Zitat des Tages von Henry Miller:
What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?
The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.
I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.
The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.
One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.
An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
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.
The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
We live at the edge of the miraculous.
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.
Actors die so loud.
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.
Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.
True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.
The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
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.
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
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.
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.
Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
The world is the mirror of myself dying.
The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.
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.
Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.
And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?
If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.
The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.