Top 500 Henry Miller Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separate and self-hypnotized, but individual and related.”

— Henry Miller

152. “The moment one is on the side of life; peace and security drop out of consciousness. The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

154. “Everything hinges on how you look at things.”

— Henry Miller

155. “All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.”

— Henry Miller

156. “When man becomes fully conscious of his powers, his role, his destiny, he is an artist and he ceases his struggle with reality.”

— Henry Miller

157. “I want to prevent as many men as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they must earn a living. It is not true. One can starve to death – it is much better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death jams another cog in the automatic process. I would rather see a man take a gun and kill his neighbor, in order to get the food he needs, than keep up the automatic process by pretending that he has to earn a living.”

— Henry Miller

158. “The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

— Henry Miller

159. “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

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

— Henry Miller

161. “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.”

— Henry Miller

162. “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.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

164. “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.”

— Henry Miller

165. “I used to think a bird couldn’t fly if its wings got wet.”

— Henry Miller

166. “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.”

— Henry Miller

167. “I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must writer and write and write, even if everybody in the world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you.”

— Henry Miller

168. “We do not talk – we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.”

— Henry Miller

169. “There are times when I myself no longer know whether I said and did the things I report or whether I dreamed them up. Anyway, I always dream true. If I lie a bit now and then it is mainly in the interest of truth.”

— Henry Miller

170. “Imagination is the voice of the daring.”

— Henry Miller

171. “Why change the world? Change worlds!”

— Henry Miller

172. “There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves. The hero, then, is not Time, but Timelessness. We must get in step, a lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. The weather will not change.”

— Henry Miller

173. “We create our fate everyday.”

— Henry Miller

174. “Example moves the world more than doctrine.”

— Henry Miller

175. “The world around me is dissolving leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away.”

— Henry Miller

176. “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.”

— Henry Miller

177. “My world of human beings had perished. I was utterly alone in the world and for friends I had the streets, and the streets spoke to me in that sad, bitter language compounded of human misery, yearning, regret, failure, wasted effort.”

— Henry Miller

178. “Als je verkiest met de kudde mee te lopen ben je immuun. Als je geaccepteerd en geapprecieerd wilt worden moet je jezelf tot een nulliteit maken, jezelf zo maken dat je niet van de kudde te onderscheiden bent. Je mag wel dromen, mits je droomt wat miljoenen anderen tegelijk dromen.”

— Henry Miller

179. “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.”

— Henry Miller

180. “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.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

182. “Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!”

— Henry Miller

183. “Life becomes a spectacle and, if you happen to be an artist, you record the passing show.”

— Henry Miller

184. “The best technique is none at all.”

— Henry Miller

185. “What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.”

— Henry Miller

186. “I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.”

— Henry Miller

187. “To know Paris is to know a great deal.”

— Henry Miller

188. “Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.”

— Henry Miller

189. “Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

191. “For a metaphysical treat stop at the Big Sur Inn, which is also a haven for stray cats and dogs. Life along the South Coast is just a bed of roses, with a few thorns and nettles interspersed.”

— Henry Miller

192. “Think only what is right there, what is right under your nose to do. It’s such a simple thing – that’s why people can’t do it.”

— Henry Miller

193. “Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life.”

— Henry Miller

194. “I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

196. “A world without hope, but no despair.”

— Henry Miller

197. “All my Calvaries were rosy crucifixions, pseudo-tragedies to keep the fires of hell burning brightly for the real sinners who are in danger of being forgotten.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

199. “The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you.”

— Henry Miller

200. “I feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that’s un-American somehow.”

— Henry Miller