Aldous Huxley

• I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.


• If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.


• Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.


• Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?


• There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.


• Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.


• Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.


• The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.

Anyway

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
... Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
... Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
... Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
... Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
... Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
... Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
... Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
... Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.


[In Mother Teresa: A Simple Path, compiled by Lucinda Vardey (1995), page 185. Eight of the original ten Paradoxical Commandments were reformatted as a poem titled "Anyway." Vardey reported that it was "a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan, the children's home in Calcutta." The Paradoxical Commandments were written by Kent M. Keith and published in 1968 in his booklet for student leaders titled The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council.]