Henry Miller

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

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.

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.

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

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.

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.

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.

Actors die so loud.

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.