Quotes By Henry Miller

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.

True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.

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.

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

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.

And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

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.

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.

Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

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.

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.

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

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

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.

The world is the mirror of myself dying.

The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

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

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

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.

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

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.

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.

The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.