Quotes by Miller, Henry

"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."

Miller, Henry on life
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"What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature."

Miller, Henry on literature   

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

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

Miller, Henry on life
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"Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning."

Miller, Henry on life
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"We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets -- we remember only."

Miller, Henry on mind   

"The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts."

Miller, Henry on mind   

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

Miller, Henry on miracles   

"Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously."

Miller, Henry on music   

"A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricature. Our world is a world of things. What we dread most, in the face of the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky."

Miller, Henry on world
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"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."

Miller, Henry on novelty   

"Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk."

Miller, Henry on obscenity   

"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."

Miller, Henry on obscurity   

"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."

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

Miller, Henry on philosophers and philosophy
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"Actors die so loud."

Miller, Henry on acting and actors   

"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."

Miller, Henry on art
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"Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life."

Miller, Henry on art
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"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."

Miller, Henry on art
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"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things."

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

Miller, Henry on war
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"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."

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

Miller, Henry on potential   

"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."

Miller, Henry on potential   

"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."

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

Miller, Henry on procrastination   

"Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge."

Miller, Henry on progress   

"If you are well off and can afford to spend ten or twenty-five dollars a day to hire some patient soul to listen to your troubles you can be readjusted to the crazy scheme of things and spare yourself the humiliation of becoming a Christian Scientist. You can have your ego trimmed or removed, as you wish, just like a wart or bunion."

Miller, Henry on psychiatry   

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

Miller, Henry on psychoanalysis   

"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."

Miller, Henry on reality   

"Remorse is impotence, it will sin again. Only repentance is strong, it can end everything."

Miller, Henry on repentance   

"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."

Miller, Henry on self-control
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"What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse."

Miller, Henry on sex   

"Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant."

Miller, Henry on sex
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"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."

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

Miller, Henry on solitude
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"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."

Miller, Henry on solutions   

"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."

Miller, Henry on space   

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

Miller, Henry on belief   

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

Miller, Henry on body