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Quote by Aldous Huxley

“After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.”

Quote by Aldous Huxley

Book:Crome Yellow

Work

Crome Yellow is a satirical work that delves into the intricacies of the English literary scene, critiquing the pretentiousness and self-importance of the literary establishment. The novel offers a humorous and critical look at the lives and ambitions of a group of writers and artists, highlighting the absurdities and vanities that often accompany the pursuit of literary fame. more

Author

Aldous Huxley was an English writer and philosopher, renowned for his dystopian novel 'Brave New World'. Born on July 26, 1894, in Godalming, Surrey, England, he was the younger brother of the poet and critic Leonard Huxley. Huxley's works frequently delved into the interplay of science, politics, and philosophy, and he was a prominent figure in the literary movement known as the 'Lost Generation'. He passed away on November 22, 1963. more

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“Life's so ordinary that literature has to deal with the exceptional. Exceptional talent, power, social position, wealth.... Dramabegins where there's freedom of choice. And freedom of choice begins when social or psychological conditions are exceptional. That's why the inhabitants of imaginative literature have always been recruited from the pages of Who's Who.”

Art Reality Artist Choices Literature Social Wealth Deals Conditions Talent Position Pages Ordinary Psychological Realism Exceptional Imaginative Freedom Of Choice

Book:The collected works of Aldous Huxley

Source: The collected works of Aldous Huxley

“The whole story of the universe is implicit in any part of it. The meditative eye can look through any single object and see, as through a window, the entire cosmos. Make the smell of roast duck in an old kitchen diaphanous and you will have a glimpse of everything, from the spiral nebulae to Mozart's music and the stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. The artistic problem is to produce diaphanousness in spots, selecting the spots so as to reveal only the most humanly significant of distant vistas behind the near familiar object.”

“Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books. In a volume by Pierre Louys all the girls are young and their figures perfect; there's no hiccoughing or bad breath, no fatigue or boredom, no sudden recollections of unpaid bills or business letters unanswered, to interrupt the raptures. Art gives you the sensation, the thought, the feeling quite pure--chemically pure, I mean,... not morally.”

“Perhaps dirt is the necessary condition of beauty.... Perhaps hygiene and art can never be bedfellows. No Verdi, after all, without spitting into trumpets. No Duse without a crowd of malodorous bourgeois giving one another their coryzas. And think of the inexpugnable retreats for microbes prepared by Michelangelo in the curls of Moses' beard!”

Source: The collected works of Aldous Huxley

“If only people would realize that moral principles are like measles.... They have to be caught. And only the people who've got them can pass on the contagion.”

People Ifs Realizing Moral Principles Influence Caught Moral Principles Contagion Measles

Book:The collected works of Aldous Huxley

Source: The collected works of Aldous Huxley

“One of the great triumphs of the nineteenth century was to limit the connotation of the word "immoral" in such a way that, for practical purposes, only those were immoral who drank too much or made too copious love. Those who indulged in any or all of the other deadly sins could look down in righteous indignation on the lascivious and the gluttonous.... In the name of all lechers and boozers I most solemnly protest against the invidious distinction made to our prejudice.”

“Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by generations of readers, are very different from the destinies foreseen for them by their authors. Gulliver's Travels, with a minimum of expurgation, has become a children's book; a new illustrated edition is produced every Christmas. That's what comes of saying profound things about humanity in terms of a fairy story.”

Source: Rotunda: a selection from the works of Aldous Huxley

“The inconveniences and horrors of the pox are perfectly well known to every one; but still the disease flourishes and spreads. Several million people were killed in a recent war and half the world ruined; but we all busily go on in courses that make another event of the same sort inevitable. Experientia docet? Experientia doesn't.”

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Book:Antic Hay and the Gioconda Smile

Source: Antic Hay and the Gioconda Smile

“When we have peace, then we have a chance to save the planet. But if we are not united in peace, if we do not practice mindful consumption, we cannot save our planet.”

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Author:Nhat Hanh

“Most loverspicture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else--their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality; and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock.”

Love Different Sometimes Reality Causes Secret Cases Discovery Appearance Invention Shock Mistress Disillusionment

Author:Aldous Huxley