Henry Miller (1891 – 1980)
American writer.
The trouble with Buddhism ?-- in order to free oneself of all desire, one has to desire to do so.
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.
If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.
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.
Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it.
One day, during one of their sessions, Gurdjieff tells Peters to look out the window and describe what he sees. 'An oak tree' the child answers. 'And what do you see on the oak tree?' 'Acorns' Peters replies. 'How many of these acorns do you suppose will become trees?' Fritz Peters is stumped, [-] 'Maybe five or six?'
'No' retorts Gurdjieff. 'Only one will become a tree, perhaps, none! Nature is always very giving, but it only gives possibility. It takes hard work and great effort to become a tree or a genuine man.'
I am against revolutions because they always involve a return to the status quo.
The whole damn universe has to be taken apart, brick by brick, and reconstructed.
Perhaps the artist is nothing more than the personification of this universal maladjustment, this universal disequilibrium.
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.
Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep.
There was one artist who wrote as beautifully as he painted. That was Hokusai - He speaks for all artists, whether they are painters or not. [He wrote]: " I have been in love with painting ever since I became conscious of it at the age of six. I drew some pictures I thought fairly good when I was fifty, but really nothing I did before the age of seventy was of any value at all. At seventy three I have at last caught every aspect of nature-birds,fish,animals,insects,trees,grasses, all. When I am eighty I shall have developed still further. And I will really master the secrets of art at ninety. When I reach a hundred my work will be truly sublime, and my final goal will be attained around the age of one hundred and ten, when every line and dot I draw will be imbued with life."
If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.
To be free, as I then knew myself to be, is to realize that all conquest is vain, even the conquest of self, which is the last act of egotism. To be joyous is to carry the ego to its last summit and to deliver it triumphantly. To know peace is total: it is the moment after, when the surrenderer is complete, when there is no longer even the consciounsness of surrender. Peace is at the centre and when it is attainded the voice issues forth in praise and benediction. Then the voice carries far and wide, to the outermost limits of the universe. Then it heals, because it brings light and the warmth of compassion.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.
I venerate van Gogh. He was a remarkable human being, a man who knew about love. His work reflects a spirit filled with light, even though his life was a tragedy in many ways.
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.
Take a good look at me. Now tell me, do you think I'm the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he's dead?
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
The truly great writer does not want to write. He wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination.