Aldous Huxley
Overview
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family
Huxley family
The Huxley family is a British family of which several members have excelled in scientific, medical, artistic, and literary fields. The family also includes members who occupied senior public positions in the service of the United Kingdom....

. Best known for his novels including Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...

and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry
Oxford Poetry
Oxford Poetry is a literary magazine based in Oxford, England. It is currently edited by Hamid Khanbhai and Thomas A Richards.Founded in 1910 by Basil Blackwell, its editors have included Dorothy L...

, and published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts. Huxley spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death.

Aldous Huxley was a humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

, pacifist, and satirist
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

, and he was latterly interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology
Parapsychology
The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...

 and philosophical mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

.
Quotations

I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

Those Barren Leaves|Those Barren Leaves (1925)

What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic.

"Where are the Movies Moving?" in Essays Old and New (1926)

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Proper Studies (1927)

That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.

Proper Studies (1927)

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Proper Studies (1927)

Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.

Point Counter Point (1928)

The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.

Point Counter Point (1928)

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.

"Wordsworth in the Tropics" in Do What You Will (1929)

 
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