Henry Miller Quotes:

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.

source: - Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.259, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Happiness, Spiritual, Peace, Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Wisdom

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.

Topics: Integrity, Commitment, Acceptance, Life And Destiny, Life Destiny

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

Topics: Heart, Sunshine, Silence, Seclusion, Paving

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

Topics: Inspirational, Lying, Book, Circulation, Ammunition

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

Topics: Gratitude, Time, Perspective, Life Moves On

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

Topics: Inspirational, Courage, Dark

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such

source: - Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.356, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Beauty, Life Is Precious, Life Moves On

Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.

source: - Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.251, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Inspirational, Progress, Adaptation, Progress In Life

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

Topics: Music, Lonely, Loneliness, Always Alone, Tropic Of Cancer

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.

Topics: Fear, Inspiration, Giving, Losing Ourselves, Self Restraint

The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

Topics: Motivational, Beauty, Gratitude, Spirit Of Life, Spiritual Awareness

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

source: - Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.2, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Life, Happiness, Success, Spirit Of Life, Spiritual Happiness

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

Topics: Beauty, Music, Beautiful, Life And Passion, Literature And Music

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.

Topics: Hero, Men, Differences, Being A Hero, Action Heroes

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

Topics: Reality, Chaos, Score, Order And Chaos, Chaos In The World

To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.

Topics: Sex, Hair, Breathing

I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.

Topics: Expression, Growth, Decay

By choosing to live above the ordinary level we create extraordinary problems for ourselves.

Topics: Ordinary, Levels, Problem, Choosing To Live

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.

Topics: Faith, Believe, Miracle

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.

Topics: Mean, Two, Society, American Flag

He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals

Topics: Leprosy, Saws, Hoaxes, Cannibal

What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment?

Topics: Enlightenment, Progress, Insane, Plunder

It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, i thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am. There are no more books to be written, thank God.

Topics: Book, Fall, Men, Looking For Happiness, Defamation

The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.

Topics: Song, Singing, Essentials

We create our fate everyday

Topics: Fate, Destiny, Everyday

Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song.

Topics: Running, Song, Wine, Tropic Of Cancer

We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.

source: - Henry Miller (1957). “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, p.325, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Fate, Training, Suffering

What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.

Topics: Evil, Joy, Mind

I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.

Topics: Mind, Expect Nothing, Made

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.

Topics: Order, Giving, Redemption, Mind Body And Spirit, Mind Body Spirit

either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.

Topics: Believe, Miracle, Hummingbirds

I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.

Topics: Eye, Sole, Grain

I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.

Topics: Sex, Want

Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown...

Topics: Night, Earth, Creation

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.

Topics: Ideas, People, Sake, Lowbrow

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.

Topics: Life, Frozen, Assets

It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.

Topics: Heart, Essence, Soul

What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin-- to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.

Topics: Hands, Earth, Want

Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.

Topics: Life, Matter, Let Me

Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.

Topics: Thinking, Serenity, Devil

Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen.

Topics: Way, Realizing, Better Life

The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we'll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it.

Topics: Eye, Heart, Men

...when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.

Topics: Believe, Miracle, Honey, Blocked, Hummingbirds

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... 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.

Topics: Lying, Book, Mind

New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves... A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute meaningless.

Topics: New York, Jobs, Thug, Leper

Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.

Topics: Peace, World, May, Good Neighbor, Shambles

People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused.

Topics: Blood, People, Skins, Lice, Tropic Of Cancer

Giving and receiving are at bottom one thing, dependent on whether one lives open or closed. Living openly one becomes a medium, a transmitter; living thus, as a river, one experiences life to the full, flows along with the current of life, and dies in order to live again as an ocean.

Topics: Ocean, Rivers, Order

Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.

Topics: Yield, Joy, Produce, Tropic Of Cancer

She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately--- a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us an we in each other's arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks--- a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die.

Topics: Beautiful, Eye, Sea, Oblivious, Leprosy

Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it

Topics: Forever, Remains

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.

Topics: Running, Eye, Defeat

Words are loneliness.

Topics: Loneliness

What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.

Topics: Sex, Together, World, Bitter Experience

Certainly paradise, whatever, wherever it be, contains flaws. (Paradisical flaws, if you like.) If it did not, it would be incapable of drawing the hearts of men or angels.

