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Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley Quotes

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Famous Aldous Huxley Quotes

“What happens out there is public—or at least fairly public," he qualified. "And what happens when somebody speaks or writes words—that's also public. But the things that go on inside these little circles are private. Private." He laid a hand on his chest. "Private." He rubbed his forehead. "Private." He touched his eyelids and the tip of his nose with a brown forefinger. "Now let's make a simple experiment. Say the word 'pinch.' " "Pinch," said the class in ragged unison. "Pinch . . ." "P-I-N-C-H—pinch. That's public, that's something you can look up in the dictionary. But now pinch yourselves. Hard! Harder!" To an accompaniment of giggles, of aies and ows, the children did as they were told. "Can anybody feel what the person sitting next to him is feeling?" There was a chorus of noes. "So it looks," said the young man, "as though there were-— let's see, how many are we?" He ran his eyes over the desks before him. "It looks as though there were twenty-three distinct and separate pains. Twenty-three in this one room. Nearly three thousand million of them in the whole world. Plus the pains of all the animals. And each of these pains is strictly private. There's no way of passing the experience from one center of pain to another center of pain.”

SelfPainEmpathyExperiencePrivacy
Book:Island
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“But man now behaves like the Pharisees and insists that he is made for all the things—science, industry, nation, money, religion, schools—which were really made for him. Why? Because he is so little aware of his own interests as a human being that he feels irresistibly tempted to sacrifice himself to these idols. There is no remedy except to become aware of one's interests as a human being, and, having become aware, to learn to act on that awareness. Which means learning to use the self and learning to direct the mind. It's almost wearisome, the way one always comes back to the same point. Wouldn't it be nice, for a change, if there were another way out of our difficulties! A short cut. A method requiring no greater personal effort than recording a vote or ordering some 'enemy of society' to be shot. A salvation from outside, like a dose of calomel.”

SelfAwarenessDiscipline
Book:Eyeless In Gaza
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“Meanwhile, the self can stand in the way of the Not-Self, interfering with the free flow of spiritual grace, this maintaining the self in a state of blindness, and also with the flow of animal grace, which leads to the impairment of natural functions and, in the long run, of the slower processes called structure. For each individual human being, the main practical problems are these: How can I prevent my ego from eclipsing the inner light, synteresis, scintilla animae, and so perpetuating the state of unregenerate illusion and blindness? And these practical problems remain unchallenged, even if we abandon the notion of an entelechy or physiological intelligencer, of an atman or pneuma and think, instead, in terms [of] systems...”

SelfAdvaitaSystems Thinking
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“The Perennial Philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi ('That art thou'); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being, is to discover the fact for himself, to find out who he really is.”

HumansArtEndsSelfPhilosophyFactsLastsHuman BeingsExistencePrinciplesEternalAbsolutesFormulasBrahmanAtmanSanskrit
Book:The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West
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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.”

ThinkingSelfFeelingsLostWishInterestActingDivineEternalKingdomsCravingSelf InterestEgocentricKingdom Come
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.”

InspirationalSelfMotivationalCertainUniverseLearningSelf EsteemPositiveConfidenceSelf ImprovementYogaPersonal GrowthCornersImprovementSelf DiscoveryNovelistsFinding YourselfImprovingTrue SelfSelf DevelopmentKnow YourselfInner SelfSelf GrowthKnow ThyselfAround The CornerSelf KnowingImproving YourselfInspiring Self EsteemDiscovering SelfYou Can Make A DifferenceYou Make A DifferenceDiscovering Your True SelfGreat Self EsteemBeing Your True SelfInfinite UniverseDifferent UniversesConstantly Improving
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“Good action and thoughts produce consequences which tend to neutralize, or put a stop to, the result of evil thoughts and actions. For as we give up the life of self (and note that, like forgiveness, repentance and humility are also special cases of giving), as we abandon what the German mystics called "the I, me, mine," we make ourselves progressively capable of receiving grace. By grace we are enabled to know reality more completely, and this knowledge of reality helps us to give up more of the life of selfhood - and so on, in a mounting spiral of illumination and regeneration.”

KnowsGivingSelfHelpingRealityActionEvilResultsCasesGraceSpecialProduceHumilityMinesGiving UpCapableConsequenceNotesAbandonRepentanceReceivingIlluminationSpiralsRegenerationThoughts And ActionsGood ActionsEvil Thoughts
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“The legs, for example, of that chair--how miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! I spent several minutes--or was it several centuries?--not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them---or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were "they") being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair.”

StillsSelfCertainCasesMinutesCenturyExampleInvolvedLegsChairsAccurateMiraculousPolishedGazingBeing MyselfBamboo
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity.”

FeelsMadeSelfFeelingsTurnsConcernedDignityPrejudiceAliensContemptOutsidersInferiorsDefectsHostilityMockeryBrave New World CharacterSlighted
Book:The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world
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“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend”

MenLifeTryingSelfForeverDoorsMysterySocietyIgnoranceWallSatisfiedReasoningWiserPsychedelicSystematicUnfathomablePsychedelic ExperienceHuxleyDoors Of Perception
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.”

ThinkingWorldHumansWellsPersonsTwoSelfLawOrderUniversePayConditionsSubjectsSorrowConsciousConcernedThirdsEndureCertaintyWell BeingLiberationHuman ConditionInherentIndifferentUnnecessaryOrganismsLaws Of NatureSelf ConsciousIrreversibleHomemadeCertainty Of Death
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“It's dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling.”

FeelsTryingChildrenSelfHardFeelingsHappensDarkWalksFeetDespairThings HappenPityDarlingSelf PityBaggageQuicksandTrying Too Hard
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one's own ignorance concerning oneself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one?s self.”

PersonsDoeSelfSpiritualSpiritualityUnderstandingGrowthJourneyIgnoranceFindingsGainsOneselfAwakeningDestinationSpiritual AwakeningLife JourneyArrivingSpiritual JourneyLife Is A JourneyDissipationNew Journey
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must be continuously on watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness.”

WayTryingMaySelfStatesWholeDreamRealityConsciousnessWatchesIllusionWake UpAwakeningPermitSelf CenteredIllusory
Book:Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948
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“Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.”

KindArtSelfCharacterFormActorsProcessActingPracticePlayerEmotionalPersonalityHabitExerciseArt IsAbuseSakeProfessionDramaticAffectedExploitsMasturbationExhibitionsCatharticHypnoticPower Over OthersActing From Actors
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“Grace is always sufficient, provided we are ready to cooperate with it. If we fail to do our share, but rather choose to rely on self-will and self-direction, we shall not only get no help from the graces bestowed on us, we shall actually make it impossible for further graces to be given.”

IfsSelfHelpingGivenGraceImpossibleFailingShareReadySufficientRelySelf Will
Book:The Divine Within: Selected Writings on Enlightenment
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