Tropic Of Cancer Quotes

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

  Henry Miller

  Yield, Joy, Produce

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• 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

  Heart, Sunshine, Silence

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

  Henry Miller

  Happiness, Money, Determination

  Henry Miller, Mary V. Dearborn (2007). “Crazy Cock”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• 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

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• The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

  Henry Miller

  Motivational, Beauty, Gratitude

  49 Copy quote

• When I think of New York I have a very different feeling. New York makes even a rich man feel his unimportance. New York is cold, glittering, malign. The buildings dominate. There is a sort of atomic frenzy to the activity going on; the more furious the pace, the more diminished the spirit. A constant ferment, but it might just as well be going on in a test tube. Nobody knows what it's all about. Nobody directs the energy. Stupendous. Bizarre, Baffling. A tremendous reactive urge, but absolutely uncoordinated.

  Henry Miller

  New York, Men, Thinking

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.

  Henry Miller

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  41 Copy quote

• People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused.

  Henry Miller

  Blood, People, Skins

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

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• I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.

  Henry Miller

  Book, Believe, Soul

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

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• Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.

  Henry Miller

  Sex, War, Obscenity

  11 Copy quote

• Do anything, but let it produce joy.

  Walt Whitman

  Life, Carpe Diem, Joy

  40 Copy quote

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

  Henry Miller

  Music, Lonely, Loneliness

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.

  Henry Miller

  Art, Book, Destiny

  Tropic of Cancer ch. 1 (1934)

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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”

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• Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song.

  Henry Miller

  Running, Song, Wine

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

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• The cancer of time is eating us away

  Henry Miller

  Time, Cancer, Eating

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

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• At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love―just enough to feed the birds.

  Henry Miller

  Heart, Two, Bird

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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

  Henry Miller

  Life, Happiness, Success

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.2, New Directions Publishing

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

  Henry Miller

  God, Voice, Imagination

  Henry Miller (2007). “Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I”, p.341, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

  Henry Miller

  Reality, Order And Chaos, Score

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

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• If any man dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world.

  Henry Miller

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it's painful gall-stones, it's gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul.

  Henry Miller

  Running, Mirrors, Blood

  20 Copy quote

• When you have cancer, it's like you enter a new time zone: the Cancer Zone. Everything in the Tropic of Cancer revolves around your health or your sickness. I didn't want my whole life to revolve around cancer. Life came first; cancer came second.

  Regina Brett

  Cancer, Time Zones, Want

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Kings, Musician, Poet

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

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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

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