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Every day the choice is presented to us, to live up to the spirit that is in us, or deny it.

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
Every
Presented
Deny
Choice
Choices
Spirit
Live

More quotes by Henry Miller

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The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.
Henry Miller
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I think someday you're going to be a great writer, he said. But he added maliciously, first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first.
Henry Miller
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We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
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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.
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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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Over there you think of nothing but becoming President of the United States some day. Potentially every man is Presidential timber. Here it's different. Here every man is potentially a zero. If you become something or somebody it is an accident, a miracle.
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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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
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Greece is the home of the gods they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt. The gods were of human proportion: they were created out of the human spirit.
Henry Miller
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Do not be duped by little duties. Do not be a chore man all your days.
Henry Miller
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All growth is a leap in the dark.
Henry Miller
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Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.
Henry Miller
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Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
Henry Miller
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Music is the can-opener of the soul.
Henry Miller
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Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown.
Henry Miller
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I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: The world of art is the only such realm.
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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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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Fame is an illusive thing - here today, gone tomorrow. The fickle, shallow mob raises its heroes to the pinnacle of approval today and hurls them into oblivion tomorrow at the slightest whim cheers today, hisses tomorrow utter forgetfulness in a few months.
Henry Miller
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Perhaps I have not lined his portrait too clearly. But if he exists, if only for the reason that I have imagined him to be. He came from the blue and returns to the blue. He has not perished, he is not lost. Neither will he be forgotten.
Henry Miller