Topics: Angel, Heart, Men

It's good to be just plain happy, it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.

Topics: Happiness, Laughter, Knowing, Happy Thoughts

Example moves the world more than doctrine.

Topics: Moving, Example, Doctrine

On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.

Topics: Time, Drama, Creating, Tropic Of Cancer

When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it, or conquer it, and you only set up more resistance. . . . The most difficult thing to admit, and to realize with one's whole being, is that you alone control nothing. . . .

Topics: Trying, Resistance, Problem, Contentment And Peace

Everything hinges on how you look at things

Topics: Looks, Hinges

Cluster together like stars!

Topics: Stars, Together, Clusters

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

Topics: Happiness, Money, Determination

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.

Topics: Love, Inspirational, Life, Inspirational Romance, Motivational Love

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

Topics: Music, Ideas, Mind

The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself.

Topics: Love, Real, Enemy, Antagonism

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

Topics: Fate, Needs, Literature

History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made manifest in time.

Topics: Time, Fall, Men

To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way.

Topics: Self, Way, Germs

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.

Topics: Lying, Book, Shelves

Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world. Tomorrow you may sing in Paradise above the smoking ruins of your world-cities. But tonight I would like to think of one man, a lone individual, a man without name or country, a man whom I respect because he has absolutely nothing in common with you - MYSELF. Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am.

Topics: Country, Men, Thinking, Absolutely Nothing

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

Topics: Life, Humility, Literature, Mystery Of Life

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Topics: Passion, Mean, Fire, Honest Criticism

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

Topics: Order, Confusion, Understanding, Chaos And Confusion

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

Topics: God, Voice, Imagination, Godlike, Imagining Things

We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.

Topics: Reading, Magazines, Facts

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

source: - Henry Miller (1957). “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, p.25, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Positive, Attitude, Vision, Journey And Destination, Departing

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.

Topics: Travel, Anchors, Way, Departing

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

Topics: Crazy, World, Becoming, Adapted

The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.

Topics: Inspirational, Leadership, Business, Lead Characters, Leadership Courage

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.

Topics: Leadership, Wise, Wisdom, Great Libertarian

We live at the edge of the miraculous.

Topics: Inspirational, Literature, Miraculous

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

Topics: Witty, Ignorance, Knowledge

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

Topics: Reading, Luxury, Giving

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

Topics: Music, Beautiful, Opiates

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

Topics: Insane, Literature, Madness, Invigorating

The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.

Topics: Literature, Crime, Prisoner, Prison Life, Criminality

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.

Topics: Stay Strong, Art, Philosophy

Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. To-day I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity - I belong to the earth!

Topics: Men, Humanity, Proud

When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow, it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.

Topics: Pain, Regret, Fall, Human Voice

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

Topics: Art, Mind, Wake Up

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.

Topics: Inspirational, Running, Believe, Short Cuts, Lessons To Be Learned

...the wise man knows that every experience is to be viewed as a blessing.

source: - Henry Miller (1957). “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, p.27, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Wise, Blessing, Men

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.

Topics: Tree, Joy, Fruit, Ripe Fruit, Sheer Joy

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Topics: Liars, Lying, Writing, Fabric Of Life, Outrageous

To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.

source: - Henry Miller (2007). “Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I”, p.31, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: World, Ghost, Madmen

The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.

Topics: Change, Pain, Men, No Pain

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

Topics: Philosophy, Facts, Action, Back Again

I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable

source: - Henry Miller (1962). “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”, p.49, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Lonely, Men, Artist, Wanderers, Love Always

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Topics: Life, Positive, Law Of Attraction, Meaning Life, What Is The Meaning Of Life

For the moment I can think of nothing— except that I am a sentient being stabbed by the miracle of these waters that reflect a forgotten world.

Topics: Thinking, Water, Miracle, Sentient Beings

Everyday we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read the lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Believe, Truth And Beauty, Everyman

I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think.

Topics: Running, Stars, Eye, Remorseless, Running Back

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

source: - Henry Miller (2010). “The Colossus of Maroussi (Second Edition)”, p.38, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Fate, Men, Medicine

Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated.

Topics: Real, Sacrifice, Love Is, Perplexed

Music is the can-opener of the soul.

source: - Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

Topics: Soul, Pineal Gland, Music Is

Every day the choice is presented to us, to live up to the spirit that is in us, or deny it.

