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Henry Miller Quotes

Henry Miller

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In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Knowledge
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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.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Chance
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Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Future
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All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Experience
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We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Chance
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An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Alone
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The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Art
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If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Peace
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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
Collection: Faith
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Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Wisdom
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The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Love
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Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Brainy
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True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Strength
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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
Collection: Fear
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The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Love
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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.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Communication
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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.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Music
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I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Money
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Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Imagination
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The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Life
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No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Failure
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Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Imagination
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The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Legal
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The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Leadership
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One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
- Henry Miller
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The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
- Henry Miller
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We live at the edge of the miraculous.
- Henry Miller
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Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
- Henry Miller
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Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
- Henry Miller
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The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
- Henry Miller
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The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.
- Henry Miller
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Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
- Henry Miller
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I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.
- Henry Miller
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The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.
- Henry Miller
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Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.
- Henry Miller
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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.
- Henry Miller
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There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.
- Henry Miller
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Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
- Henry Miller
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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.
- Henry Miller
Image of Henry Miller
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.
- Henry Miller
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If I am against the condition of the world, it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more.
- Henry Miller
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Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.
- Henry Miller
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Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.
- Henry Miller
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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.
- Henry Miller
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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
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One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.
- Henry Miller
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We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
- Henry Miller
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What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.
- Henry Miller
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Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.
- Henry Miller
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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.
- Henry Miller

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