Henry Miller
Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.
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.
Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.
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.
The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.
No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
The world is the mirror of myself dying.
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
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.
Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.
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.
I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.
Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.
It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.
The concert is a polite form of self induced torture.
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
Actors die so loud.
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.
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.
Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.
The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.
We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.
It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.
There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.
In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.
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.
And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?
Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'
What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?
Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.
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.
Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.
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 suchCollection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Fate
We are dancing in the hollow of nothingness. We are one flesh, but separated like stars.Collection: Stars
It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Real
...the wise man knows that every experience is to be viewed as a blessing.Collection: Wise
Every day the choice is presented to us, to live up to the spirit that is in us, or deny it.Collection: Choices
Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.Collection: Inspirational