Topics: Choices, Spirit, Deny

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation... The other eight are unimportant.

source: - Sexus ch. 21 (1949)

Topics: Funny, Sexy, Good Sex, Funny Sex, Funny Sexy

The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues.You can't separate them. They're wedded.

Topics: Men, Imperfection, Important

I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must writer and write and write, even if everybody in the world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you.

source: - Henry Miller, Norman Mailer (1976). “Genius and lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller”, Grove Press

Topics: Giving Up, Believe, Writing

Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Fate, Life Fate

There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.

Topics: Love, Funny, Strong Women, Loving A Woman

The art of living is based on rhythm - on give & take, ebb & flow, light & dark, life & death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good & bad, right & wrong, yours & mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, 'the dance of life,' metamorphosis.

Topics: Art, Good Life, Acceptance, Light Dark, Dark Life

The full and joyful acceptance of the worst in oneself may be the only sure way of transforming it.

Topics: Acceptance, May, Way

The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.

Topics: Goal, Life Is, Life Goal

To make living itself an art, that is the goal.

source: - Henry Miller (1957). “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, p.400, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Art, Teaching, Goal

If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.

source: - Henry Miller (1969). “Mémoires, Plaidoiries Et Documents”, p.192, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Heaven, Found, Certainty

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything - except his own nature.

source: - Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.175, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Nature, Men, Masters, Man And Nature, Best Nature

We have been educated to such a fine - or dull - point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

source: - Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.166, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Criticism, Dull, Way

It is silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars and hypocrites.

Topics: Brother, Liars, Integrity, Cannibal

Even if one’s whole life were a mistake, there is always time to change.

source: - Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller (1989). “A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953”, p.373, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Mistake, Whole Life, Whole

Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

source: - Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Kings, Men, Profound, Profound Truth, Tropic Of Cancer

Voyages are accomplished inwardly.

source: - Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.59, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Voyages, Accomplished

The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human.

source: - Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

Topics: Opportunity, Wonderful, Offers

Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us.

source: - Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.154, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Failing, Christ, Maximum

A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.

source: - Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Writing, Men, Trying

There's nothing wrong with the world. What's wrong is our way of looking at it.

source: - Henry Miller (1957). “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, p.351, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Perspective, World, Way

Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.

Topics: Sex, War, Obscenity, Tropic Of Cancer

The cancer of time is eating us away

source: - Henry Miller, Norman Mailer (1976). “Genius and lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller”, Grove Press

Topics: Time, Cancer, Eating, Tropic Of Cancer

The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain.

source: - Henry Miller (2007). “Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I”, p.18, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: Pain, Live Life, Writing

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.

source: - Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.246, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Communication, Writing, Important

Until we lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

Topics: Self Control, Conformity, No Hope, Losing Ourselves, Self Restraint

have you ever seen a genius out there looking for a job? it's the saddest thing in the world. no one will hire him. there is only one place where he is always welcome- at the bottom.

Topics: Jobs, Genius, World, Looking For A Job

Keep your libraries, your penal institutions, your insaneasylums... give me beer.You think man needs rule, he needs beer. The world does not need morals, it needs beer... The souls of men have been fed with indigestibles, but the soul could make use of beer.

Topics: Beer, Men, Thinking, Brewing Beer

What is an artist? He's a man who has antennae, who knows how to hook up to the currents which are in atmosphere, in the cosmos.

source: - Henry Miller, Frank L. Kersnowski (1994). “Conversations with Henry Miller”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

Topics: Writing, Men, Artist, Hook Up

To imagine a new world is to live it daily, each thought, each glance, each step, each gesture, killing and recreating, death always a step in advance. To spit on the past is not enough. To proclaim the future is not enough. One must act as if the past were dead and the future unrealizable.

source: - Henry Miller (2007). “Black Spring”, p.26, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: Past, World, Gestures

An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument.

source: - Henry Miller (1962). “The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud”, p.138, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Artist, Instruments, Creator

From the little reading I had done I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little or nothing. They had no illusions about duty, or the perpetuation of their kith and kin, or the preservation of the State. They were interested in truth and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity - creation.

source: - Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Reading, Men, Done, Molding

It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.

source: - Henry Miller (1972). “The Henry Miller reader”, Ayer Co Pub

Topics: Stressed, Needs, Metamorphosis

I felt free and chained at the same time - like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man.

source: - Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.39, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Men, Feels Just, Crooks, Right Man

Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time.

source: - Henry Miller (1962). “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”, p.60, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Teacher, Hero, Heart, Statesmen, Vulture

Dedication is not what others expect of you, it is what you can give to others.

