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The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses.

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
Dung
Heap
Roses
Monstrous
Rose
Created
Reason
Thing

More quotes by Henry Miller

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And the books you write. They're not you. They're not me sitting here, this Henry Miller. They belong to someone else. It's terrible. You can never rest.
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The waking mind, you see, is the least serviceable in the arts.
Henry Miller
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Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.
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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.
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I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions.
Henry Miller
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Music is the can-opener of the soul.
Henry Miller
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The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
Henry Miller
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An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
Henry Miller
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The city grows like a cancer I must grow like a sun. The city eats deeper and deeper into the red it is an insatiable white louse which must die eventually of inanition. I am going to starve the white louse which is eating me up. I am going to die as a city in order to become again a man. Therefore I close my ears, my eyes, my mouth.
Henry Miller
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The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity.
Henry Miller
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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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Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.
Henry Miller
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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.
Henry Miller
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Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.
Henry Miller
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It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.
Henry Miller
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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
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To be cured, we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another - it is a private affair which is best done collectively. We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separated and self-hypnotized, but individual and related.
Henry Miller
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Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
Henry Miller
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If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you've got it half licked.
Henry Miller
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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