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Aldous Huxley Quotes

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"The traveller's-eye view of men and women is not satisfying. A man might spend his life in trains and restaurants and know nothing of humanity at the end. To know, one must be an actor as well as a spectator."

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

"Every person who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves, to multiply the ways in which they exist, to make life full, significant, and interesting."

"The proper study of mankind is books."

"Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking."

"An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie."

"We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look."

"Dream in a pragmatic way."

"My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger."

"The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen."

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

"There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail."

"So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable."

"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead."

"Several excuses are always less convincing than one."

"The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name."

"The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right."

"One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous."

"What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera."

"That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep."

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