To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Aldous HuxleyRead
For the first time in the history of the world, Buddhism proclaimed a salvation which each individual could gain from him or herself, in this world, during this life, without any least reference to God, or to gods either great or small.
Interpretation
Buddhism offers a path to personal salvation independent of divine intervention.
In this quote, Aldous Huxley highlights the revolutionary aspect of Buddhism, which emphasizes self-reliance and personal responsibility in the pursuit of enlightenment and salvation. Unlike many religious traditions that rely on a deity or deities for salvation, Buddhism empowers individuals to achieve liberation through their own efforts and practices, fostering a direct and personal connection to their spiritual journey.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about personal development workshops to highlight self-empowerment.
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.
If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case; so it's important to engage with the other Africa.
Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.
Assuming if there's such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?
We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.
The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.
In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
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