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Conservation
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What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?
-Henry Miller
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Control
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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
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Conversation
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We do not talk -- we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
-Henry Miller
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Creation
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In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.
-Henry Miller
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Creativity
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All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself -- civilization, in a word is the fruits of the creative artist. It is the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which characterizes the animal world from which he made his escape.
-Henry Miller
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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
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Crime
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The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you.
-Henry Miller
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Criticism
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We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.
-Henry Miller
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Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
-Henry Miller
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Culture
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Men are not suffering from the lack of good literature, good art, good theatre, good music, but from that which has made it impossible for these to become manifest. In short, they are suffering from the silent shameful conspiracy (the more shameful since it is unacknowledged) which has bound them together as enemies of art and artists.
-Henry Miller
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Death
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The world is the mirror of myself dying.
-Henry Miller
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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
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Deception/Lying
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One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.
-Henry Miller
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Democracy
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It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.
-Henry Miller
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Difficulty
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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.
-Henry Miller, The Books in My Life
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Discovery
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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.
-Henry Miller
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Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
-Henry Miller
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Dreams
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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
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Effort
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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
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Enemy, Enemies
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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
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Entertainment
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Broadway, such as I see it now and have seen it for twenty-five years, is a ramp that was conceived by St. Thomas Aquinas while he was yet in the womb. It was meant originally to be used only by snakes and lizards, by the horned toad and the red heron, but when the great Spanish Armada was sunk the human kind wriggled out of the ketch and slopped over, creating by a sort of foul, ignominious squirm and wiggle the cunt-like cleft that runs from the Battery south to the golf links north through the dead and wormy center of Manhattan Island.
-Henry Miller
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Example
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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
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Excess
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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
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Failure
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The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.
-Henry Miller
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Faith
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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
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Books by and about Henry Miller