“Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.” ― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
“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.” ― Henry Miller
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” ― Henry Miller
“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. 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
“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.” ― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such” ― Henry Miller
“Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn’t matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.” ― Henry Miller
“What’s a fuck when what I want is love?” ― Henry Miller
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself” ― Henry Miller
“I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous [person], the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the [person] in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable.” ― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
“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.” ― Henry Miller
“Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.” ― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
“If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.” ― Henry Miller
“To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.” ― Henry Miller
“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.” ― Henry Miller
“Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything godlike about God, it is that. He dared to imagine everything” ― Henry Miller, Sexus
“Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.” ― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“It’s good to be just plain happy, it’s a little better to know that you’re happy; but to understand that you’re happy and to know why and how and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.” ― Henry Miller
“Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is – in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet. We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were deaf and blind, as if He were in a space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable. One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.” ― Henry Miller
“Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.” ― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
“An artist is always alone – if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.” ― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live – if what others are doing is called living – but to express myself.” ― Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.” ― Henry Miller
“I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give a fuck anymore what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!” ― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.” ― Henry Miller
“To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.” ― Henry Miller
“Living apart and at peace with myself,I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another’s way of life-so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands Off.” ― Henry Miller
“Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought. If he succeeds in freeing himself, it is to make a sacrificial flight to the sun. His dreams of a regenerate world are but the reverberations of his own fevered pulse beats. He imagines the world will follow him, but in the blue he finds himself alone. Alone but surrounded by his creations; sustained, therefore, to meet the supreme sacrifice. The impossible has been achieved; the duologue of author with Author is consummated. And now forever through the ages the song expands, warming all hearts, penetrating all minds. At the periphery the world is dying away; at the center it glows like a live coal. In the great solar heart of the universe the golden birds are gathered in unison. There it is forever dawn, forever peace, harmony and communion. Man does not look to the sun in vain; he demands light and warmth not for the corpse which he will one day discard but for his inner being. His greatest desire is to burn with ecstasy, to commerge his little flame with the central fire of the universe. If he accords the angels wings so that they may come to him with messages of peace, harmony and radiance from worlds beyond, it is only to nourish his own dreams of flight, to sustain his own belief that he will one day reach beyond himself, and on wings of gold. One creation matches another; in essence they are all alike. The brotherhood of man consists not in thinking alike, nor in acting alike, but in aspiring to praise creation. The song of creation springs from the ruins of earthly endeavor. The outer man dies away in order to reveal the golden bird which is winging its way toward divinity.” ― Henry Miller, The Time of the Assassins: a Study of Rimbaud
“Everyman has his own destiny: The only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.” ― Henry Miller
“The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we’ll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don’t have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it.” ― Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
“We are dancing in the hollow of nothingness. We are one flesh, but separated like stars.” ― Henry Miller
“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.” ― Henry Miller
“For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.” ― Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.” ― Henry Miller
“…when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.” ― Henry Miller
“Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.” ― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others – priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior – hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized “hero of our time” – and of all time.” ― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
“Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity – I belong to the earth!” ― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
