Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Would
Succeed
Succeeds
Men
Paper
Viruses
Life
Courage
Writes
World
Word
Poison
Inoculate
Live
Innocence
Recapture
Writing
Believed
Disillusionment
Trying
False
Virus
Way
Throw
Accumulated

More quotes by Henry Miller

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.
Henry Miller
Image
The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.
Henry Miller
Image
I couldn't allow myself to think about her very long if I had I would have jumped off the bridge. It's strange. I had become so reconciled to this life without her, and yet if I thought about her only for a minute it was enough to pierce the bone and marrow of my contentment and shove me back again into the agonizing gutter of my wretched past.
Henry Miller
Image
I don't know whether you've ever had a woman eat an apple while you were doing it. Well, you can imagine how that affects you.
Henry Miller
Image
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
Image
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Henry Miller
Image
To make living itself an art, that is the goal.
Henry Miller
Image
Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.
Henry Miller
Image
The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.
Henry Miller
Image
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.
Henry Miller
Image
Leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.
Henry Miller
Image
I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable
Henry Miller
Image
The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.
Henry Miller
Image
In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
Henry Miller
Image
I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.
Henry Miller
Image
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
Image
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