Stand Still Like the Hummingbird Quotes

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

“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

“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”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

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

“either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

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

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

“The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous. The language of society is conformity; the language of the creative individual is freedom. Life will continue to be a hell as long as people who make up the world shut their eyes to reality.”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

“It was the end for me. And yet not an end. In all the years which have since elapsed she remains the woman I loved and lost, the unattainable one [...] 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.

—Henry Miller, Stand Still like the Hummingbird (1962)”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird