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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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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
Half
Surly
Fall
Sour
Keep
Cynical
Wells
Forgive
Well
Bitter
Love
Forgiving
Growing
Forget
Licked

More quotes by 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.
Henry Miller
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Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.
Henry Miller
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The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you.
Henry Miller
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For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal.
Henry Miller
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The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.
Henry Miller
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I felt free and chained at the same time - like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man.
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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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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Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
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.
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
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Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.
Henry Miller
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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
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I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.
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
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I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.
Henry Miller
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To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
Henry Miller
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One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.
Henry Miller
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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
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Whenever a taboo is broken, something good happens, something vitalizing. Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn't the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us.
Henry Miller