Laura Huxley Quotes

Beauty starvation is almost as widespread as love starvation. Often we do not realize that this is what we are hungry for. In our world of traffic jams and artificial flowers we are so far removed from the pure experiences of our senses that we do not even realize our deprivation. (16: "AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME, or Five Minutes of Beauty a Day")

Service or giving is the other side of receiving. Giving and receiving is a full circle: a full circle feels more natural than a half circle.

Choose to see beauty. Watch a puppy's antics. Do not think of how he will look or behave when he is a grown dog. Look at him now, look at him fully, look at him so completely that there is no room in your mind for anything except this puppy, this moment. (16: "AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME, or Five Minutes of Beauty a Day")

each of us has a choice. We can passively take our place in the negative chain, accepting the harm to ourselves and passing it on to others. Or we can break the chain and turn the energy of a destructive emotion into a constructive action. Energy is neutral. It is what we do with it that makes it destructive or creative, harmful or healing.

Disguised in a thousand forms, hidden under an infinite variety of masks, love starvation is even more rampant than food starvation. It invades all classes and all peoples. It occurs in all climates, on every social and economic level. It seems to occur in all forms of life. Love starvation wears the stony face of the disciplinarian or speaks in the hysterical voice of the zealot. It puts on the unctuous manner of the hypocrite or the ruthlessness of the ambitious power-seeker.

Although we would not consider ourselves the target of a hurricane or a tidal wave, we often feel we are the victims of meteorological disturbances in the minds of other people. Sometimes it is true; people are trying to hurt us. But most of the time they are merely exploding, and we happen to be nearby-a conveniant substitute for their real target.

It is against our ethical principles as human beings to harm others. But aside from ethics, it is against our self-interest. The neurosis we cultivate in others inevitably rebounds against ourselves. From heavy-handed authority resentment and rebellion will develop. From sexual repression or dissatisfaction, anger, nervous tension and its consequences will arise.

It is feeling the energy, becoming conscious of it, that permits us to redirect it according to the best of our physical, intellectual, and ethical knowledge.

Our task is to find ways in which the energy evoked by negative emotions can be transformed, in a manner compatible with civilized living, into harmless-or better-into positively useful energy. Our purpose, then, is to become expert and voluntary energy transformers instead of involuntary energy victims. Like everything else, this takes practice.

There are almost as many ways of helping people to feel better as there are human beings.

There is danger in everything that we do. We are to eat food otherwise we don’t live and sometimes we eat food that is very damaging...Or addicted to food. Oh, yes, addiction to food is unfortunately really grave, also to alcohol or to anything else. But these drugs can be such an extraordinary gift, really. Some, not all drugs. Again, how can we speak about "drugs"? It is like speaking about the human race—each person is different, each drug is different!

focus your mind and respect your body. But mostly love your heart. I think that is where to begin, from there and then it goes out...Love your heart. It really is to love yourself to begin with and help everybody else in doing the same. But the heart being the center. You can focus your mind. You can respect your body. All of that is important. Then if you love your heart, this can be transmitted to other people. I mean you can help anybody that wants to do the same.

Whether you are nineteen or ninety, whether you weigh one hundred or three hundred pounds, whether you move with ease or difficulty, whether your joints are supple or stiff-no matter. Dance. ("Dance Naked With Music")

Like any other faculty, imagination can be starved and suffocated or stimulated and nourished.

Often a question, the first one, is not the real question at all but a substitute which our unconscious self has artfully framed to protect our superficial comfort from being disturbed by a deeper, more troubling doubt.