Patterns of living cells and organs and physiological functioning; but chaos of men’s behavior in time.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
That’s why animals have no metaphysical worries. Being identical with their physiology, they know there’s a cosmic order. Whereas human beings identify themselves with money-making, say, or drink, or politics, or literature. None of which has anything to do with the cosmic order. So naturally they find that nothing makes sense.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
The divine Ground is a timeless reality. Seek it first, and all the rest- everything from an adequate interpretation of life to a release from compulsory self-destruction- will be added.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
Patterns of living cells and organs and physiological functioning; but chaos of men’s behavior in time.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
Everybody had been taught to read, and the result was Northcliffe and advertisements for cigarettes and laxatives and whiskey. Everybody went to school, and everywhere the years of schooling had been made a prelude to military conscription. And what fine courses in false history and self-congratulation! What a thorough grounding in the religions of nationalism! No God anymore; but forty-odd infallible Foreign Offices.
Once again, the whole universe shook with laughter.
Once again, the whole universe shook with laughter.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
But man’s world was chaotically ugly and unjust and stupid.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
First it’s God they believe in… then they grow bored with God, and it’s war and massacre in the name of Humanity. Humanity and Progress, Progress and Humanity… Inevitable Progress! Only one more indispensable massacre of Capitalists or Communists or Fascists or Christians or Heretics, and there we are- there we are in the Golden Future.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
Of course you could always argue that you live more intensely in your mental world-substitute than we who only wallow in the real thing. And I’d be inclined to admit it. But the trouble is that you can’t be content to stick to your beautiful ersatz. You have to descend into evening clothes, and Ciro’s and chorus girls- and perhaps even politics and committee meetings, God help us! With lamentable results. Because you’re not at home with these lumpy bits of matter. They depress you, they bewilder you, they shock you and sicken you and make a fool of you. And yet they still tempt you; and they’ll go on tempting you, all our life. Tempting you to embark on actions which you know in advance can only make you miserable and distract you from the one thing you can do properly, the one thing that people value you for.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
And being sickened in advance, with no immediate reason for one’s feelings was merely silly. No less silly was thinking about death. So long as one was alive, death didn’t exist, except for other people. And when one was dead, nothing existed, not even death. So why bother?
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. Your own self… So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you’ve worked on your own corner. You’ve got to be good before you can do good- or at any rate do good without doing harm at the same time.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
But thought’s the slave of life, and life’s time’s fool,
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.
— Time must have a stop, Aldous Huxley
