Those Barren Leaves
1925
Those Barren Leaves is a satirical novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1925. Set in a small Italian town, it follows a group of culturally ambitious guests at the summer palace of Mrs. Aldwinkle, who yearns to revive the glories of the Italian Renaissance. Through the interactions of characters like the aspiring novelist Mary Thriplow and the charming Calamy, Huxley critiques the superficiality and pretensions of the cultural elite. The novel's title references a poem by William Wordsworth, highlighting its themes of artistry and societal artifice.
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“It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realize the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live. The fools, the innumerable fools, take it all for granted, skate about cheerfully on the surface and never think of inquiring what's underneath.””
— Aldous Huxley
“The writer proposes, the readers dispose.””
— Aldous Huxley
“Simplicity is no virtue unless you are potentially complicated.””
— Aldous Huxley
“Money brings no satisfaction if one has to work for it; for if one works for it one has no time to spend it.””
— Aldous Huxley
“What is there in common between life and chemistry; between good and evil and electrical charges, between a collection of cells and the consciousness of a caress?””
— Aldous Huxley
“In itself, no doubt, the natural and moderate satisfaction of the sexual instinct is a matter quite indifferent to morality. It is only in relation to something else that the satisfaction of a natural instinct can be said to be good or bad.””
— Aldous Huxley
“The most successful men are those who never admit the validity of other people's opinions, who even deny their existence.””
— Aldous Huxley
“The Quakers pray as the spirit moves them; but to let oneself be moved by the spirit is an arduous business. Kindlier and more worldly churches, with a feeling for human weakness, provide their worshipers with rituals, litanies, beads and prayer wheels.””
— Aldous Huxley
“At some distant future date, when society is organized in a rational manner so that every individual occupies the position and does the work for which his capacities really fit him, when education has ceased to instil into the minds of the young fantastic prejudices instead of truth, when the endocrine glands have been taught to function in perfect harmony and diseases have been suppressed, all our literature of conflict and unhappiness will seem strangely incomprehensible; and our taste for the spectacle of mental torture will be regarded as an obscene perversion of which decent men should be ashamed.””
— Aldous Huxley
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Huxley, Aldous. Those Barren Leaves. Lex, lex-books.com/book/those-barren-leaves-ae62ef24-aaf8-4205-b1a5-fc7f82e03a2e.Huxley, A. (1925). Those Barren Leaves. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/those-barren-leaves-ae62ef24-aaf8-4205-b1a5-fc7f82e03a2eHuxley, Aldous. Those Barren Leaves. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/those-barren-leaves-ae62ef24-aaf8-4205-b1a5-fc7f82e03a2e.
