Henry Miller

Explore quotes from Henry Miller

June 21, 2020

Name: Henry Miller
Born: 12/26/1891
Died: 06/07/1980 (88 years old)
Occupation: Writer

Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American writer and artist. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn and The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961). He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.

Birth Name: Henry Valentine Miller

Genre: Roman à clef, philosophical fiction

Birth Place: Yorkville, Manhattan, New York, U.S.

Death Place: Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Source: Wikipedia

Henry Miller quotes :

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

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.
Henry Miller

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.
Henry Miller

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

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.
Henry Miller

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.
Henry Miller

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.
Henry Miller

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.
Henry Miller

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.
Henry Miller

The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.
Henry Miller

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
Henry Miller

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.
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

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

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.
Henry Miller

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
Henry Miller

Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.
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

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.
Henry Miller