“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
“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.”
“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.”
“If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”
“I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.”
“I am I, and I wish I weren't.”
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
“I like being myself. Myself and nasty.”
“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.”
“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.”
“...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”
“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
“No social stability without individual stability.”
“I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness.”
“I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”
“...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays....”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.”
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”
“I want God, I want poetry, I want danger, I want freedom, I want sin.”
“A love of nature keeps no factories busy.”
“It is natural to believe in God when you're alone-- quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I'm sorry," Butch croaked. "Oh God, I'm so sorry..."
V put his arm out and curled it around the cop. Pulling the male close to his chest, he laid his head down on his buddy's.
"It's okay," He said roughly. "It's all right. It's okay...You did the right thing...”
“Rodrick’s punishment was that he had to answer a bunch of questions Mom wrote out for him. Did owning this magazine make you a better person? No. Did it make you more popular at school? No. How do you feel about having owned this type of magazine now? I feel ashamed. Do you have anything you want to say to women for having owned this offensive magazine? I’m sorry women.”
“We were comfort kissing, that's all. We wrapped our arms around each other for solace. Bear hugging. Squeezing the life out of each other as if we were trying to merge together. When at last we loosened our grip, in a strange way we were both more calm. Physically, at least. Not mentally.”
“Tell me what to wish for." Tell me what to ask the sea for."
"To be happy. Happiness."
"I don't think such a thing is had on Thisby. And if it is, I don't know how you would keep it."
"You whisper to it. What it needs to hear. Isn't that what you said?"
"That's what I said. What do I need to hear?"
"That tomorrow we'll rule the Scorpio Races as king and queen of Skarmouth and I'll save the house and you'll have your stallion. Dove will eat golden oats for the rest of her days and you will terrorize the races each year and people will come from every island in the world to find out how it is you get horses to listen to you. The piebald will carry Mutt Malvern into the sea and Gabriel will decide to stay on the island. I will have a farm and you will bring me bread for dinner."
"That's what I needed to hear.”
“I knew your father. I hated him."
"That surprises me your Majesty." Loki smiled broadly at her. "My father was a stone-cold jerk. That sounds like your taste exactly.”
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