110+ Henry Miller Quotes On Art, Greece And Writing

Henry Miller was an American author best known for his novel Tropic of Cancer. He was an experimental novelist and essayist who wrote about topics such as sexuality, freedom, and spirituality. Miller's works were considered to be groundbreaking for their frankness and exploration of taboo topics. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Henry Miller on love, art, greece.

Top 10 Henry Miller Quotes

1. One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.
2. If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
3. Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.
4. In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
5. A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.
6. The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
7. Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
8. Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything -- except his own nature.
9. Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
10. All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

Henry Miller Image Quotes

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having. — Henry Miller

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance. — Henry Miller

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written. — Henry Miller

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything -- except his own nature. — Henry Miller

Henry Miller Short Quotes

• One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.
• Everything hinges on how you look at things
• Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.
• Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
• One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
• Dedication is not what others expect of you, it is what you can give to others.
• Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
• The real leader has no need to lead -- he is content to point the way.
• The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.
• We create our fate everyday

Henry Miller Quotes About Love

To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle. — 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

Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated. — 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

I think someday you're going to be a great writer," he said. "But" he added maliciously, "first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first. — Henry Miller

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

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

I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable — 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

Henry Miller Quotes About Art

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

Why change the world? Change worlds! — 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

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

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

To make living itself an art, that is the goal. — 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

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

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

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life. — Henry Miller

Henry Miller Quotes About Greece

The light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded my whole being. — 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

Until he [man] has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him. The tragedy of Greece lies not in the destruction of a great culture but in the abortion of a great vision. — Henry Miller

Henry Miller Quotes About Writing

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

There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry. — Henry Miller

The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain. — Henry Miller

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

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

I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions. — Henry Miller

After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game, or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in. — Henry Miller

He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. — Henry Miller

I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone. — Henry Miller

The more I wrote, the more I became a human being. The writing may have seemed monstrous (to some) for it was a violation, but I became a more human individual because of it. I was getting the poison out of my system. — Henry Miller

Henry Miller Quotes About Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

A man of good will with a little effort and belief in his own powers can enjoy a deep, tranquil, rich life - provided he go his own way.... To live one's own life is still the best way of life, always was and always will be. — Henry Miller

Your whole past is like a long sleep which would have been forgotten had there been no memory, but remembrance is there in the blood and the blood is like an ocean in which everything is washed away but that which is new and more substantial even than life - reality. — 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

Of course you don't die. Nobody dies. Death doesn't exist. You only reach a new level of vision, a new realm of consciousness, a new unknown world. — Henry Miller

Henry Miller Quotes About World

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

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

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

What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse. — Henry Miller

Example moves the world more than doctrine. — Henry Miller

I soon found out you can't change the world. The best you can do is to learn to live with it. — Henry Miller

It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world -- it's the American way of looking at things. — Henry Miller

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy. — Henry Miller

The man who is intoxicated with life does not pass judgment, does not seek to come to a conclusion, does not impose his message on the world. — Henry Miller

The world is two thirds spaghetti and meatballs, one third syphilitic chancre. — Henry Miller

Henry Miller Quotes About Word

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood. — 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

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 word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it. — Henry Miller

In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor. — 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

Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible. — Henry Miller

The word civilization to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing. For me it was always so. I don't believe in the golden ages, you see... civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture. — Henry Miller

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs. — Henry Miller

No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in. — Henry Miller

Henry Miller Quotes About Artist

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

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

The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal. — Henry Miller

We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world. — Henry Miller

America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still. — 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

Henry Miller Quotes About People

People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. — Henry Miller

Whenever a taboo is broken, something good happens, something vitalizing. Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn't the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us. — Henry Miller

People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it. — Henry Miller

It is no accident that propels people like us to Paris. — Henry Miller

When you meet the man [Brassai] you see at once that he is equipped with no ordinary eyes. And the sharpness of vision and depth of insight are revealed in Brassai's lifelong photographic exploration of Paris - its people, places, and things. — Henry Miller

Think only what is right there, what is right under your nose to do. It's such a simple thing - that's why people can't do it. — Henry Miller

I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people. — Henry Miller

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music -- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. — Henry Miller

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

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. — Henry Miller

Henry Miller Famous Quotes And Sayings

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having. — Henry Miller

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance. — Henry Miller

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written. — Henry Miller

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. — Henry Miller

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything -- except his own nature. — Henry Miller

No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes. — 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

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

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

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs. — Henry Miller

When you come, please be so kind as to check your neuroses and psychoses at the gate... Fans and other obnoxious pests would do well to maintain silence. — Henry Miller

The art of living is based on rhythm - on give & take, ebb & flow, light & dark, life & death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good & bad, right & wrong, yours & mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, 'the dance of life,' metamorphosis. — Henry Miller

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

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

A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in. — Henry Miller

The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition. — 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

To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing. — 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

It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis. — Henry Miller

Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks-- admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve. — Henry Miller

Man, as man, has never realized himself. The greater part of him, his potential being, has always been submerged. What is history if not the endless story of his repeated failures? — 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

Remorse is impotence, it will sin again. Only repentance is strong, it can end everything. — Henry Miller

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

The poet speaks adequately only when he speaks somewhat wildly... not with intellect alone, but with intellect inebriated by nectar. — Henry Miller

If one believes, then miracles occur. — Henry Miller

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

Keep your libraries, your penal institutions, your insaneasylums... give me beer.You think man needs rule, he needs beer. The world does not need morals, it needs beer... The souls of men have been fed with indigestibles, but the soul could make use of beer. — Henry Miller

By choosing to live above the ordinary level we create extraordinary problems for ourselves. — Henry Miller

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery. — Henry Miller

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. — 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

The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags. — Henry Miller

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

He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals — Henry Miller

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

Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern. — 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

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

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

Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. To-day 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

I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing. — 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

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

Giving and receiving are at bottom one thing, dependent on whether one lives open or closed. Living openly one becomes a medium, a transmitter; living thus, as a river, one experiences life to the full, flows along with the current of life, and dies in order to live again as an ocean. — Henry Miller

It was only in my forties that I started feeling young. — Henry Miller

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

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

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

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. — Henry Miller

What I really hoped for, no doubt, was to come upon one of those lives which begin nowhere, which lead us through marshes and salt flats, trickling away, seemingly without plan, purpose or goal, and suddenly emerge, gushing like geysers, and never cease gushing, even in death. — Henry Miller

When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise. — Henry Miller

When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it, or conquer it, and you only set up more resistance. . . . The most difficult thing to admit, and to realize with one's whole being, is that you alone control nothing. . . . — Henry Miller

Voyages are accomplished inwardly. — Henry Miller

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order. — Henry Miller

Life Lessons by Henry Miller

1. Henry Miller encourages readers to live life to the fullest and take risks in order to experience true joy and fulfillment. He emphasizes the importance of embracing the present moment and not allowing fear to hold us back from pursuing our dreams.
2. Miller also encourages readers to be creative and to explore their passions, as he believes that creativity is the key to living a meaningful life. He also emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and self-awareness in order to gain a better understanding of oneself and the world around us.
3. Finally, Miller encourages readers to be open to change and to embrace new experiences, as this is the only way to truly grow and evolve as individuals. He also encourages us to be kind and compassionate to others, as this is the only way