After Many a Summer Dies the Swan Quotes

“But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what’s going on in his heart and mind.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power....”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“If you're always scared of dying," Obispo had said, "you'll surely die. Fear's a poison; and not such a slow poison either.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“This day fifty years ago I was born. From solitude in the Womb, we emerge into solitude among our Fellows, and return again to solitude within the Grave. We pass our lives in the attempt to mitigate that solitude. But propinquity is never fusion. We exchange Words, but exchange them from prison to prison, and without hope that they will signify to others what they mean to ourselves. We marry and there are two solitudes in the house instead of one; we beget children, and there are many solitudes. We reiterate the act of love; but again propinquity is never fusion. The most intimate contact is only of Surfaces, and we couple, as I have seen the condemned Prisoners at Newgate coupling with their Trulls, between the bars of our cages. Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give pleasure to our lover or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power; and this we are for ever trying to do, despite the fact that by doing it we cause ourselves to feel more solitary than ever. The reality of Solitude is the same in all men, there being no mitigation of it, except in Forgetfulness, Stupidity or Illusion; but a man's sense of Solitude is proportionate to the sense and fact of his Power. In anz set of circumstances, the more Power we have, the more intensely do we feel our solitude. I have enjoyed much Power in my life.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“A funny little literary article in the hand is worth at least three Critiques of Pure Reason in the bush.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“His gravest offence had been to accept the world in which he found himself as normal, rational and right.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“It's good to be cynical," he said. "That is, if you know when to stop. Most of the things that we're all taught to respect and reverence- they don't deserve anything but cynicism.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“Power and wealth increase in direct proportion to a man's distance from the material objects from which wealth and power are ultimately derived.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“nationalism will always produce at least one war each generation. It has done in the past, and I suppose we can rely on it to do the same in the future.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer

“Unless you're steadily and unflaggingly cynical about the solemn twaddle that's talked by bishops and bankers and professors and politicians and all the rest of them, you're lost. Utterly lost. Doomed to personal imprisonment in your ego- doomed to be a personality in a world of personalities; and a world of personalities is this world, the world of greed and fear and hatred, of war and capitalism and dictatorship and slavery. Yes, you've got to be cynical, Pete. Specially cynical about all the actions and feelings you've been taught to suppose were good. Most of them are not good. They're merely evils which happen to be regarded as creditable. But unfortunately, creditable evil is just as bad as discreditable evil. Scribes and Pharises aren't any better, in the last analysis, than publicans and sinners. Indeed, they're often much worse.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“To most people any radical change is even more odious than cynicism. The only way between the horns of dilemma is to persist at all costs in the ignorance which permits one to go on doing wrong in the comforting belief that yb doing so one is accomplishing one's duty / one's duty to the company, to the shareholders, to the family, the city, the state, the fatherland, the church. For, of course, poor Hansen's case wasn't in any way unique; on a smaller scale, and therefore with less power to do evil, he was acting like all those civil servants and statesmen and prelates who go through life spreading misery and destruction in the name of their ideals and under orders from their categorical imperatives.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“Cea mai gravă infracțiune a lui fusese să accepte lumea în care trăia ca pe una normală, rațională și corectă. Ca toți ceilalți, permisese publicității să îi multiplice dorințele; învățase să echivaleze fericirea cu posesiunile, iar prosperitatea cu banii cheltuiți la magazin.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“The people who make wars, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word- these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“But the many are there. You've got to do something about them."
"You've got to do something about them," Mr. Propter agreed. "But at the same time, there are circumstances in which you can't do anything. You can't do anything effective about any one if he doesn't choose or isn't able to collaborate with you in doing the right thing. For example, you've got to help people who are being killed off by malaria. But in practice you can't help them if they refuse to screen their windows and insist on taking walks near stagnant water in the twilight. It's exactly the same with the diseases of the body politic You've got to help people if they're under the menace of sudden revolution or slow degeneration. You've got to help. But the fact remains, nevertheless, that you can't help if they persist in the course of behaviour which originally got them into their trouble. For example, you can't preserve people from the horrors of war if they won't give up the pleasures of nationalism. You can't save them from slumps and depressions so long as they go on thinking exclusively in terms of money and regarding and regarding money as the supreme good. You can't avert revolution and enslavement if they will identify progress with the increase of centralization and prosperity with the intensifying of mass production. You can't preserve them from their collective madness and suicide if they persist in paying divine honours to ideals which are merely projections of their own personalities - in other words, if they insist on worshiping themselves...”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“Man cannot live by bread alone; but if he chooses to nourish his mind on the wrong kind of spiritual food, he won't even get bread. He won't even get bread, because he'll be so busy killing or preparing to kill his neighbours in the name of God, or Country, or Social Justice that he won't be able to cultivate his fields.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“To most people radical change is even more odious than cynicism. The only way between the horns of the dilemma is to persist at all costs in the ignorance which permits one to go on doing wrong in the comforting belief that by doing so one is doing one's duty- one's duty to the company, to the shareholders, to the family, the city, the state, the fatherland, the Church.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“_They_ believe that the Ballot will rob them of their Power and Privileges, whereas _I_ am sure that, by the exercise of even such little Prudence and Cunning as parsimonious Nature has endowed them with, they can with ease maintain themselves in their present pre-eminence. This being so, let the Rabble amuse itself by voting. An Election is no more than a gratuitous Punch and Judy Show, offered by the Rulers in order to distract the attention of the Ruled.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“We float in language like icebergs – four-fifths under the surface and only one-fifth of us projecting into the open air of immediate, non-linguistic experience.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“أنا رئيس شركة بترول هنا. لديّ ألفا محطة بنزين في كاليفورنيا وحدها،وكل العاملين بها خريجو جامعات!”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“Men can't live by bread alone, because they need to feel that their life has a point. That's why they take to idealism. But it's a matter of experience and observation that most idealism leads to war, persecution and mass insanity. Man cannot live by bread alone; but if he chooses to nourish his mind on the wrong kind of spiritual food, he won't even get bread. He won't even get bread, because he'll be so busy killing or preparing to kill his neighbours in the name of God, or Country, or Social Justice that he won't be able to cultivate his fields. Nothing could be more certain or obvious. But at the same time," Mr. Propter continued, "nothing is more certain than that most people will go on choosing the wrong spiritual food and thereby indirectly choosing their own destruction.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“The frightfulness of the world had reached a point at which it had become for him merely boring.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan