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Henry Miller Quotes - Page 17

All Quotes Acceptance Art Beauty Boredom Cancer Change Chaos Christ Consciousness Creation Creativity Crime Criticism Curiosity Death Destiny Dying Earth Eating Effort Ego Evil Falling In Love Fashion Fate Fear Feelings Funny Giving Giving Up Grace Gratitude Growth Happiness Hate Heart History Humanity Imagination Inspiration Inspirational Integrity Joy Life Literature Live Life Love Lying Music Nature Pain Passion Past Peace Perspective Philosophy Progress Purpose Reading Reality Running Silence Sin Singing Soul Spring Struggle Suffering Time Tragedy Travel Understanding Vision Waiting War Water Writing

The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must

The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.

Wise, Keys, Order

Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.118, New Directions Publishing

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.

Evil, Progress, Different

Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, p.172, New Directions Publishing

What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.

Night, Symphony, Years

Henry Miller (1945). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, [New York] : New directions

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

Rip, Character, Plot

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

Moving, Differences, Evil

Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.183, New Directions Publishing

There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.

Fear, Men, Matter

Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.95, New Directions Publishing

I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.

Needs, Faces, Spit

Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, i thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am. There are no more books to be written, thank God.

Book, Fall, Men

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

There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books

Book, Interest, One Thing

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

Without a Coca-Cola life is unthinkable.

Life Is, Coca Cola, Unthinkable

Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, p.258, New Directions Publishing

I didn't have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let's say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!

Inspirational, Thinking, Air

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

To know Paris is to know a great deal.

Paris, Deals, Knows

I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people.

Integrity, Home, Writing

Henry Miller (1961). “Tropic of Capricorn”, Grove/Atlantic

Fame is an illusive thing - here today, gone tomorrow. The fickle, shallow mob raises its heroes to the pinnacle of approval today and hurls them into oblivion tomorrow at the slightest whim; cheers today, hisses tomorrow; utter forgetfulness in a few months.

Cheer, Hero, Gone

No, there's fifteen francs somewhere, which nobody gives a damn about anymore and which nobody is going to get in the end anyhow, but the fifteen francs is like the primal cause of things and rather than listen to one's own voice, rather than walk out on the primal cause, one surrenders to the situation, one goes on butchering and butchering and the more cowardly one feels the more heroically does he behave, until a day when the bottom drops out and suddenly all the guns are silenced and the stretcher-bearers pick up the maimed and bleeding heroes and pin medals on their chest.

Hero, Gun, Voice

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Art, Mean, Way

Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.24, New Directions Publishing

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

Skeletons, Literature, World

Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.191, New Directions Publishing

Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

Profound, Honest, Quiet

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

The city grows like a cancer; I must grow like a sun. The city eats deeper and deeper into the red; it is an insatiable white louse which must die eventually of inanition. I am going to starve the white louse which is eating me up. I am going to die as a city in order to become again a man. Therefore I close my ears, my eyes, my mouth.

Cancer, Eye, Men

Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean, when boredom seems the very stuff of life.

Mean, Boredom, Stuff

Those interested in celestial navigation are advised to first obtain a rudimentary knowledge of integral calculus, phlebotomy, astral physics and related subjects. The use of liquor is strictly forbidden on interplanetary flights.

Use, Firsts, Navigation

The word civilization to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing. For me it was always so. I don't believe in the golden ages, you see... civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture.

Believe, Civilization, Mind

You start out with the sublime and you end up in an alley jerking away for dear life.

Sublime, Dear Life, Ends

"Black Spring".

There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such over−brimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the Madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half−minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. Something intangible , something inexplicable, was given out-and received.

Moon, Perfect, Miracle

Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.

Cities, Giving, Imagination

Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, p.257, New Directions Publishing

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