The Doors of Perception is an autobiographical book and is written by Aldous Huxley, published in 1954.
This book elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline.
The book explores the mind’s remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness, and signaled a crucial turn in the popular perception of psychedelics.
Let’s explore some of the classic quotes from The Doors of Perception book.
Table of Contents
Best The Doors of Perception Quotes
“Space was still there; but it had lost its predominance. The mind was primarily concerned, not with measures and locations, but with being and meaning.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“The fear, as I analyze it in retrospect, was of being overwhelmed, of disintegrating under a pressure of reality greater than a mind, accustomed to living most of the time in a cosy world of symbols, could possibly bear.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“Mescalin opens up the way of Mary, but shuts the door on that of Martha.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“Half at least of all morality is negative and consists in keeping out of mischief.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“The Lord’s Prayer is less than fifty words long, and six of those words are devoted to asking God not to lead us into temptation.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“For the moment the interfering neurotic who, in waking hours, tries to run the show, was blessedly out of the way.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
Also Read: Her Body And Other Parties Quotes by Carmen Maria Machado and Archer’s Voice Quotes by Mia Sheridan
Top The Doors of Perception Quotes
“When we feel ourselves to be sole heirs of the universe, when “the sea flows in our veins…and the stars are our jewels,” when all things are perceived as infinite and holy, what motive can we have for covetousness or self-assertion, for the pursuit of power or the drearier forms of pleasure?” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness – to be aware of it and yet remain in a condition to survive as an animal. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“Most lead lives at worst so painful, at best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principle appetites of the soul.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
Quotes from The Doors of Perception
“Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory – all these have served, in H. G. Wells’s phrase, as Doors in the Wall.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“To rush headlong into the comforting darkness of selfhood as a reborn human being, or even as beast, an unhappy ghost, a denizen of hell. Anything rather than the burning brightness of unmitigated Reality.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand and hand into the arena; they are crucified alone.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“There seems to be plenty of it,’ was all I would answer, when the investigator asked me to say what I felt about time.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies- all these are private and except through symbols and at second hand incommunicable.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“He can go about his business, so completely satisfied to see and be part of the divine Order of Things that he will never even be tempted. When all things are perceived as infinite and holy, what motive can we have for covetousness, for drearier forms of pleasure?” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“So in a certain sense disintegration may have its advantages. But of course it’s dangerous, horribly dangerous. Suppose you couldn’t get back, out of the chaos…” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
“An hour later, with ten more miles and the visit to the World’s Biggest Drug Store safely behind us, we were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as “being in one’s right mind.” ~ Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception).
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