208 quotes
What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic.
Essays Old and New (1926)
At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?
Brave New World Revisited (1958)
Nature, or anything that reminds me of nature, disturbs me; it is too large, too complicated, above all too utterly pointless and incomprehensible.
Crome Yellow (1921)
Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Grey Life.
Island (1962)
I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.
John in Brave New World (1932)
There are many kinds of gods. Therefore there are many kinds of men.
Do What You Will (1928)
Every crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness which he attributes to his enemies; it becomes in some sort a part of him.
The Devils of Loudon (1951)
Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat — and the boat is perpetually sinking.
Island (1962)
Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof — that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.
Island (1962)
What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. His perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful.
The Doors of Perception (1954)
However hard they try, men cannot create a social organism, they can only create an organization. In the process of trying to create an organism they will merely create a totalitarian despotism.
Brave New World Revisited (1958)
After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.
Crome Yellow (1921)
Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.
Proper Studies (1927)
"Death," said Mark Staithes. "It's the only thing we haven't succeeded in completely vulgarizing."
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.
Proper Studies (1927)
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
Themes and Variations (1950)
Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs.
Themes and Variations (1950)
The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more.
Brave New World Revisited (1958)
He took nobody by surprise; there was nobody to take.
Crome Yellow (1921)
It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.