Henry Miller Quotes - Page 15

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• But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.

  Henry Miller

  Sweet, Littles, Chance

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

  4 Copy quote

• One can see now how the idea of heaven takes hold of men's consciousness, how it gains ground even when all the props have been knocked from under it. There must be another world beside this swamp in which everything is dumped pell-mell. It's hard to imagine what it can be like, this heaven that men dream about.

  Henry Miller

  Dream, Men, Ideas

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

  4 Copy quote

• Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.

  Henry Miller

  Swim, Void, Planets

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses.

  Henry Miller

  Men, Rose, Want

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

  6 Copy quote

• Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box.

  Henry Miller

  Letting Go, Spring, Struggle

  Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.

  Henry Miller

  Eye, Cities, Order

  4 Copy quote

• Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space―space even more than time.

  Henry Miller

  Distance, Space, Needs

  Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.36, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• But you can’t put fight into a man’s guts if he hasn’t any fight in him. There are some of us so cowardly that you can’t ever make heroes of us, not even if you frighten us to death. We know too much, maybe. There are some of us who don’t live in the moment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind.

  Henry Miller

  Hero, Fighting, Men

  Henry Miller, Norman Mailer (1976). “Genius and lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller”, Grove Press

  4 Copy quote

• When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.

  Henry Miller

  Travel, Spring, Paris

  Henry Miller (1961). “Tropic of Cancer”

  10 Copy quote

• Men are not suffering from the lack of good literature, good art, good theatre, good music, but from that which has made it impossible for these to become manifest. In short, they are suffering from the silent shameful conspiracy (the more shameful since it is unacknowledged) which has bound them together as enemies of art and artists.

  Henry Miller

  Art, Men, Enemy

  Henry Miller (1957). “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, p.57, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• The moment one is on the side of life; peace and security drop out of consciousness. The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.

  Henry Miller

  Peace, Sides, Consciousness

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.87, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Remorse is impotence; it will sin again. Only repentance is strong - it can end everything.

  Henry Miller

  Strong, Sin, Repentance

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.203, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet - if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

  Henry Miller

  Funny, Book, Reading

  Henry Miller (2007). “Black Spring”, p.48, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.

  Henry Miller

  Study, Crime, Mankind

  Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.87, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured-disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui-in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

  Henry Miller

  Fear, War, Eye

  Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

  6 Copy quote

• Until he [man] has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him. The tragedy of Greece lies not in the destruction of a great culture but in the abortion of a great vision.

  Henry Miller

  Lying, Men, Abortion

  4 Copy quote

• The wallpaper with which the men of science have covered the world of reality is falling to tatters. The grand whorehouse which they have made of life requires no decoration; it is essential that only the drains function adequately. Beauty, that feline beauty that has us by the balls in America, is finished.

  Henry Miller

  Fall, Reality, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Understanding is not a piercing of the mystery, but an acceptance of it, a living blissfully with it, in it, through and by it.

  Henry Miller

  Writing, Acceptance, Understanding

  Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• The vast difference between astrology and other sciences, if I may put it thus, is that astrology deals not with facts but with profundities. The solid ground on which the scientist pretends to rest gives way, in astrology, to imponderables.

  Henry Miller

  Differences, Astrology, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity.

  Henry Miller

  Freedom, Law, Differences

  Henry Miller (1962). “The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud”, p.29, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt. The gods were of human proportion: they were created out of the human spirit.

  Henry Miller

  Home, May, Spirit

  Henry Miller (2010). “The Colossus of Maroussi”, p.205, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• The poem is the dream made flesh, in a two-fold sense: as work of art, and as life, which is a work of art.

  Henry Miller

  Dream, Art, Two

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.4, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• The piano bar is the gateway to the halls of masturbation.

  Henry Miller

  Piano, Romance, Bars

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• Each man has his own way of being himself and of saying it so ultimately that he can't be denied.

  Henry Miller

  Men, Individuality, Way

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• Often, when following the trail which meanders over the hills, I pull myself up in an effort to encompass the glory and the grandeur which envelops the whole horizon. Often, when the clouds pile up in the north and the sea is churned with white caps, I say to myself: "This is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked out on from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look.

  Henry Miller

  Men, Clouds, Years

  Henry Miller (1957). “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, p.6, New Directions Publishing

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