Aldous Huxley

“ Ha, ha!” And Lypiatt laughed his loud Titan’s laugh, the laugh of cynicism which seems to belie, but which, for those who have understanding, reveals the high, positive spirit within. “Ideals—they’re not sufficiently genteel for you civilized young men. You’ve quite outgrown that sort of thing. No dream, no religion, no morality.”
“I glory in the name of earwig,” said Gumbril. He was pleased with that little invention. It was felicitous; it was well chosen. “One’s an earwig in sheer self-protection,” he explained.
But Mr. Mercaptan refused to accept the name of earwig at any price. ”

“ What a fuss they make when we talk about life! Bloody fools!” said Shearwater, mild and crushing. “Nobody but a fool could talk of mechanism in face of the kidneys. And there are actually imbeciles who talk about the mechanism of heredity and reproduction.”
“All the same,” began Mr. Mercaptan very earnestly, anxious to deny his own life, “there are eminent authorities. I can only quote what they say, of course. I can’t pretend to know anything about it myself. But——”
“Reproduction, reproduction,” Coleman murmured the word to himself ecstatically. ”

“ Mercaptan, who was pouring oil on his salad.
“How can you ever hope to achieve anything decent or solid, when you don’t even believe in decency or solidity? I look about me,” and Lypiatt cast his eyes wildly round the crowded room, “and I find myself alone, spiritually alone. I strive on by myself, by myself.” ”

“ Sometimes he put a piece of crust in his mouth and under the bushy brown moustache his jaw moved slowly, ruminatively, with a sideways motion, like a cow’s. He nudged Gumbril with his elbow. “Ass,” he said, “be quiet.”
Lypiatt went on torrentially. “You’re afraid of ideals, that’s what it is. You daren’t admit to having dreams. ”

“ There be beavers which have made themselves beavers for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. But there are some beavers, on the other hand, which were so born from their mother’s womb.” He burst into a fit of outrageous laughter which stopped as suddenly and as voluntarily as it had begun. ”

“ They take their crude theories as facts and try to make us accept them when we’re dealing with life. Oh, they are sacred, their theories. Laws of Nature they call them; and they talk about their known truths and our romantic biological fancies. ”

“ Newton and Boehme and Michelangelo—what are they doing but expressing, in different ways, different aspects of the same thing?”
“Alberti, I beg you,” said Gumbril. “I assure you he was the better architect.”
“Fi donc!” said Mr. Mercaptan. “San Carlo alle Quatro Fontane——” But he got no further. Lypiatt abolished him with a gesture.
“One reality,” he cried, “there is only one reality.”
“One reality,” Coleman reached out a hand across the table and caressed Zoe’s bare white arm, “and that is callipygous.” Zoe jabbed at his hand with her fork. ”