Quotes from Brave New World

“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

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“There are moments in every relationship that define when two people start to fall in love.
A first glance
A first smile
A first kiss
A first fall…
(I remove the Darth Vader house shoes from my satchel and look down at them.)
You were wearing these during one of those moments.
One of the moments I first started to fall in love with you.
The way you gave me butterflies that morning
Had absolutely nothing to do with anyone else,
and everything to do with you.
I was falling in love with you that morning
because of you.
(I take the next item out of the satchel. When I pull it out and look up, she brings her hands to her mouth in shock.)
This ugly little gnome
With his smug little grin…
He's the reason I had an excuse to invite you into my house.
Into my life.
You took a lot of aggression out on him over those next few months.
I would watch from my window as you would kick him over every time you walked by him.
Poor little guy.
You were so tenacious.
That feisty, aggressive, strong-willed side of you….
The side of you that refused to take crap from this concrete gnome?
The side of you that refused to take crap from me?
I fell in love with that side of you
because of you.
(I set the gnome down on the stage and grab the CD)
This is your favorite CD
‘Layken’s shit.’
Although now I know you intended for shit to be possessive, rather than descriptive.
The banjo started playing through the speakers of your car
and I immediately recognized my favorite band.
Then when I realized it was your favorite band, too?
The fact that these same lyrics inspired both of us?
I fell in love with that about you.
That had absolutely nothing to do with anyone else.
I fell in love with that about you
because of you.
(I take a slip of paper out of the satchel and hold it up. When I look at her, I see Eddie slide her a napkin. I can’t tell from up here, but that can only mean she’s crying.)
This is a receipt I kept.
Only because the item I purchased that night was on the verge of ridiculous.
Chocolate milk on the rocks? Who orders that?
You were different, and you didn’t care.
You were being you.
A piece of me fell in love with you at that moment,
because of you.
This? (I hold up another sheet of paper.)
This I didn’t really like so much.
It’s the poem you wrote about me.
The one you titled 'mean?'
I don’t think I ever told you…
but you made a zero.
And then I kept it
to remind myself of all the things I never want to be to you.
(I pull her shirt from my bag. When I hold it into the light, I sigh into the microphone.)
This is that ugly shirt you wear.
It doesn’t really have anything to do with why I fell in love with you.
I just saw it at your house and thought I’d steal it.”
― Colleen Hoover, quote from Point of Retreat

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