Henry Miller quotes

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Henry Miller

Birthdate: 26. December 1891
Date of death: 7. June 1980
Other names: Henry Valentine Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American writer, expatriated in Paris at his flourishing. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms, developing a new sort of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Capricorn, The Colossus of Maroussi, The Time of the Assassins, and The Books in My Life, many of which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris , adding Big Sur and the Oranges of Heronymous Bosch while finally residing in Big Sur, California. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.

Photo: Unknown author / Public domain

Works

Tropic of Cancer

Henry Miller

Tropic of Capricorn

Henry Miller

Sexus

Henry Miller

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Henry Miller

The Colossus of Maroussi

Henry Miller

Plexus

Henry Miller

Nexus

Henry Miller

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

Henry Miller

Black Spring

Henry Miller

Quotes Henry Miller

„The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission is to preach and to teach. These are gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don't ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners.“

— Henry Miller, book Sexus

Source: Sexus

„Paint what you like and die happy“

— Henry Miller

Painting, Happiness

„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

Life, Fear

„The real leader has no need to lead. He is content to point the way.“

— Henry Miller

Source: The Wisdom of the Heart (1941), p. 46

Way, Leadership

„The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.“

— Henry Miller, book Tropic of Capricorn

A fragment of Miller's unfinished book on D. H. Lawrence, originally published in the London literary journal Purpose.
Source: Tropic of Capricorn (1939) "Creative Death", p. 2

Life, Life

„All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.“

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

World, Sadness

„Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.“

— Henry Miller

Source: Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

„Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.“

— Henry Miller, book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Joy

„I have found God, but he is insufficient.“

— Henry Miller, book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

God

„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

God, Thinking

„I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.“

— Henry Miller, book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One

Money, Hope

„I am a free man-and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion. I need sunshine and paving tones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me. Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to anyone, I would've responsible to God alone-if he exited!“

— Henry Miller, book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter Four, Pappin

Despair, God, Freedom, Heart

„Take a good look at me. Now tell me, do you think I'm the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he's dead?“

— Henry Miller, book Tropic of Capricorn

Source: Tropic of Capricorn (1939) New York: Grove Press, 1961, p. 313

Thinking, Dead

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

— Henry Miller

The Books in My Life (1952) Chapter 11: The Story of My Heart (2nd edition. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1969, p. 192)

„Through it all I learned the value of being humble to the dust, reduced to ashes. Everyone should experience that. Before you can recognize you're somebody, you have to know you're nobody. [-] The butterfly was just a lowly worm in its beginning. The worm didn't live with the moment-to-moment expectation of sprouting wings and taking flight. He lived a useful and productive life, the life of a worm. And he had to die a worm in order to be born as an angel! The spinning of the cocoon is, in and of itself, remarkable. It is as wondrous as the emergence and first flight of the butterfly.“

— Henry Miller

Reflections (1981)

Life, Angels, Learning

„The Happiest peoples, it is said, are those which have no history. Those who have a history, those who have made history seem only to have emphazied through their acomplishments the eternality of struggle. These disappear too eventually, just as those who made no effort, who were content to merely live & enjoy.“

— Henry Miller

Source: Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

People, History, Effort

„I am glad to be a maggot in the corpse which is the world.“

— Henry Miller

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

World

„The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is, different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.“

— Henry Miller, book The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

With Edgar Varèse in the Gobi Desert http://books.google.com/books?id=jAEY3Kbnj3oC&q="The+new+always+carries+with+it+the+sense+of+violation+of+sacrilege+What+is+dead+is+sacred+what+is+new+that+is+different+is+evil+dangerous+or+subversive"&pg=PA172#v=onepage, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)

Sense, Evil, Dead

„I'm crazy enough to believe that the happiest man on earth is the man with the fewest needs.“

— Henry Miller, book The Colossus of Maroussi

Source: The Colossus of Maroussi (1941) Part 2, p. 133