To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Aldous HuxleyRead
... one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.
Interpretation
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.
In practice
During a book club discussion about literature's role in our lives.
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
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.
On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
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.
The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace, The prurient ape's defiling touch: And do you like the human race? No, not much.
He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars.
But I'm kind of comfortable with getting older because it's better than the other option, which is being dead. So I'll take getting older.
Now, when you are aware, you see the whole process of your thinking and action, but it can happen only when there is no condemnation. That is. When I condemn something, I do not understand it.
Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.
Inside every seventy-year-old is a thirty-five-year-old asking, 'What happened?
... one doesn't want to read badly any more than live badly, since time will not relent. I don't know that we owe God or nature a death, but nature will collect anyway, and we certainly owe mediocrity nothing, whatever collectivity it purports to advance or at least represent.
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