Aldous Huxley

It's dark because you're trying too hard," said Susila. "Dark because you want it to be light. Remember what you used to tell me when I was a little girl. 'Lightly, child, lightly. You've got to learn to do everything lightly. Think lightly, act lightly, feel lightly. Yes, feel lightly, even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.' I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly__t was the best advice ever given me. Well, now I'm going to say the same thing to you, Lakshmi . . . Lightly, my darling, lightly. Even when it comes to dying. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self-conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Goethe or Little Nell. And, of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the Clear Light. So throw away all your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling. On tiptoes; and no luggage, not even a sponge bag. Completely unencumbered.

Choiceless awareness - at every moment and in all the circumstances of life - is the only effective meditation.

What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!

Our __ncreasing mental sickness_ may find expression in neurotic symptoms. These symptoms are conspicuous and extremely distressing. But __et us beware,_ says Dr. Fromm, __f defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symptoms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting._ The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. __any of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does._ They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish __he illusion of individuality,_ but in fact they have been to a great extent deindividualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But __niformity and freedom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible too. . . . Man is not made to be an automaton, and if he becomes one, the basis for mental health is destroyed.

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.

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.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one__ never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

What a gulf between impression and expression! That__ our ironic fate__o have Shakespearean feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to be Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors. We practice alchemy in reverse__ouch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash.

It was all extremely symbolic; but then, if you choose to think so, nothing in this world is not symbolical.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

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.

There was something called Christianity.

All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There was also a thing called God.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity

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.

Every one belongs to every one else.