“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“I am I, and I wish I weren't.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“I like being myself. Myself and nasty.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“No social stability without individual stability.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays....”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“The Savage nodded, frowning. "You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows or outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them...But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy."
..."What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol."
...
"There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality."
...
"But they used to take morphia and cocaine."
...
"Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F. 178."
...
"Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug."
...
"Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant."
...
"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."
...
"Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology."
...
"Stability was practically assured.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“I want God, I want poetry, I want danger, I want freedom, I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“A love of nature keeps no factories busy.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“It is natural to believe in God when you're alone-- quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“Isn't there something in living dangerously?'
There's a great deal in it,' the Controller replied. 'Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time.'
What?' questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.
It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory.'
V.P.S.?'
Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconvenience.'
But I like the inconveniences.'
We don't,' said the Controller. 'We prefer to do things comfortably.'
But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'
In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer, the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence.
I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Born place: in Godalming, Surrey, England, The United Kingdom
Born date July 26, 1894
See more on GoodReads
“It is not the ink and the paper that matter, but the hand that holds the pen.”
― quote from The Paladin Prophecy
“For the love of men like Fitzpiers is unquestionably of such quality as to bear division and transference. He had indeed once declared, though not to her, that on one occasion he had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations at the same time. If this were true, his differed from the highest affection as the lower orders of the animal world differ from advanced organisms, partition causing not death but a multiplied existence.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from The Woodlanders
“…quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean "love" in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage. I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later—because I did not belong there, did not come from there”
― Joan Didion, quote from Slouching Towards Bethlehem
“God bless the book people for their boundless knowledge absorbed from having words instead of friends.”
― Mackenzi Lee, quote from The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue
“Love is the strongest emotion any creature can feel except for hate, but hate can't hurt you. Love, and trust, and friendship, and all the other emotions humans value so much, are the only emotions that can bring pain. Only love can break a heart into so many pieces. ”
― Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, quote from In the Forests of the Night
Dear Enemy
Something like Norma...
Requiem for a Wren
Starclimber
The Return of Philip...
The Rozabal LineBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
