Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch Quotes

“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, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist.
To make living itself an art, that is the goal.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“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.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“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.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“We create our fate everyday”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“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.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“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. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. (Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice.) yet everyone knows that nothing is accomplished without sacrifice.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“She discovered what others know only too well in a cynical way, that people prefer to believe in and worship a god who is remote rather than live out the godlike nature which is their inherent being.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“And no one sets about saving the world unless he has first experienced the miracle of personal salvation.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself - direct experience of life. The same is true for art. Here, too, we an dispense with "the masters.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“Sweet or bitter, I am now convinced that all experience is enriching and rewarding. Above all, instructive.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“The ideal community, in a sense, would be the loose, fluid aggregation of individuals who elected to be alone and detached in order to be at one with themselves and all that lives and breathes. It would be a God-filled community, even if none of its members believe in (a) God. It would be a paradise, even though the word had long disappeared from our vocabulary.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“. . . They had skies of pure azure and walls of fog moving in and out of the canyons with invisible feet, hills in winter of emerald green and in summer mountain upon mountain of pure gold. They had even more, for there was ever the unfathomable silence of the forest, the blazing immensity of the Pacific, days drenched with sun and nights spangled with stars. . .”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“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 chose. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. (Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice.) Yet everyone knows that nothing is accomplished without sacrifice.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“This is the lone-American type I admire, the kind I believe in, can get along with, and whom I vote for even though he’s never nominated for office. The democratic man our poets sang of but who, alas, is being rapidly exterminated, along with the buffalo, the moose and the elk, the great bear, the eagle, the condor, the mountain lion. The sort of American that never starts a war, never raises a feud, never draws the color line, never tries to lord it over his fellow-man, never yearns for higher education, never holds a grudge against his neighbor, never treats an artist shabbily and never turns a beggar away. Often untutored and unlettered, he sometimes has more of the poet and the musician in him, philosopher too, than those who are acclaimed as such. His whole way of life is aesthetic. What marks him as different, sometimes ridiculous, is his serenity and originality. That he aspires to be none other than himself, is this not the essence of wisdom?”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“Big Sur? Why it's just like every other place! . . . a profound truth, since a place is only what you make it, what you bring to it.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there.”*”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“Between laughs I could hear my mother’s words ringing in my ears. “Why don't you write something that will sell?”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“Artists never thrive in colonies.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“There is one other thing to know … when you have expressed yourself to the fullest, then and only then will it dawn upon you that everything has already been expressed, not in words alone but in deed, and that all you need really do is say Amen!”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“No, we are never alone. But one has to live apart to know it for the truth.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“Better keep the young on lemons and lavender until they've reached the age of discretion.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“Only when we are truly alone does the fullness and richness of life reveal itself to us. In simplifying our lives, everything acquires a significance hitherto unknown. When we are one with ourselves the most insignificant blade of grass assumes its proper place in the universe”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“A writer often has two great surprises in store for him: the first is the lack of proper response to his efforts; the second is the overwhelming nature of the response when it does come. One is just as bad as the other.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“You will then be ready to undergo initiation: an ordeal imposed by the Brotherhood of Fools and Simpletons. Three questions will be put to you. Just three. The first: 'How would you order the world if you were given the powers of the creator?' the second: 'What is it you desire that you do not already possess?' The third: 'Say something that will truly astonish us!'
If you answer these satisfactorily you are then to return to your birthplace, sit quietly with hands folded, and meditate on the needs of all God's creatures. . . . When you know what it is they need . . . you are to report back to the Brotherhood and dissolve the order.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“If it was a mistake not to finish school (it wasn't!), it was an even worse mistake to go to work. ("Work! The word was so painful he couldn't bring himself to pronounce it," says a character in one of Cossery's books.) Until I was almost eighteen I had know freedom, a relative freedom, which is more than most people ever get to know. (It included "freedom of speech," which has hung over into my writing.) Then, like an idiot, I entered the lists. Overnight, as it were, the bit was put in my mouth, I was saddled, and the cruel rowels were dug into my tender flanks. It didn't take long to realize what a shithouse I had let myself into. Every new job I took was a step further in the direction of "murder, death and blight." I think of them still as prisons, whorehouses, lunatic asylums: the Atlas Portland Cement Co., the Federal Reserve Bank, the Bureau of Economic Research, the Charles Williams Mail Order House, the Western Union Telegraph Co., etc. To think that I wasted ten years of my life serving these anonymous lords and masters! That look of rapture in Pookie's eyes, that look of supreme admiration which I reserved for such as Eddie Carney, Lester Reardon, Johnny Paul: it was gone, lost, buried. It returned only when, much later, I reached the point where I was completely cut off, thoroughly destitute, utterly abandoned. When I became the nameless one, wandering as a mendicant through the streets of my own home town. Then I began to see again, to look with eyes of wonder, eyes of love, into the eyes of my fellow-man.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“Up all the wrong alleys, down all the wrong streets—yet how right I was!—until I came to the end of my tether.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“What I say is, if we are going to meet one another with a view or an awareness of our diversity and divergences we will never acquire enough knowledge to deal with one another smoothly and effectively. To get anywhere with another individual one has to cut through to the rock-bottom man, to that common human substratum which exists in all of us. This is not a difficult procedure and certainly doesn't demand of one that he be a psychologist or a mind reader. One doesn't have to know a thing about astrological types, the complexity of their reactions to this or that. There is one simple, direct way to deal with all types, and that is truthfully and honestly.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“She fell into it naturally and unassumingly, more as an angelic being than as a doer of good deeds. In performing her duties she innocently believed that she was awakening the afflicted to the nature and existence of the true source of power and health, or peace and joy. But, like all who have made the experiment, she gradually came to perceive that people are not interested in the divine power which is theirs but only in finding an intermediary who will undo the havoc which they have wrought through stupidity or meanness of soul. She discovered what others know only too well in a cynical way, that people prefer to believe in and worship a god who is remote rather than live out the godlike nature which is their inherent being. She found that people prefer the easy path, the lazy, irresponsible path, of confession, repentance and sinning anew to the hard but direct path which leads, not to the Cross, but to life more abundant, life everlasting.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“It sounds so simple: break it up! get a divorce! separate! But what about the child? Where would I stand, in court, claiming the right to keep my daughter? “You? A man with your reputation?” I could just see the judge foaming at the mouth. Even to do away with myself would not remedy matters. We had to go on. We had to fight it out. No, that’s not the word. Iron things out. (With what? A flatiron?) Compromise! That’s better. It’s not either! Then surrender! Admit you’re licked. Let her walk over you. Pretend you don’t feel, don’t hear, don’t see. Pretend you’re dead.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch