Henry Miller > Quotes

“The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.”
― Henry Miller

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”
― Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

“Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“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

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
― Henry Miller

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”
― Henry Miller

“One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
― Henry Miller

“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 such”
― Henry Miller

“Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Anaïs, I don't know how to tell you what I feel. I live in perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late. You numb me. [...] This is a little drunken, Anaïs. I am saying to myself "here is the first woman with whom I can be absolutely sincere." I remember your saying - "you could fool me, I wouldn't know it." When I walk along the boulevards and think of that. I can't fool you - and yet I would like to. I mean that I can never be absolutely loyal - it's not in me. I love women, or life, too much - which it is, I don't know. But laugh, Anaïs, I love to hear you laugh. You are the only woman who has a sense of gaiety, a wise tolerance - no more, you seem to urge me to betray you. I love you for that. [...]
I don't know what to expect of you, but it is something in the way of a miracle. I am going to demand everything of you - even the impossible, because you encourage it. You are really strong. I even like your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me.”
― Henry Miller, A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953

“Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.”
― Henry Miller

“Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.”
― Henry Miller

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”
― Henry Miller

“Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.”
― Henry Miller

“What's a fuck when what I want is love?”
― Henry Miller

“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself”
― Henry Miller

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.”
― Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

“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, Tropic of Cancer

“I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous [person], the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the [person] in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable.”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

“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

“I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.”
― Henry Miller, A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953

“Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

“If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.”
― Henry Miller

“I have found God, but he is insufficient.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.”
― Henry Miller

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy”
― Henry Miller

“And for that one moment of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap... it drive me nuts sometimes... I want to kick them out immediately... I do now and then. But that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women... they're all masochists at heart.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.”
― Henry Miller

“Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything godlike about God, it is that. He dared to imagine everything”
― Henry Miller, Sexus