Henry Miller Quotes

...when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.

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

Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

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

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.

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

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way.

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything - except his own nature.

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

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.

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.

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.

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.

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

The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

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.

To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.

Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us.

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.

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

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.

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

Everything hinges on how you look at things

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.

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.

Everyday we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read the 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. Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

When you come, please be so kind as to check your neuroses and psychoses at the gate... Fans and other obnoxious pests would do well to maintain silence.

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated.

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.

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

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.

We have been educated to such a fine - or dull - point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

The art of living is based on rhythm - on give & take, ebb & flow, light & dark, life & death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good & bad, right & wrong, yours & mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, 'the dance of life,' metamorphosis.

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.

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.

Dedication is not what others expect of you, it is what you can give to others.

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.

The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.

I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.

A man of good will with a little effort and belief in his own powers can enjoy a deep, tranquil, rich life - provided he go his own way.... To live one's own life is still the best way of life, always was and always will be.

Your whole past is like a long sleep which would have been forgotten had there been no memory, but remembrance is there in the blood and the blood is like an ocean in which everything is washed away but that which is new and more substantial even than life - reality.