The trouble with fiction,” said John Rivers, “is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.
La filosofía nos enseña a sentir incertidumbre ante las cosas que nos parecen evidentes. La propaganda, en cambio, nos enseña a aceptar como evidentes cosas sobre las que sería razonable suspender nuestro juicio o sentir dudas.
He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.’‘A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,’ said the Savage promptly.‘Quite so…
Those who crusade not for God in themselves but against the devil in others, never succeed in leaving the world better, but leave it as it was or sometimes even perceptibly worse than it was before the crusade began.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then,” he added in a lower tone, “I ate my own wickedness.
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.
All crosses had their tops cut and became T’s. There was also a thing called God.
A felicidade nunca é graciosa.Happiness is never gracious.
Well, I’d rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.
The world and the friends that lived in it are shadows: you alone remain real in this drowsing room.
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.
I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example…
Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.
Science [is] that wonderfully convenient personification of the opinions, at a certain date, of Professors X, Y, and Z….
The more science discovers and the more comprehension it gives us of the mechanisms of existence, the more clearly does the mystery of existence itself stand out.
The only cure for science is more science, not less. We are suffering from the effects of a little science badly applied. The remedy is a lot of science, well applied.
… science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.
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.
And whatever troubled him and showed in his face might have been the same old trouble – the problem of occupying space in the world and having a name people could call you by, being somebody they thought they could know
What would it be like if I were free, not enslaved by my conditioning?
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
One can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You’re paying for it, Mr. Watson – paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty.
Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered.
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?
It’s a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend most of our time is not the only universe there is. I think it’s healthy that people should have this experience.
Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
These,” he said gravely, “are unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical facts are unpleasant.
But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what’s going on in his heart and mind.
My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Power and wealth increase in direct proportion to a man’s distance from the material objects from which wealth and power are ultimately derived.
I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.
…reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays….
He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw- knewit, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for the recurrent deliriumof his days and nights, the nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness.
Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to his society.
However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for.
Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time.
Home, home – a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease and smells.
Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.
In the contexts of religion and politics, words are not regarded as standing, rather inadequately, for things and events; on the contrary, things and events are regarded as particular illustrations of words.
Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner.
It was all extremely symbolic; but then, if you choose to think so, nothing in this world is not symbolical.
Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.
The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song, beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried.
Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.
What fun it would be,” he thought, “if one didn’t have to think about happiness!
Choiceless awareness – at every moment and in all the circumstances of life – is the only effective meditation.
There’s nothing like a re-creation of the event. Which is lucky. Think if one could fully remember perfume or kisses! How wearisome the reality of them would be!
It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.
The rich never have a chance of being neighborly to their equals. The best they can do is feel mawkish about the sufferings of their inferiors, which they can never begin to understand, and to be patronizingly kind.
I’m not denying their kindness,” said the Rani. “But after all kindness isn’t the only virtue.
Like every other good thing in thisworld, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however,it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Let us beduly thankful for that, my dear Denis–duly thankful.
One is always alone in suffering; the fact is depressing when one happens to be the sufferer, but it makes pleasure possible for the rest of the world.
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
He had allowed the advertisers to multiply his wants; he had learned to equate happiness with possessions, and prosperity with money to spend in a shop.
Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation.
Stability,” insisted the Controller, “stability. The primal and the ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this.
Time moved for you not in quotidian beats, but in the slow rhythm the ages keep –
Shut lips, sleeping faces,Every stopped machine,The dumb and littered placesWhere crowds have been:.All silences rejoice,Weep (loudly or low),Speak-but with the voiceOf whom, I do not know.
We float in language like icebergs – four-fifths under the surface and only one-fifth of us projecting into the open air of immediate, non-linguistic experience.
For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.
Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.
In silence, an act is an act is an act. Verbalized and discussed, it becomes an ethical problem …
The essential Not-self could be perceived very clearly in things and in livingcreatures on the hither side of good and evil. In human beings it was visible only when they were inrepose, their minds untroubled, their bodies motionless.
One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.
As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I’ve no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you’re a bore.
I mean what does a democracy depend on? A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest, in any given circumstance.
A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.
[T]he vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches.
But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.
Democracy is, among other things, the ability to say ‘no’ to the boss. But a man cannot say ‘no’ to the boss, unless he is sure of being able to eat when the boss’s favour has been withdrawn.
If you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible.
Happiness is a hard master – particularly other people’s happiness.
A hell, from which one can be saved by a quibble that would carry no weight with a police magistrate, cannot be taken very seriously.
The greater a man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray.
De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.
That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.
Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas—that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!
Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously overcompensates a secret doubt.
Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can’t be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?
That is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you’ve got to do.
He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul.
We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look.
In a sane world I should be a great man; as things are, in this curious establishment, I am nothing at all; to all intents and purposes I don’t exist. I am just a Vox et preaterea nihil.
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Yes,” Mustapha Mond was saying, “that’s another item in the cost of stability. It isn’t only art that’s incompatible with happiness; it’s also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.
What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.
For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols
And it’s what you never will write,” said the Controller. “Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And if were new, it couldn’t possibly be like Othello.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
It is their duty to be infantile, even against their inclination.
He wanted to imprison his nameless misery in words.
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations of misery.
The worth of a gift lies as much in the way it is offered as in its intrinsic value.
So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable.
-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being…
The advertisement is one of the most interesting and difficult of modern literary forms.
To his dog every man is Napoleon hence the constant popularity of dogs.
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Everyone who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves to multiply the ways in which they exist to make their life full significant and interesting.
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour for their curiosity their intolerance of shams the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
Consistency is contrary to nature contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body.
The consistent thinker … is either a walking mummy or else if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality a fanatical monomaniac.
Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.
Experience is not what happens to you it is what you do with what happens to you.
Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.
Faith may be relied upon to produce sustained action and more rarely sustained contemplation.
A fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
To associate with other like-minded people in small purposeful groups is for the great majority of men and women a source of profound psychological satisfaction.
Every ceiling when reached becomes a floor upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right.
Happiness is something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach.
Most human beings have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
Nonsense is an assertion of man’s spiritual freedom in spite of all the oppressions of circumstance.
Modern man’s besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions.
The natural rhythm of human life is routine punctuated by orgies.
At any given moment life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time having a purpose tending in a certain direction.
The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.
That all men are equal is a proposition to which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
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.
Every gain made by individuals or society is almost instantly taken for granted.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
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.
There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that’s your own self.
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that’s your own self.
There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that’s your own self.
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture.
The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished not by doing something but by refraining from doing. Great is truth but still greater from a practical point of view is silence about truth.
The course of every intellectual if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough ends in the obvious from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.
There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtures are of no avail.
What we think and feel and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and our viscera.
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.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
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.
Why should human females become sterile in their forties while female crocodiles continue to lay eggs into their third century?
Thanks to words we have been able to rise above the brutes and thanks to words we have often sunk to the level of the demons.
They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.
Writers write to influence their readers their preachers their auditors but always at bottom to be more themselves.
Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
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.
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
Science has explained nothing the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.
A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.
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.
Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people’s happiness.
There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.
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.
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.
Cynical realism is the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.
Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.
All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.
There’s only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.
Experience is not what happens to you it’s what you do with what happens to you.
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.
Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.
An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.
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.
To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.
Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder.
The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.
The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.
That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.
Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.
The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.
Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.