One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Henry Miller
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.
Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.
An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
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.
The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.
In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
We live at the edge of the miraculous.
The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.
Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.
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.
Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.
True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.
The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.
Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.
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.
Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.
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.
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.
There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.
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.
The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.
Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.
We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.
I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.
And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?
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.
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
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.
It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.
Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.
The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.
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.
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
