Aldous Huxley Literature Quotations

Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.

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 worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

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?

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.

Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hallmark of true science.

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.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.

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 creation by word-power of something out of nothing--what is that but magic? And, may I add, what is that but literature?

The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything

Every man's memory is his private literature.