Aldous Huxley Quotes

The truth is in the details.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Generalities don't count and won't help you in football.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

It is abhorrent to me when a fine intelligence is paired with an unsavory character.

I need say hardly anything in favor of the Intellects of the Negroes, or of their capacities for virtue and happiness, although these have been supposed by some to be inferior to those of the inhabitants of Europe. The accounts which travelers give of their ingenuity, humanity and strong attachments to their parents, relations, friends and country, show us that they are equal to the Europeans.… All the vices which are charged upon the Negroes in the southern colonies, and the West Indies, such as Idleness, Treachery, Theft and the like, are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove, that they were not intended, by Providence, for it.

What interests me principally are points.

‎"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.

Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.

When I was a child . . . Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.

She tended to be impatient with that sort of intellectual who, for all his brilliance, has never been able to arrive at the simple conclusion that to be reasonably happy you have to be reasonably good.

Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.

Natural good is' so intimately connected with moral good, and natural evil with moral evil, that I am as certain as if I heard a voice from heaven proclaim it, that God is on the side of virtue. He has learnt much, and has not lived in vain, who has practically discovered that most strict and necessary connection, that does and will ever exist between vice and misery, and virtue and happiness.

Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars.

It is necessary, in order to know things well, to know the particulars of them; and these, being infinite, make our knowledge eversuperficial and imperfect.

Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

The surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definitive, and concrete. The greatest writers - Homer, Dante, Shakespeare - are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter. Their words call up pictures.

And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.

Reality deals in specifics under the guise of generalities. Literature does the contrary.

When well-being comes from engaging our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity.

Virtue and integrity are necessary for genuine happiness. Guard your integrity with care.

Good is to bee sought out, and evill attended.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all. Bertha: What's that? Socrates: Philosophy. Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here. Socrates: Where are they? Bertha: In the philosophy department. Socrates: Philosophy is not department. Bertha: Well, we have philosophers. Socrates: Are they dangerous? Bertha: Of course not. Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers.