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Quotes by Henry Miller

Actors die so loud.
– Henry Miller
An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
– Henry Miller
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
– Henry Miller
Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
– Henry Miller
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
– Henry Miller
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
– Henry Miller
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
– Henry Miller
I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.
– Henry Miller
I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.
– Henry Miller
If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.
– Henry Miller
If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
– Henry Miller
If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
– Henry Miller
Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
– Henry Miller
In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
– Henry Miller
Instead of asking - How much damage will the work in question bring about? why not ask - How much good? How much joy?
– Henry Miller
Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.
– Henry Miller
Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.
– Henry Miller
Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.
– Henry Miller
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
– Henry Miller
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
– Henry Miller
My books are the books that I am, the confused man, the negligent man, the reckless man, the lusty, obscene, boisterous, scrupulous, lying, diabolically truthful man that I am.
– Henry Miller
Nine-tenths of our sickness can be prevented by right thinking plus right hygiene - nine-tenths of it!
– Henry Miller
No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
– Henry Miller
No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.
– Henry Miller
No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.
– Henry Miller
Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.
– Henry Miller
One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.
– Henry Miller
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
– Henry Miller
Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.
– Henry Miller
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation... the other eight are unimportant.
– Henry Miller
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
– Henry Miller
The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.
– Henry Miller
The concert is a polite form of self induced torture.
– Henry Miller
The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.
– Henry Miller
The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.
– Henry Miller
The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.
– Henry Miller
The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to ahve artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
– Henry Miller
The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
– Henry Miller
The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
– Henry Miller
The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.
– Henry Miller
The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.
– Henry Miller
The word civilization to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing. For me it was always so. I don't believe in the golden ages, you see... civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture.
– Henry Miller
The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.
– Henry Miller
There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.
– Henry Miller
Topographically the country is magnificent - and terrifying. Why terrifying? Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak.
– Henry Miller
True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.
– Henry Miller
Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.
– Henry Miller
We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
– Henry Miller
We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.
– Henry Miller
We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.
– Henry Miller
What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.
– Henry Miller
Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.
– Henry Miller
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.
– Henry Miller
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
– Henry Miller
Whenever a taboo is broken, something good happens, something vitalizing. Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn't the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us.
– Henry Miller
A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.
– Henry Miller
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
– Henry Miller
Living apart and at peace with myself, I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain, even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another's way of life - so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands off!
– Henry Miller
What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?
– Henry Miller
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.
– Henry Miller
Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.
– Henry Miller
There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.
– Henry Miller
The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.
– Henry Miller
The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.
– Henry Miller
The only thing we never get enough of is love and the only thing we never give enough of is love.
– Henry Miller
Sin, guilt, neurosis they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
– Henry Miller
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.
– Henry Miller
Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.
– Henry Miller
Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.
– Henry Miller
In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.
– Henry Miller
In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.
– Henry Miller
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
– Henry Miller
Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
– Henry Miller
Develop interest in life as you see it in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
– Henry Miller
Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.
– Henry Miller
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
– Henry Miller