Brave new World

by Aldous Huxley

What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.

Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising.

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.

Every change is a menace to stability.

He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.’ ‘A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,’

But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man—that it is an unnatural state—will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end . . .”

They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed;

“You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.”

‘If you allowed yourselves to think of God, you wouldn’t allow yourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices. You’d have a reason for bearing things patiently, for doing things with courage. I’ve seen it with the Indians.’ ‘I’m sure you have,’ said Mustapha Mond. ‘But then we aren’t Indians. There isn’t any need for a civilized man to bear anything that’s seriously unpleasant. And as for doing things—Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his head. It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own.’

“If after every tempest come such calms, may the winds blow till they have wakened death.”