"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

"Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am."
— Henry Miller (Stand Still Like the Hummingbird)

"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

"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

"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

"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive."
— Henry Miller

"Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war."
— Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer)

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

"There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy"
— Henry Miller

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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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)

"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

"Life's wildest moment---she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies."
— Henry Miller (Sexus)

"Chaos is the score upon which reality is written."
— Henry Miller

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

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

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

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

"Develop ineterest 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

"I have found God, but he is insufficient."
— Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer)

"One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar."
— 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)

"You must be life for me to the very end," so he writes. "That is the only way in which to sustain my idea of you. Because you have gotten, as you see, tied up with something so vital to me, I do not think I shall ever shake you off. Nor do I wish to. I want you to live more vitally every day, as I am dead. That is why, when I speak of you to others, I am just a bit ashamed. It's hard to talk of one's self so intimately"
— Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer)

"Do not be duped by little duties. Do not be a chore man all your days."
— Henry Miller

"Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge."
— 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

"I'm a bit retarded, like most Americans."
— Henry Miller (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. . . ."
— 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

"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

"Everything hinges on how you look at things"
— 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)

"Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one
which gave it birth a book is dead to us.
Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs."
— Henry Miller

"True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself."
— 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

"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."
— Henry Miller (The Air-Conditioned Nightmare)

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

"Example moves the world more than doctrine."
— Henry Miller