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

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

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

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

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 Quote

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 Quote

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
- Henry Miller Quote

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
- Henry Miller Quote

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 Quote

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

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.
- Henry Miller Quote

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.
- Henry Miller Quote

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.
- Henry Miller Quote

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

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 Quote

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
- Henry Miller Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

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

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.
- Henry Miller Quote

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

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.
- Henry Miller Quote

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 Quote

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.
- Henry Miller Quote

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

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

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 Quote

Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.
- Henry Miller Quote

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.
- Henry Miller Quote

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

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

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

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

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

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.
- Henry Miller Quote

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

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.
- Henry Miller Quote

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

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
- Henry Miller Quote

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.
- Henry Miller Quote

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

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 Quote

The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.
- Henry Miller Quote

The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
- Henry Miller Quote

The world is the mirror of myself dying.
- Henry Miller Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

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

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

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.
- Henry Miller Quote

We live at the edge of the miraculous.
- Henry Miller Quote

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.
- Henry Miller Quote

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

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.
- Henry Miller Quote

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.
- Henry Miller Quote

Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge.
- Henry Miller Quote

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 Quote

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.
- Henry Miller Quote