Henry Miller Quotes

316 Sourced Quotes

Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.

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

Henry Miller
Topographically the country is magnificent - and terrifying. Why terrifying? Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak.

Henry Miller
When our very lives are threatened we begin to live. Even the psychic invalid throws away his crutches in such moments. For him the greatest joy is to realize that there is something more important than himself. All his life he has turned on the spit of his own roasted ego. He made the fire with his own hands. He drips in his own juices.

Henry Miller
The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal.

Henry Miller
It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.

Henry Miller
The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean-when boredom seems the very stuff of life.

Henry Miller
As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.

Henry Miller
To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money?

Henry Miller
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
Nobody sees with his eyes alone; we see with our souls.

Henry Miller
For one crime which is expiated in prison ten thousand are committed thoughtlessly by those who condemn.

Henry Miller
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.

Henry Miller
I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.

Henry Miller
I felt free and chained at the same time - like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man.

Henry Miller
If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you've got it half licked.

Henry Miller
Even if one's whole life were a mistake, there is always time to change.

Henry Miller
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.

Henry Miller
The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition, the world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives.

Henry Miller
There's nothing wrong with the world. What's wrong is our way of looking at it.

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

Henry Miller
The art of living is based on rhythm - on give & take, ebb & flow, light & dark, life & death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good & bad, right & wrong, yours & mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, 'the dance of life,' metamorphosis.

Henry Miller
To be free, as I then knew myself to be, is to realize that all conquest is vain, even the conquest of self, which is the last act of egotism. To be joyous is to carry the ego to its last summit and to deliver it triumphantly. To know peace is total: it is the moment after, when the surrenderer is complete, when there is no longer even the consciounsness of surrender. Peace is at the centre and when it is attainded the voice issues forth in praise and benediction. Then the voice carries far and wide, to the outermost limits of the universe. Then it heals, because it brings light and the warmth of compassion.

Henry Miller
I've spoken many times about the Japanese woman. I've praised her again and again. But I have to tell you that I think the Japanese man is the worst. The women are such delicate creatures and they're treated abominably by the men. The Japanese men are pigs - even worse than American men.

Henry Miller
Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.

Henry Miller