Top 500 Henry Miller Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

203. “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

204. “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

205. “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

Featured in: Real Quotes

206. “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

207. “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

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

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

211. “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

Featured in: Individuality Quotes

212. “You are always laughing at the wrong moment; you are considered cruel and heartless when in reality you are only tough and durable. But if you would laugh when others laugh and weep when they weep then you must be prepared to die as they die and live as they live.”

— Henry Miller

213. “Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.”

— Henry Miller

214. “Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.”

— Henry Miller

215. “We don’t trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

217. “I believe in saying the truth, coming out with it cold, shocking if necessary, not disguising it.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

219. “You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.”

— Henry Miller

220. “We create our fate every day that we live.”

— Henry Miller

221. “Understanding is not a piercing of the mystery, but an acceptance of it, a living blissfully with it, in it, through and by it.”

— Henry Miller

222. “For her were meant those terrible words of Louis-Philippe, “and a night comes when all is over, when so many jaws have closed upon us that we no longer have the strength to stand, and our meat hangs upon our bodies, as though it had been masticated by every mouth.”

— Henry Miller

223. “Thyroid eyes. Michelin lips. Voice like pea soup.”

— Henry Miller

224. “Were there a Christian so faithful to his God as I was to her we would all be Jesus Christ today.”

— Henry Miller

225. “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.”

— Henry Miller

Featured in: Real Quotes

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

— Henry Miller

227. “Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.”

— Henry Miller

228. “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.”

— Henry Miller

229. “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.”

— Henry Miller

230. “Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space – space even more than time.”

— Henry Miller

231. “New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.”

— Henry Miller

232. “Nothing is right or wrong but thinking makes it so. You no longer believe in reality but in thinking. And when you are pushed off the dead end your thoughts go with you and they are of no use to you.”

— Henry Miller

233. “I am so thoroughly healthy and empty. No dreams, no desires. I am like the luscious deceptive fruit which hangs on the Californian trees. One more ray of sun and I will be rotten.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller

235. “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

236. “There are so many ways of walking about and the best, in my opinion, is the Greek way, because it is aimless, anarchic, thoroughly and discordantly human.”

— Henry Miller

237. “The world is two thirds spaghetti and meatballs, one third syphilitic chancre.”

— Henry Miller

238. “Twilight hour. Indian blue, water of glass, trees glistening and liquescent.”

— Henry Miller

239. “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.”

— Henry Miller

240. “The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.”

— Henry Miller

241. “It was only in my forties that I started feeling young.”

— Henry Miller

242. “In every man’s heart there is anchored a little schooner.”

— Henry Miller

243. “The poem is the dream made flesh, in a two-fold sense: as work of art, and as life, which is a work of art.”

— Henry Miller

244. “Give me a few days of peace in your arms – I need it terribly. I’m ragged, worn, exhausted. After that I can face the world.”

— Henry Miller

245. “Surrealism is merely the reflection of the death process. It is one of the manifestations of a life becoming extinct, a virus which quickens the inevitable end.”

— Henry Miller

246. “Night is longing, longing, longing, beyond all endurance.”

— Henry Miller

247. “Paint what you like and die happy.”

— Henry Miller

248. “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.”

— Henry Miller

249. “Life’s wildest moment – she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.”

— Henry Miller

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

— Henry Miller