Topics: Dedication, Giving

A man of good will with a little effort and belief in his own powers can enjoy a deep, tranquil, rich life - provided he go his own way.... To live one's own life is still the best way of life, always was and always will be.

Topics: Men, Rich Life, Effort

Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.

source: - Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

Topics: Friendship Love, Next, Opinion, Valuable Things

To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to the fullest.

Topics: Live Life, Love Is, Paint, Love Again

I soon found out you can't change the world. The best you can do is to learn to live with it.

Topics: Change, Learning, Balance, Golden Mean

A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricature. Our world is a world of things. What we dread most, in the face of the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky.

Topics: Peace, Giving Up, Our World, Debacles

When you come, please be so kind as to check your neuroses and psychoses at the gate... Fans and other obnoxious pests would do well to maintain silence.

Topics: Psychosis, Silence, Fans

It was only in my forties that I started feeling young.

Topics: Birthday, Feelings, Young

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 anothers way of life-so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands Off.

source: - Henry Miller (1962). “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”, p.18, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Acceptance, Simple, Hands

Your whole past is like a long sleep which would have been forgotten had there been no memory, but remembrance is there in the blood and the blood is like an ocean in which everything is washed away but that which is new and more substantial even than life - reality.

source: - Henry Miller, Norman Mailer (1976). “Genius and lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller”, Grove Press

Topics: Memories, Ocean, Sleep, Long Sleep

'Life', said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine.

source: - Henry Miller, Norman Mailer (1976). “Genius and lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller”, Grove Press

Topics: Life, Men, Thinking, Intestines

Work on one thing at a time until finished.

source: - Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Writing, One Thing At A Time, Finished

We are dancing in the hollow of nothingness. We are one flesh, but separated like stars.

source: - Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

Topics: Stars, Dancing, Flesh

Begin this moment, wherever you find yourself, and take no thought of the morrow. Look not to Russia, China, India, not to Washington, not to the adjoining county, city or state, but to your immediate surroundings. Forget Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and all the others. Do your part to the best of your ability, regardless of the consequences. Above all, do not wait for the next man to follow suit.

source: - Henry Miller (1962). “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”, p.3, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Jesus, Men, Russia

It is our destiny to live with the wrong as well as the right kind of citizens, and to learn from them, the wrong-minded ones, as much or more as from others. If we have not yet succeeded -after how many centuries?- in eliminating from life the elements which plague us perhaps we need to question life more closely. Perhaps our refusal to face reality is the only ill we suffer from, and all the rest but illusion and delusion. (p.26)

Topics: Reality, Destiny, Suffering

Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.

source: - Henry Miller (1962). “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”, p.44, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Reality, Swim, Frightened

The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.

source: - Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.87, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Inner Peace, Mind, Fulfillment

I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.

source: - Henry Miller (2007). “Plexus: The Rosy Crucifixion II”, p.599, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: School, Order, Purpose

At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.

source: - Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.58, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Giving Up, Heart, World, Unison

We must not just be in the world and above the world, but also of the world. To love it for what it is... is the only task. Avoid it and you are lost. Lose yourself in it, and you are free.

Topics: Gratitude, Tasks, World

We should not stop to reflect, compare, analyze, possess, but flow on and through, endlessly, like music.

source: - Henry Miller (1958). “The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder”, p.47, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Flow, Should, Compare

Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.

source: - Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

Topics: Yesterday, Flags, Half, Masts

I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself.

source: - Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

Topics: Found, Ifs

I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it's painful gall-stones, it's gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul.

Topics: Running, Mirrors, Blood, Lava, Dysentery

We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong.

source: - Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.115, New Directions Publishing

Topics: War, Common Sense, Shadow

We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.

source: - Henry Miller (2007). “Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I”, p.138, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: Artist, Giving, Grace

America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.

source: - Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Writing, Artist, America, Leper, Creative Writers

Man, as man, has never realized himself. The greater part of him, his potential being, has always been submerged. What is history if not the endless story of his repeated failures?

source: - Henry Miller (1962). “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”, p.15, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Men, Stories, Endless, Repeated Failure

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

source: - Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.193, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Art, Opposites, Understanding

Part of the act of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don't look for them in the wrong places.

