Top 448 Quotes & Sayings by Henry Miller - Page 2

Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.

Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

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.

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.

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

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.

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.

Actors die so loud.

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

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.

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

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.

Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.

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.

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.

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

And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?

It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.

Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.

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.

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.

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

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.

It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.

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.

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

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.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

If I am against the condition of the world, it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more.

The concert is a polite form of self induced torture.

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

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.

Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it

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

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.

The cancer of time is eating us away

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

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

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.

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

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

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.

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.

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

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

When you can't create you can work

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Everything hinges on how you look at things

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