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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.

Henry Miller

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Henry Miller
Age: 88 †
Born: 1891
Born: December 26
Died: 1980
Died: June 7
Essayist
Novelist
Painter
Writer
New York City
New York
Genri Miller
Henri Miller
Phineas Flapdoodle
Men
Marvel
Apparently
Direction
Neither
Limits
Capable
Either
Baseness
Literature
Sublimity

More quotes by Henry Miller

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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
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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.
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The best technique is none at all.
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Music is the can-opener of the soul.
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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.
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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.
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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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Perhaps I am still very much of an American. That is to say, naïve, optimistic, gullible. In the eyes of a European, what am I but an American to the core, an American who exposes his Americanism like a sore. Like it or not, I am a product of this land of plenty, a believer in superabundance, a believer in miracles.
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At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love―just enough to feed the birds.
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Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
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have you ever seen a genius out there looking for a job? it's the saddest thing in the world. no one will hire him. there is only one place where he is always welcome- at the bottom.
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The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean-when boredom seems the very stuff of life.
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The waking mind, you see, is the least serviceable in the arts.
Henry Miller
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The Frenchman is first and foremost a man. He is likeable often just because of his weaknesses, which are always thoroughly human, even if despicable.
Henry Miller
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A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.
Henry Miller
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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.
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There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.
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I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of life... Instead I lost hold of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to - and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for - myself.
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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.
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To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to the fullest.
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