Henry Miller Quotes | GloryQuotes

Henry Miller Quotes About Life

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

Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.

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

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

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

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

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

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Henry Miller Quotes About Music

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

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.

More Quotes by Henry Miller

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

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

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.

It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.

In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.

And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?

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

The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.

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

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

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

The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.

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

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

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

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

Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

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

The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.

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.

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

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.

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

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.

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

The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.

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

The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself.

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.

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.

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

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

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

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.

Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.

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

Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.

Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

Browse 92 quotes attributed to Henry Miller, listed in the source data as a American Author, organized around themes such as Life, Music, Work. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.