Henry Miller Quotes

Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.

Like every man I am my own worst enemy, but unlike most men I know too that I am my own saviour.

One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.

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.

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.

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

I stood before a mirror and said fearfully: “I want to see how I look in the mirror with my eyes closed.”

These wrods of Richter’s, when I first came upon them, made an indescribable commotion in me. As did the following, which seems almost like a corollary of the above — from Novalis:

The seat of the soul is where inner world and outer world touch each other. For nobody knows himself, if he is only himself and not also another one at the same time.

To take possession of one’s transcendental I, to be the I of one’s I, at the same time, as Novalis expressed it again.

The happiest peoples, it is said, are those which have no history. Those who have a history, those who have made history seem only to have emphasized through their accomplishments the eternality of struggle. These disappear too eventually, just as those who made no effort, who were content to merely live and enjoy.

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.

Everything hinges on how you look at things

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy

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.

I am glad to be a maggot in the corpse which is the world.

My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once.