ALDOUS HUXLEY

Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hallmark of true science.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

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

De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.

Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.

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

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.

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

Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

Orthodoxy is the diehard of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget.

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?

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.