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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.

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
Also
Task
Must
Avoid
Love
Tasks
World
Gratitude
Lose
Loses
Free
Lost

More quotes by 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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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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I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.
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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The more I wrote, the more I became a human being. The writing may have seemed monstrous (to some) for it was a violation, but I became a more human individual because of it. I was getting the poison out of my system.
Henry Miller
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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
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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 wallpaper with which the men of science have covered the world of reality is falling to tatters. The grand whorehouse which they have made of life requires no decoration it is essential that only the drains function adequately. Beauty, that feline beauty that has us by the balls in America, is finished.
Henry Miller
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It's the pleasure of picking up the brush and seeing what happens.
Henry Miller
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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
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Cluster together like stars!
Henry Miller
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The history of the world is the history of the privileged few.
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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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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In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.
Henry Miller
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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
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A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. 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. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.
Henry Miller
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What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.
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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Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.
Henry Miller