QuoteProject
... one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.
Aldous Huxley
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Reading serves as a distraction from our own thoughts.

In this quote, Aldous Huxley suggests that reading can often act as a form of escapism, allowing individuals to avoid confronting their own thoughts and feelings. This reflects on the nature of literature as both a tool for gaining knowledge and a way to distract oneself from personal introspection.

Themes

ReadingThoughtsDistractionLiteratureEscapism

In practice

Example use cases

During a book club discussion about literature's role in our lives.

More from Aldous Huxley

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Aldous HuxleyRead
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous HuxleyRead
In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country.
Aldous HuxleyRead
On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
Aldous HuxleyRead
No man ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese tomcat when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife.
Aldous HuxleyRead
The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace, The prurient ape's defiling touch: And do you like the human race? No, not much.
Aldous HuxleyRead

Similar quotes

Each day is a precious gift to be savored and used, not left unopened and hoarded for a future that may never come.
Regina BrettRead
Purity is when there is no anxiety, no worry, no thinking.
B.K.S. IyengarRead
Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.
Sylvia PlathRead
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
I never said I was an angel. Nor am I innocent or holy like the Virgin Mary. What I am is natural and serious and as sensitive as an open nerve on an ice cube.
Sister SouljahRead
Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing.
Friedrich NietzscheRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.