Tao Te Ching
Henry Miller
1891 – 1980 CE
Banished from the UK, literary bohemian in 1930’s Paris, painter of over 2,000 watercolors, author of over 50 books (many banned for a generation), anti-Vietnam War voice, “one of the most iconoclastic literary spirits of our time,” legendary lover from Anaïs Nin to Playboy magazine star Brenda Venus when he was 84 years old; he pioneered new literary forms, attacked respectability, broke cultural taboos, and in one of the main events in 1960’s sexual revolution, won a Supreme Court decision on obscenity. Continuing a tradition from Dostoyevsky, Balzac and Nietzsche; he was an important influence on Jack Kerouac, Philip Roth, Alan Ginsberg and Norman Mailer who called him “the writer’s writer.”
Lineages
American (USA) Artists Poets Trickster
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Generations
The Lost Generation (1883 – 1900 CE)Unlisted Sources
Wisdom of the Heart (1951)
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957)
Books in My Life (1952)
Colossus of Maroussi (1941)
My Bike & Other Friends (1977)
Reflections (1981)
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)
The Colossus of Maroussi
Time of the Assassins
Tropic of Capricorn (1939)
Wisdom of the Heart (1941)
Quotes by Henry Miller (25 quotes)
“We all derive from the same source… We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”
Chapters:
1. The Unnamed
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“He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud”
from Time of the Assassins
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“Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood.”
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“Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti.”
from My Bike & Other Friends (1977)
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“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses… the tender shoots we stifle because we lack the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty... That is why we get a heartache.”
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“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
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“To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money?”
from Tropic of Capricorn (1939)
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“Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.”
from Tropic of Capricorn (1939)
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“If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.”
from Colossus of Maroussi (1941)
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“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.”
from Wisdom of the Heart (1951)
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“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, in the long run, is the easiest.”
from Books in My Life (1952)
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“One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.”
from Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957)
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“Gurdjieff was one of the most mysterious figures of the twentieth century. His writing was incomprehensible to me, yet I feel I know him intimately because of a delectable book, Boyhood With Gurdjieff by Fritz Peters”
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“I've spoken many times about the Japanese woman. I've praised her again and again. But I have to tell you that I think the Japanese man is the worst. The women are such delicate creatures and they're treated abominably by the men. The Japanese men are pigs - even worse than American men.”
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“I've spoken many times about the Japanese woman. I've praised her again and again. But I have to tell you that I think the Japanese man is the worst. The women are such delicate creatures and they're treated abominably by the men. The Japanese men are pigs - even worse than American men.”
from Reflections (1981)
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“More than anything the French have a profound knowledge of the ways of life. They possess a tolerance and an acceptance of the way things are. Problems are faced with intelligence, patience, and a sense of humanity. I have more respect for them than any other nationality on the face of the earth.”
from Reflections (1981)
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“The man who doesn't respond to music, the man without music in his soul is not to be trusted. A man like that is cold and empty, empty to the core.”
from Reflections (1981)
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“Through it all I learned the value of being humble to the dust, reduced to ashes. Everyone should experience that. Before you can recognize you're somebody, you have to know you're nobody.”
from Reflections (1981)
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“The butterfly was just a lowly worm in its beginning. The worm didn't live with the moment-to-moment expectation of sprouting wings and taking flight. He lived a useful and productive life, the life of a worm. And he had to die a worm in order to be born as an angel! The spinning of the cocoon is, in and of itself, remarkable. It is as wondrous as the emergence and first flight of the butterfly.”
from Reflections (1981)
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“Struggle is the most invaluable experience of all. Suffering seems to be the inevitable fate of the creative sensitive types. Poverty, disease, death, unrequited love affairs, and disappointments of every sort fan the flame of the artistic spirit. The greatest works of art were not created by spoiled brats. They were born for the most part out of a sense of despair, and if not despair then just plain hard work. Somewhere along the line the artist learns the art of transformation.”
from Reflections (1981)
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“No life in the whole history of man has been so misinterpreted, so woefully misunderstood as Christ's. If not a single Man has shown himself capable of following the example of Christ, and doubtless none ever will for we shall no longer have need of Christs, nevertheless this one profound example has altered our climate.”
from Wisdom of the Heart (1941)
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“Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.”
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“Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.”
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“religious in the only way that is becoming—extracting the utmost of life from every passing minute.”
from The Colossus of Maroussi
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“Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.”
from The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)
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Quotes about Henry Miller (1 quotes)
“Miller is a writer out of the ordinary... in my opinion the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English speaking races for some years past... I earnestly counsel anyone who has not done so to read at least Tropic of Cancer.”
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