100 Quotes by Henry Miller
Henry Miller, a provocative and candid author, defied societal norms with his exploration of sexuality, introspection, and the human experience. His works, including "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn," challenged traditional literary boundaries with their explicit content and uninhibited expression. Miller's writing delved into the complexities of personal freedom, artistic expression, and the clash between individual desires and societal expectations. While his explicit prose often courted controversy and censorship, Miller's influence on modern literature cannot be denied. He paved the way for a more open and honest approach to discussing taboo subjects in literature and encouraged writers to embrace their unique voices, even when those voices challenged conventional standards.
Henry Miller Quotes
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written. (Meaning)
One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. (Quote Meaning)
All growth is a leap in the dark. (Meaning)
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously. (Quote Meaning)
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. (Meaning)
The world is not to be put in order; the world is order. (Quote Meaning)
Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life. (Meaning)
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. (Quote Meaning)
Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine. (Meaning)
Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement. (Quote Meaning)
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. (Meaning)
The real leader has no need to lead—he is content to point the way. (Quote Meaning)
Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk. (Meaning)
The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts. (Quote Meaning)
One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. (Meaning)
An artist is always alone – if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. (Quote Meaning)
Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed. (Meaning)
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. (Quote Meaning)
The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition. (Meaning)
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. (Quote Meaning)
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 is, in the long run, the easiest. (Meaning)
The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference. (Quote Meaning)
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. (Meaning)
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood. (Quote Meaning)
If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having. (Meaning)
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. (Quote Meaning)
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. (Meaning)
To make living itself an art, that is the goal. (Quote Meaning)
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood. (Meaning)
To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts. (Quote Meaning)
We live at the edge of the miraculous. (Meaning)
either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. (Quote Meaning)
Imagination is the voice of the daring. (Meaning)
Develop an Interest in Life as you see it. (Quote Meaning)
My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once. (Meaning)
Paint what you like and die happy (Quote Meaning)
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.
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.
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
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.
Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
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.
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.
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.
An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
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.
Everything hinges on how you look at things
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.
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.
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.
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
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.
The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
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.
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.
Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.
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.
Dedication is not what others expect of you, it is what you can give to others.
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.
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation... The other eight are unimportant.
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.
A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.
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.
The full and joyful acceptance of the worst in oneself may be the only sure way of transforming it.
I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it's painful gall-stones, it's gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul.
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.
To make living itself an art, that is the goal.
I felt free and chained at the same time - like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man.
If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you've got it half licked.
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 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. 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 any one. I would be responsible to God alone―if He existed!
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.
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 is, in the long run, the easiest.
An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument.
It is silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars and hypocrites.
We create our fate everyday
It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.
When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow, it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.
In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.
Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.
We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
By choosing to live above the ordinary level we create extraordinary problems for ourselves.
I soon found out you can't change the world. The best you can do is to learn to live with it.
The man who is intoxicated with life does not pass judgment, does not seek to come to a conclusion, does not impose his message on the world.
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown.
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?
The poet speaks adequately only when he speaks somewhat wildly... not with intellect alone, but with intellect inebriated by nectar.
If one believes, then miracles occur.
What is an artist? He's a man who has antennae, who knows how to hook up to the currents which are in atmosphere, in the cosmos.
The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to the fullest.
The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain.
If the poet can no longer speak for society, but only for himself, then we are at the last ditch.
Music is the can-opener of the soul.
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
If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.
The wise man knows that every experience is to be viewed as a blessing.
Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.
Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.
I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.
It was only in my forties that I started feeling young.
We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.
He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
Life', said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.
She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately--- a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us an we in each other's arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks-- a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die.
There's nothing wrong with the world. What's wrong is our way of looking at it.
Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.
When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it, or conquer it, and you only set up more resistance. . . . The most difficult thing to admit, and to realize with one's whole being, is that you alone control nothing. . . .
Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.
The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these things at once and the same time.
For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.
Giving and receiving are at bottom one thing, dependent on whether one lives open or closed. Living openly one becomes a medium, a transmitter; living thus, as a river, one experiences life to the full, flows along with the current of life, and dies in order to live again as an ocean.
Every day the choice is presented to us, to live up to the spirit that is in us, or deny it.
Voyages are accomplished inwardly.
We must not just be in the world and above the world, but also of the world. To love it for what it is... is the only task. Avoid it and you are lost. Lose yourself in it, and you are free.
Work, it seemed to me even at the threshold of life, is an activity reserved for the dullard. It is the very opposite of creation, which is play… The part of me which was given up to work, which enabled my wife and child to live in the manner which they unthinkingly demanded, this part of me which kept the wheel turning - a completely fatuous, ego-centric notion! - was the least part of me. I gave nothing to the world in fulfilling the function of breadwinner; the world exacted its tribute of me, that was all.
The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.
From the little reading I had done I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little or nothing. They had no illusions about duty, or the perpetuation of their kith and kin, or the preservation of the State. They were interested in truth and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity - creation.
Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity - I belong to the earth!
Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.
What I really hoped for, no doubt, was to come upon one of those lives which begin nowhere, which lead us through marshes and salt flats, trickling away, seemingly without plan, purpose or goal, and suddenly emerge, gushing like geysers, and never cease gushing, even in death.
To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way.
At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.
We live at the edge of the miraculous.
The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can't separate them. They're wedded.
I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.
All growth is a leap in the dark.
What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin-- to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.
We are dancing in the hollow of nothingness. We are one flesh, but separated like stars.
have you ever seen a genius out there looking for a job? it's the saddest thing in the world. no one will hire him. there is only one place where he is always welcome- at the bottom.
Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it
A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricature. Our world is a world of things. What we dread most, in the face of the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky.
To imagine a new world is to live it daily, each thought, each glance, each step, each gesture, killing and recreating, death always a step in advance. To spit on the past is not enough. To proclaim the future is not enough. One must act as if the past were dead and the future unrealizable.
What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
When you travel often, you will be addicted to it forever.
To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.
The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.
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.
Begin this moment, wherever you find yourself, and take no thought of the morrow. Look not to Russia, China, India, not to Washington, not to the adjoining county, city or state, but to your immediate surroundings. Forget Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and all the others. Do your part to the best of your ability, regardless of the consequences. Above all, do not wait for the next man to follow suit.
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.
I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.
I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself.
Living apart and at peace with myself, I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with anothers way of life-so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands Off.
The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.
In every man's heart there is anchored a little schooner.
Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.
The cancer of time is eating us away
Part of the act of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don't look for them in the wrong places.
We should not stop to reflect, compare, analyze, possess, but flow on and through, endlessly, like music.
Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes.
When you can't create you can work
In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.
For the moment I can think of nothing— except that I am a sentient being stabbed by the miracle of these waters that reflect a forgotten world.
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.
Even if one’s whole life were a mistake, there is always time to change.
America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.
To the man whose senses are alive and alert there is not even the need to stir from one's threshold.
The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human.
The history of the world is the history of the privileged few.
― Henry Miller Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
