Words from the thread on which we string our experiences.

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.

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful.

Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals it cannot be mass-produced.

The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however painful --because the reproached self isn't abandoned it remains intact.

What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.

There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy Would he ever want to do anything What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life

Most human beings have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs.

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

I can sympathise with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions it's walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.

My fate cannot be mastered it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul I am only its noisiest passenger.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

Science has explained nothing the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are.