The Best Henry Miller quotes

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

Without a Coca–Cola life is unthinkable. — Henry Miller

The purpose of life is to remember. — Henry Miller

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

Develop an Interest in Life as you see it. — Henry Miller

Life is 440 horsepower in a 2–cylinder engine. — Henry Miller

Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring. — Henry Miller

The prisoner is not The one who has committed a crime, but The one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. — Henry Miller

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life. — Henry Miller

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

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

Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement. — Henry Miller

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

The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it. — Henry Miller

But it’s just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here. — Henry Miller

Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it. — Henry Miller

To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to the fullest. — Henry Miller

Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. — Henry Miller

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

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

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

That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them–that is the tragedy of life. — Henry Miller

Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way. — Henry Miller

The poem is the dream made flesh, in a two–fold sense: as work of art, and as life, which is a work of art. — Henry Miller

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. — Henry Miller

What’s a fuck when what I want is love? — Henry Miller

There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature. — Henry Miller

Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer. — Henry Miller

If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you’ve got it half licked. — Henry Miller

The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love. — Henry Miller

The practice of any art demands more than ‘mere savoir faire’. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts. — Henry Miller

We must not just be in the world and above the world, but also of the world. To love it for what it is… is the only task. Avoid it and you are lost. Lose yourself in it, and you are free. — Henry Miller

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. — Henry Miller

At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love–just enough to feed the birds. — Henry Miller

History is the myth, the true myth, of man’s fall made manifest in time. — Henry Miller

Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem–to be yourself! — Henry Miller

We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown. — 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

I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: The world of art is the only such realm. — Henry Miller

Reality is not protected or defended by laws, proclamations, ukases, cannons and armadas. Reality is that which is sprouting all the time out of death and disintegration. — Henry Miller

On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. — Henry Miller

I felt free and chained at the same time–like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man. — Henry Miller

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. — Henry Miller

Work on one thing at a time until finished. — Henry Miller

When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upon which reality is written. — Henry Miller

The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these things at once and the same time. — Henry Miller

This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty… what you will. — Henry Miller

Even if one’s whole life were a mistake, there is always time to change. — Henry Miller

The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment. — Henry Miller

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. — Henry Miller

The Frenchman is first and foremost a man. He is likeable often just because of his weaknesses, which are always thoroughly human, even if despicable. — Henry Miller

Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race. — Henry Miller

The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human. — Henry Miller

As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance. — Henry Miller

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

Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt. The gods were of human proportion: they were created out of the human spirit. — Henry Miller

It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart. — Henry Miller

An artist is always alone–if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. — Henry Miller

What is an artist? He’s a man who has antennae, who knows how to hook up to the currents which are in atmosphere, in the cosmos. — 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

I feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that’s un–American somehow. — Henry Miller

An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument. — Henry Miller

For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal. — Henry Miller

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. — Henry Miller