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1 " 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… "
― Aldous Huxley , Brave New World
2 " Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. "
3 " All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There was also a thing called God. "
4 " 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. "
5 " I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example... "
6 " ... science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. "
7 " 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. "
8 " 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 "
9 " What would it be like if I were free, not enslaved by my conditioning? "
10 " Every change is a menace to stability. "
11 " 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. "
12 " 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. "
13 " Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books. "
14 " A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. "
15 " Nature is powerless to put asunder. "
16 " Pain was a fascinating horror "
17 " I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly. "
18 " ...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays.... "
19 " And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears–that's what soma is. "
20 " 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. "