Henry Miller Quotes - Page 15

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• 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

• 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 loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul's death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc.

  Henry Miller

  Death, Sex, War

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.120, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.

  Henry Miller

  Sports, Suicide, Fashion

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.177, New Directions Publishing

  14 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

• 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

• France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.

  Henry Miller

  Dream, Men, Soul

  Henry Miller (2010). “The Colossus of Maroussi”, p.7, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens. Not one of us is intact, and yet we have in us all the continents and the seas between the continents and the birds of the air. We are going to put it down ― the evolution of this world which has died but which has not been buried.

  Henry Miller

  Crazy, Men, Our World

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

  6 Copy quote

• The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.

  Henry Miller

  Love, Sweet, Wall

  Henry Miller (1963). “Black spring”, Grove Pr

  8 Copy quote

• Life's wildest moment---she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.

  Henry Miller

  Lying, Doe, Moments

  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

• Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

  Henry Miller

  Book, Reading, Magic

  Henry Miller (1969). “Mémoires, Plaidoiries Et Documents”, p.139, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Henry Miller

  Friendship, Power, Appreciate

  Henry Miller (2007). “Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I”, p.28, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

• When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

  Henry Miller

  Reality, Chaos, Womb

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

  4 Copy quote

• I'm delirious because I'm dying so fast.

  Henry Miller

  Dying, Delirious

  4 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 smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife.

  Henry Miller

  Knives, Fleeting, Flash

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

  4 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

• 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

• Paint what you like and die happy

  Henry Miller

  Paint, Dies

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• 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

• 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

• I like the one about the little soulworms that fly out of the nest for the resurrection.

  Henry Miller

  Poetry, Soul, Nests

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.147, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

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