“I was looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely aesthetic, Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers—back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance.”

— Aldous Huxley , book The Doors of Perception

describing his experiment with mescaline, p. 22
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I was looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not a…" by Aldous Huxley?

Aldous Huxley 290

English writer 1894–1963

Paul Nash (artist) (1889–1946) British surrealist painter and war artist

Outline- An Autobiography & Other Writings (London, 1949)

“Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or… or what”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

“I realized that the image I had been given by my teachers, the scientists.... by their way of looking at Nature, was just another stage setting with all the magnificence and ingenuity that the genius of any artist produces in a work of art. I realized that in my scientific journey I had been under the power of a magic spell of a work of art whose reality was just as true as the verity of the image in an artist's vision.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote from Of divers arts, (1962), p. 21; as cited in International Handbook on Giftedness, Larisa V. Shavinina (2009), p. 862
undated

“Everything I do is because of writing. If I go for a walk, it’s because I’m thinking of writing. I go look at flowers, I go look at the garden, I go look at a museum, but it’s all coming back to writing. I don’t really do anything that isn’t about writing, and I don’t really know who I am if I’m not thinking about writing.”

Jamaica Kincaid (1949) Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer

On her obsession with writing in “Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?” https://www.guernicamag.com/does-truth-have-a-tone/ in Guernica (2013 Jun 17)

“What I hear is valueless; only what I see is living, and when I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p . 232
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

“I turn and I slowly walk away and I don't look back. It has always been a fault of mine, but it is the way I am. I never look back. Never.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

“Chased the good life my whole life long
Look back on my life, and my life gone
Where did I go wrong? And my head keeps spinning
Can't stop having these visions
I gotta get with it.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Welcome to Heartbreak
Lyrics, 808s & Heartbreak (2008)

“Whenever I begin to write a poem or draw a picture I am, in imagination, if not in reality, back in my room where I began to draw pen-and-ink pictures and write verses in my seventeenth year.”

Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) American poet

What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)
Context: Whenever I begin to write a poem or draw a picture I am, in imagination, if not in reality, back in my room where I began to draw pen-and-ink pictures and write verses in my seventeenth year. Both windows of the room look down on the great Governor’s Yard of Illinois. This yard is a square block, a beautiful park. Our house is on so high a hill I can always look down upon the governor. Among my very earliest memories are those of seeing old Governor Oglesby leaning on his cane, marching about, calling his children about him.

“Oh, there's no such thing as my favorite performance. I can't sit here today and look back, and say, Top Hat was better than Easter Parade or any of the others. I just don't look back, period. When I finish with a project, I say 'all right, that's that. What's next?”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Fred Astaire, interviewed by Dan Navarro for American Classic Screen Magazine, September/October 1978.

“When I reached thirty I looked back on my past.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), Introduction
Context: When I reached thirty I looked back on my past. The previous victories were not due to my having mastered strategy. Perhaps it was natural ability, or the order of heaven, or that other schools' strategy was inferior. After that I studied morning and evening searching for the principle, and came to realise the Way of strategy when I was fifty.
Since then I have lived without following any particular Way. Thus with the virtue of strategy I practise many arts and abilities — all things with no teacher. To write this book I did not use the law of Buddha or the teachings of Confucius, neither old war chronicles nor books on martial tactics. I take up my brush to explain the true spirit of this Ichi school as it is mirrored in the Way of heaven and Kwannon. The time is the night of the tenth day of the tenth month, at the hour of the tiger.

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Aldous Huxley 290

Related quotes

Related topics