Quote

Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.

Aldous Huxley

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Aldous Huxley
Age: 69 †
Born: 1894
Born: July 26
Died: 1963
Died: November 22
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Godalming
Surrey
Aldous Leonard Huxley
Moments
Longing
Appetites
Women
Escape
Monotonous
Best
Painful
Transcend
Soul
Lead
Urge
Always
Principles
Urges
Love
Worst
Principal
Poor
Appetite
Lives
Limited

More quotes by Aldous Huxley

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Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.
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No less than war or statecraft, the history of Economics has its heroic ages.
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People are much too solemn about things - I'm all for sticking pins into episcopal behinds.
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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.
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I was born wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born, and have made, in a curious way, the worst of both.
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Industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.
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Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right
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Faith, it is evident, may be relied on to produce sustained action and, more rarely, sustained contemplation.
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Science in itself is morally neutral it becomes good or evil according as it is applied.
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No social stability without individual stability.
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Fortunately, however, birds don't understand pep talks. Not even St. Francis'. Just imagine, he went on, preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him?
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All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.
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Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
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When truth is nothing but truth, it's unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world.
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Dream in a pragmatic way.
Aldous Huxley
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Assemble a mob of men and women previously conditioned by a daily reading of the newspapers treat them to amplified band music, bright lights...and in next to no time you can reduce them to a state of almost mindless subhumanity. Never before have so few been in a position to make fools, maniacs, or criminals of so many.
Aldous Huxley
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To be a fool at the right time is also an art.
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Our kingdom go is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is self, the less there is of God. The divine eternal fulness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing, and acting.
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A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.
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Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.
Aldous Huxley