Henry Miller Life Quotations

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes.

The purpose of life is to remember.

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

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.

'Life', said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine.

The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and intimate with them and finally they become tame again. No, it is more like being in a hotel room in Hoboken let us say, and just enough money in one's pocket for another meal.

Who wants to be a hundred? What's the point of it? A short life and a merry one is far better than a long one sustained by fear, caution, and perpetual medical surveillance.

You start with the sublime and end up in an alley jerking away for dear life.

Even if one’s whole life were a mistake, there is always time to change.

Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.

Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!

Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.

The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.

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.

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.

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

Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.

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

Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen.

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.

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.

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

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.

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

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

Everyday we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read the lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

Without a Coca-Cola life is unthinkable.

Develop an Interest in Life as you see it.

We are all guilty of crime the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What those powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring.

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.

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.

Who wants to live to be a hundred? What's the point of it? A short life and a merry one is far better than a long life sustained by fear, caution and perpetual medical surveillance

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.

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.