Henry Miller > Quotes

“Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
― Henry Miller

“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.”
― Henry Miller

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those 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. 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.”
― Henry Miller

“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.”
― Henry Miller

“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.”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

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

“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”
― Henry Miller

“Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.”
― Henry Miller

“Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”
― Henry Miller

“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”
― Henry Miller, 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.”
― Henry Miller

“All growth is a leap in the dark,
a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.”
― Henry Miller

“What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.”
― Henry Miller

“If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.”
― Henry Miller

“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself”
― Henry Miller

“Anaïs, I don't know how to tell you what I feel. I live in perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late. You numb me. [...] This is a little drunken, Anaïs. I am saying to myself "here is the first woman with whom I can be absolutely sincere." I remember your saying - "you could fool me, I wouldn't know it." When I walk along the boulevards and think of that. I can't fool you - and yet I would like to. I mean that I can never be absolutely loyal - it's not in me. I love women, or life, too much - which it is, I don't know. But laugh, Anaïs, I love to hear you laugh. You are the only woman who has a sense of gaiety, a wise tolerance - no more, you seem to urge me to betray you. I love you for that. [...]
I don't know what to expect of you, but it is something in the way of a miracle. I am going to demand everything of you - even the impossible, because you encourage it. You are really strong. I even like your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me.”
― Henry Miller, A Literate Passion: Letters of Anais Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy”
― Henry Miller

“And for that one moment of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap... it drive me nuts sometimes... I want to kick them out immediately... I do now and then. But that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women... they're all masochists at heart.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“What's a fuck when what I want is love?”
― Henry Miller

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

“Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is - in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet.
We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were deaf and blind, as if He were in a space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.
One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.”
― Henry Miller

“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.”
― 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, Sexus

“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. . . .”
― Henry Miller

“Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.”
― 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

“Life's wildest moment---she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.”
― Henry Miller, Sexus

“I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“I have found God, but he is insufficient.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.”
― Henry Miller

“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.”
― Henry Miller

“I’m an egotist, but I’m not selfish. There’s a difference. I’m a neurotic, I guess. I can’t stop thinking about myself. It isn’t that I think myself so important... I simply can’t think about anything else, that’s all. If I could fall in love with a woman that might help some. But I can’t find a woman who interests me.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

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

“One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
― Henry Miller

“Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“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.”
― Henry Miller

“True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.”
― Henry Miller

“A man should begin with his own times. He should become acquainted first of all with the world in which he is living and participating. He should not be afraid of reading too much or too little. He should take his reading as he does his food or his exercise. The good reader will gravitate to the good books. He will discover from his contemporaries what is inspiring or fecundating, or merely enjoyable, in past literature. He should have the pleasure of making these discoveries on his own, in his own way. What has worth, charm, beauty, wisdom, cannot be lost or forgotten. But things can lose all value, all charm and appeal, if one is dragged to them by the scalp.”
― Henry Miller

“Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
― Henry Miller

“Who wants to be a hundred? What's the point of it? A short life and a merry one is far better than a long one sustained by fear, caution, and perpetual medical surveillance.”
― Henry Miller

“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.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Everyman has his own destiny: The only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.”
― Henry Miller

“One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar.”
― Henry Miller

“I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.”
― Henry Miller

“On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“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. ”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Words are loneliness.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer