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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
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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
Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'
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
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
In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
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
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
In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.
Henry Miller
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.
Henry Miller
It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.
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 only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.
Henry Miller
I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.
Henry Miller
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
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
Henry Miller
An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
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
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
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
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
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
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
Henry Miller
What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?
Henry Miller
The world is the mirror of myself dying.
Henry Miller
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
Henry Miller
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
Henry Miller
The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.
Henry Miller
The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.
Henry Miller
The concert is a polite form of self induced torture.
Henry Miller
We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
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
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
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
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
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
There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.
Henry Miller
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
Henry Miller
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
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
Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
Henry Miller
True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.
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 ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
Henry Miller
Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.
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
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
Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.
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