Quote

Certainly paradise, whatever, wherever it be, contains flaws. (Paradisical flaws, if you like.) If it did not, it would be incapable of drawing the hearts of men or angels.

Henry Miller

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Whatever
Flaws
Heart
Angels
Would
Paradise
Men
Wherever
Like
Drawing
Angel
Hearts
Contains
Certainly
Incapable

More quotes by Henry Miller

Image
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
Henry Miller
Image
The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these things at once and the same time.
Henry Miller
Image
People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it.
Henry Miller
Image
I had to learn to think, feel, and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink.
Henry Miller
Image
I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself.
Henry Miller
Image
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.
Henry Miller
Image
Develop an interest in life as you see it the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller
Image
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
Henry Miller
Image
All growth is a leap in the dark.
Henry Miller
Image
Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.
Henry Miller
Image
Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible.
Henry Miller
Image
What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin-- to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.
Henry Miller
Image
He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.
Henry Miller
Image
Topographically the country is magnificent - and terrifying. Why terrifying? Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak.
Henry Miller
Image
Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.
Henry Miller
Image
For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal.
Henry Miller
Image
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
Image
You have to write a million words before you find your voice as a writer.
Henry Miller
Image
Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.
Henry Miller
Image
Understanding is not a piercing of the mystery, but an acceptance of it, a living blissfully with it, in it, through and by it.
Henry Miller