Quotes from Aldous Huxley

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

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

Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom.

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Like every man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes - ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous.

Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

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.