Quote

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

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
Empty
Fringe
Citadel
City
Belly
Skyscrapers
Walking
Magnificent
Citadels
Cities
Rage
Bellies
Modern
Presence
Howling
America
Enormous
Skyscraper
Feels
Sky
Raging
Like
York
Rags

More quotes by Henry Miller

Image
The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition. (God doesn't make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly they underwrite it with their lives.
Henry Miller
Image
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
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
Hitler is no worse, nay better, in my opinion, than the other lugs. He makes the German mistake of being tactless, that's all.
Henry Miller
Image
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
Image
As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.
Henry Miller
Image
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.
Henry Miller
Image
When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.
Henry Miller
Image
Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.
Henry Miller
Image
Man, as man, has never realized himself. The greater part of him, his potential being, has always been submerged. What is history if not the endless story of his repeated failures?
Henry Miller
Image
The sordid qualities imputed to the enemy are always those which we recognize as our own and therefore rise to slay, because only through projection do we realize the enormity and horror of them.
Henry Miller
Image
And the books you write. They're not you. They're not me sitting here, this Henry Miller. They belong to someone else. It's terrible. You can never rest.
Henry Miller
Image
Leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.
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
For a metaphysical treat stop at the Big Sur Inn, which is also a haven for stray cats and dogs. Life along the South Coast is just a bed of roses, with a few thorns and nettles interspersed.
Henry Miller
Image
Those interested in celestial navigation are advised to first obtain a rudimentary knowledge of integral calculus, phlebotomy, astral physics and related subjects. The use of liquor is strictly forbidden on interplanetary flights.
Henry Miller
Image
Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
Henry Miller
Image
But you can’t put fight into a man’s guts if he hasn’t any fight in him. There are some of us so cowardly that you can’t ever make heroes of us, not even if you frighten us to death. We know too much, maybe. There are some of us who don’t live in the moment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind.
Henry Miller
Image
But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.
Henry Miller
Image
Keep your libraries, your penal institutions, your insaneasylums... give me beer.You think man needs rule, he needs beer. The world does not need morals, it needs beer... The souls of men have been fed with indigestibles, but the soul could make use of beer.
Henry Miller