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Henry Miller Quotes


Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.

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

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.

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.

Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The concert is a polite form of self induced torture.

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.

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

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

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.

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

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.