Henry Miller Quotes

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“Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.”

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

“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.”

“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.”

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.”

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

“The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.”

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

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

“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.”

“An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”

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

“At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love―just enough to feed the birds.”

“We create our fate every day… most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.”

“To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.”

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

“To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

“Everything hinges on how you look at things”

“In this age, which believes that there is a short-cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way, in the long run, is the easiest.”

“Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: It comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.”

“The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of our time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves.”

“Example moves the world more than doctrine.”

“Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it.”

“Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.”

“Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.”

“This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty… what you will.”

“That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life.”

“For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.”

“Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.”

“Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks-- admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve.”

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.”

“And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean, when boredom seems the very stuff of life.”

“either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.”

“The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife.”

“They never opened the door which leads to the soul.”

“The cancer of time is eating us away”

“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.”

“What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.”

“Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race”

“Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.”

“I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.”

“When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.”