Henry Miller

The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.

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.

We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers magazines and digests.

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

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

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.

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.

Life is constantly providing us with new funds new resources even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

We live at the edge of the miraculous.

If there is to be any peace it will come through being not having.

Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy, I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.

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.

Develop interest in life as you see it, in people things literature music - the world is so rich simply throbbing with rich treasures beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

It is the American vice the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

If we are always arriving and departing it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

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.

It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand a gratuitous letter so to speak which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.

What is not in the open street is false derived that is to say literature.

I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.

I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.

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.

The real enemy can always be met and conquered or won over. Real antagonism is based on love a love which has not recognized itself.

To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

No matter how vast how total the failure of man here on earth the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that but man's front embraces the whole universe.

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

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.

The ordinary man is involved in action the hero acts. An immense difference.

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery we shall learn nothing.

The legal system is often a mystery and we its priests preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.

True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life through devotion to something beyond himself.

Sin guilt neurosis, they are one and the same the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

The great work must inevitably be obscure except to the very few to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

Life as it is called is for most of us one long postponement.

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

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

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

And what is the potential man after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine in other words?

Music is a beautiful opiate if you don't take it too seriously.

We live in the mind in ideas in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.

In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act not the actor.

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder to the enduring fact of mystery.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death and to deny one is to deny the other.

The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

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.

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act instead of react is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.

The concert is a polite form of self induced torture.

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.

The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.

Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.

In this age which believes that there is a short cut to everything the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is in the long run the easiest.

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.

Develop an interest in life as you see it, the people things literature music - the world is so rich simply throbbing with rich treasures beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.

Analysis brings no curative powers in its train, it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil which oddly enough is consciousness.

The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.

Back of every creation supporting it like an arch is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes then miracles occur.

The man who looks for security even in the mind is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.

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