Topics: Creating, Looks, Kind

The history of the world is the history of the privileged few.

Topics: History, World, World History

I haven't any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I'm neither for nor against. I'm a neutral.

source: - Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

Topics: Passion, Responsibility, Worry

In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.

source: - Henry Miller (1978). “Quiet days in Clichy and The world of sex: two books”, Atlantic Monthly Press

Topics: Men, Creation Of Man, Actors

The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these things at once and the same time.

source: - Henry Miller (1957). “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, p.23, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Perspective, Soul, Different

If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you've got it half licked.

source: - Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

Topics: Falling In Love, Cynical, Forgiving, Surly, Love Again

When you travel often, you will be addicted to it forever.

source: - "Feeding The Travel Addiction Beast: The Ladder Of Addiction" by William D. Chalmers, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 22, 2012.

Topics: Forever

Keep your exclamation points under control!

Topics: Exclamation Points, Emotion, Exclamation

There was another thing I heartily disbelieved in - work. Work, it seemed to me even at the threshold of life, is an activity reserved for the dullard. It is the very opposite of creation, which is play… The part of me which was given up to work, which enabled my wife and child to live in the manner which they unthinkingly demanded, this part of me which kept the wheel turning - a completely fatuous, ego-centric notion! - was the least part of me. I gave nothing to the world in fulfilling the function of breadwinner; the world exacted its tribute of me, that was all.

Topics: Children, Opposites, Play, Wheels Turning, Breadwinner

The American white man (not to speak of the Indian, the Negro, the Mexican) hasn't a ghost of a chance. If he has any talent he's doomed to have it crushed one way or another. The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack of him.

source: - Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.156, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Men, White Man, Mexican

The man who is intoxicated with life does not pass judgment, does not seek to come to a conclusion, does not impose his message on the world.

source: - Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller (1989). “A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Life Lesson, Men, Doe

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.

source: - Henry Miller (1969). “The Books in My Life”, p.120, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Reason Why, Reason, Stifling

For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.

source: - Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

Topics: Adventure, Self, Space

Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middle-class men and woman who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will least forever or else are so frightened it won't, that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.

Topics: Men, Class, Waiting, Decrepit, Bomb Shelters

I think someday you're going to be a great writer," he said. "But" he added maliciously, "first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first.

source: - Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

Topics: Falling In Love, Mean, Thinking

Imagination is the voice of the daring.

Topics: Voice, Imagination, Daring

Don't look for miracles. You yourself are the miracle.

Topics: Miracle, Looks

For one crime which is expiated in prison ten thousand are committed thoughtlessly by those who condemn.

source: - Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.86, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Justice, Prison, Crime

When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears.

source: - Henry Miller (1961). “Tropic of Cancer”

Topics: Running, Art, Emotional, Stuttering, Emotional Release

To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money. Money, money everywhere and still not enough! And then no money, or a little money, or less money, or more money but money always money. and if you have money, or you don't have money, it is the money that counts, and money makes money, but what makes money make money?

source: - Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

Topics: Money, Night, Crowds

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.

source: - Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.6, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Death, Moving, Men, Life Moves On

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

source: - Henry Miller (2010). “The Colossus of Maroussi”, p.205, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Work, Believe, Ambition, Cans Of Worms

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.

Topics: Country, Divorce, Men, Man And Nature, Fabric Of Life

Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.

source: - Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Nature, Writing, Discovery, Voyages Of Discovery

Somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself.

source: - Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Important, Way, Storytelling

My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once.

source: - Henry Miller (2007). “Plexus: The Rosy Crucifixion II”, p.61, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: Curiosity, Hunger

We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow.

source: - Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

Topics: Journey, Tomorrow

In every man's heart there is anchored a little schooner.

Topics: Heart, Men, Discovery

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

source: - Henry Miller (2007). “Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I”, p.205, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: Men, Forever, Humanity

If the poet can no longer speak for society, but only for himself, then we are at the last ditch.

source: - Henry Miller (1962). “The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud”, p.33, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Writing, Lasts, Speak

Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.

source: - Henry Miller, Norman Mailer (1976). “Genius and lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller”, Grove Press

Topics: Men, Destiny, Work Out