Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Henry Miller (American Novelist)

Henry Valentine Miller (1891–1980) was an American novelist whose works achieved notoriety for their use of sexually explicit and obscene language. His two most famous novels, Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939,) were prohibited from publication and sale in the United States and Britain for many years.

Born and brought up in Brooklyn, New York City, Miller studied briefly at City College of New York and then held various jobs in New York. He devoted himself to writing in 1924 and, in 1930, moved to Paris, where he lived until 1940. There, he published Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and Black Spring (1936.)

Upon returning to America, Miller completed a yearlong road trip across the United States and published a highly critical account of his impression of the U.S. during a time of chauvinism, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945.) He settled in Big Sur, California.

Many of Miller’s works are autobiographical. They were explicitly sexual, and he had to overcome many denunciations from censors. The American editions of the Tropics were not published until the early 1960s. The books were charged with obscenity and were the subject of 60 court cases. In 1964, the Supreme Court ruled in support of the books’ publication, ending censorship based on obscenity in America.

Miller’s other notable works were The Colossus of Maroussi (1941,) and The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy of novels: Sexus (1949,) Plexus (1953) and Nexus (1960.) The volumes of his correspondence include those with Lawrence Durrell (1963,) to Anaïs Nin (1965,) and with Wallace Fowlie (1975.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Henry Miller

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Getting Going, Procrastination, Instincts, Inaction

Our diseases are our attachments.
—Henry Miller

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
Topics: City Life, Cities

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Inspiration, Destiny

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Philosophy, Science, Philosophers

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Sex

Reality is not protected or defended by laws, proclamations, ukases, cannons and armadas. Reality is that which is sprouting all the time out of death and disintegration.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Reality

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
Topics: Self-Control, Control

Who hates the Jews more than the Jew?
—Henry Miller
Topics: Religion, Jews, Judaism

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Dedication, Commitment, Belief

I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Integrity

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Politics

The American ideal is youth—handsome, empty youth.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Youth

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
Topics: Superstition

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Courage, Growth

Actors die so loud.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Acting, Actors

It isn’t the oceans which cut us off from the world—it’s the American way of looking at things.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Solitude, Isolation

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
Topics: Lies, Deception/Lying

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Action, Secrets of Success, Heroes, Heroes/Heroism

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
Topics: Fame

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.
—Henry Miller
Topics: America

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
Topics: Writers, Writing, Authors & Writing

Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It’s a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Hope

The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and intimate with them and finally they become tame again. No, it is more like being in a hotel room in Hoboken let us say, and just enough money in one’s pocket for another meal.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Tragedy, Disasters

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Imagination

The American white man (not to speak of the Indian, the Negro, the Mexican) hasn’t a ghost of a chance. If he has any talent he’s doomed to have it crushed one way or another. The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack of him.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Talent

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there, that of the pulse, the heart beat.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Books, Literature, Reading

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Difficulty

No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man’s front embraces the whole universe.
—Henry Miller
Topics: War, Space

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Dreams, Strength, Acceptance

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