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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

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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
Life
Desired
Express
Called
Living
Found
Others
Live

More quotes by Henry Miller

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Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation... The other eight are unimportant.
Henry Miller
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New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.
Henry Miller
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Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.
Henry Miller
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They were painfully clean. But inwardly they stank. Never once had they opened the door which leads to the soul never once did they dream of taking a blind leap into the dark.
Henry Miller
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If one believes, then miracles occur.
Henry Miller
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The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.
Henry Miller
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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
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The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.
Henry Miller
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Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.
Henry Miller
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It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.
Henry Miller
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Until he [man] has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him. The tragedy of Greece lies not in the destruction of a great culture but in the abortion of a great vision.
Henry Miller
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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.
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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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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The practice of any art demands more than 'mere savoir faire'. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts.
Henry Miller
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I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.
Henry Miller
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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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Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
Henry Miller
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The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul's death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc.
Henry Miller
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Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. To-day I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity - I belong to the earth!
Henry Miller