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From The Little Reading I Had Done I Had Observed That The Men Who Were Most In Life, Who Were Molding Life, Who Were Life Itself, Ate Little, Slept Little, Owned Little Or Nothing. They Had No Illusions About Duty, Or The Perpetuation Of Their Kith And Kin, Or The Preservation Of The State. They Were Interested In Truth And In Truth Alone. They Recognized Only One Kind Of Activity - Creation.

-Henry Miller

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From The Little Reading

Henry Miller

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From The Little Reading I Had Done I Had Observed That The Men Who Were Most In Life, Who Were Molding Life, Who Were Life Itself, Ate Little, Slept Little, Owned Little Or Nothing. They Had No Illusions About Duty, Or The Perpetuation Of Their Kith And Kin, Or The Preservation Of The State. They Were Interested In Truth And In Truth Alone. They Recognized Only One Kind Of Activity - Creation.

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The Dreamer Whose Dreams Are Non-utilitarian Has No Place In This World. In This World The Poet Is Anathema, The Thinker A Fool, The Artist An Escapist, The Man Of Vision A Criminal.

What Is Not In The Open Street Is False, Derived, That Is To Say, Literature.

If The Poet Can No Longer Speak For Society, But Only For Himself, Then We Are At The Last Ditch.

The City Is Loveliest When The Sweet Death Racket Begins. Her Own Life Lived In Defiance Of Nature, Her Electricity, Her Frigidaires, Her Soundproof Walls, The Glint Of Lacquered Nails, The Plumes That Wave Across The Corrugated Sky. Here In The Coffin Depths Grow The Everlasting Flowers Sent By Telegraph.

We Kill Because We Are Afraid Of Our Own Shadow, Afraid That If We Used A Little Common Sense We'd Have To Admit That Our Glorious Principles Were Wrong.

We're Creators By Permission, By Grace As It Were. No One Creates Alone, Of And By Himself. An Artist Is An Instrument That Registers Something Already Existent, Something Which Belongs To The Whole World, And Which, If He Is An Artist, He Is Compelled To Give Back To The World.

A World Without Hope, But No Despair

What Does It Matter How One Comes By The Truth So Long As One Pounces Upon It And Lives By It?

People Are Like Lice - They Get Under Your Skin And Bury Themselves There. You Scratch And Scratch Until The Blood Comes, But You Can't Get Permanently Deloused.

One Of The Reasons Why So Few Of Us Ever Act, Instead Of React, Is Because We Are Continually Stifling Our Deepest Impulses.

Of Course You Don't Die. Nobody Dies. Death Doesn't Exist. You Only Reach A New Level Of Vision, A New Realm Of Consciousness, A New Unknown World.

Everything Was For Tomorrow, But Tomorrow Never Came. The Present Was Only A Bridge And On This Bridge They Are Still Groaning, As The World Groans, And Not One Idiot Ever Thinks Of Blowing Up The Bridge.

The Most Wonderful Opportunity Which Life Offers Is To Be Human.

It Was Here In Big Sur That I First Learned To Say 'amen.'

Better To Separate Than Never To Marry.

The Piano Bar Is The Gateway To The Halls Of Masturbation.

Plots And Character Don't Make Life. Life Is Here And Now, Anytime You Say The Word, Anytime You Let Her Rip.

The Waking Mind, You See, Is The Least Serviceable In The Arts.

Until We Accept The Fact That Life Itself Is Founded In Mystery, We Shall Learn Nothing.

Once You Have Given Up The Ghost, Everything Follows With Dead Certainty, Even In The Midst Of Chaos.

Many Is The Mirage I Chased. Always I Was Overreaching Myself. The Oftener I Touched Reality, The Harder I Bounced Back To The World Of Illusion, Which Is The Name For Everyday Life.

For The Artist To Attach Himself To His Work, Or Identify Himself With It, Is Suicidal.

This Is Not A Book In The Ordinary Sense Of The Word. No, This Is A Prolonged Insult, A Gob Of Spit In The Face Of Art, A Kick In The Pants To God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... What You Will.

What Is An Artist? He's A Man Who Has Antennae, Who Knows How To Hook Up To The Currents Which Are In Atmosphere, In The Cosmos.

Your Whole Past Is Like A Long Sleep Which Would Have Been Forgotten Had There Been No Memory, But Remembrance Is There In The Blood And The Blood Is Like An Ocean In Which Everything Is Washed Away But That Which Is New And More Substantial Even Than Life - Reality.

I Too Love Everything That Flows: Rivers, Sewers, Lava, Semen, Blood, Bile, Words, Sentences. I Love The Amniotic Fluid When It Spills Out Of The Bag. I Love The Kidney With It's Painful Gall-stones, It's Gravel And What-not; I Love The Urine That Pours Out Scalding And The Clap That Runs Endlessly; I Love The Words Of Hysterics And The Sentences That Flow On Like Dysentery And Mirror All The Sick Images Of The Soul.

But It's Just Because The Chances Are All Against You, Just Because There Is So Little Hope, That Life Is Sweet Over Here.

You Must Be Life For Me To The Very End," So He Writes. "that Is The Only Way In Which To Sustain My Idea Of You. Because You Have Gotten, As You See, Tied Up With Something So Vital To Me, I Do Not Think I Shall Ever Shake You Off. Nor Do I Wish To. I Want You To Live More Vitally Every Day, As I Am Dead. That Is Why, When I Speak Of You To Others, I Am Just A Bit Ashamed. It's Hard To Talk Of One's Self So Intimately

Honest Criticism Means Nothing: What One Wants Is Unrestrained Passion, Fire For Fire.

Whoever Uses The Spirit That Is In Him Creatively Is An Artist. To Make Living Itself An Art, That Is The Goal.

One's Destination Is Never A Place But Rather A New Way Of Looking At Things.

It Is Silly To Go On Pretending That Under The Skin We Are Brothers. The Truth Is More Likely That Under The Skin We Are All Cannibals, Assassins, Traitors, Liars And Hypocrites.

Dedication Is Not What Others Expect Of You, It Is What You Can Give To Others.

A Book Lying Idle On A Shelf Is Wasted Ammunition. Like Money, Books Must Be Kept In Constant Circulation... A Book Is Not Only A Friend, It Makes Friends For You. When You Have Possessed A Book With Mind And Spirit, You Are Enriched. But When You Pass It On You Are Enriched Threefold.

To Be Cured, We Must Rise From Our Graves And Throw Off The Cerements Of The Dead. Nobody Can Do It For Another - It Is A Private Affair Which Is Best Done Collectively. We Must Die As Egos And Be Born Again In The Swarm, Not Separated And Self-hypnotized, But Individual And Related.

There Will Be More Calamities, More Death, More Despair. Not The Slightest Indication Of A Change Anywhere. The Cancer Of Our Time Is Eating Us Away. Our Heroes Have Killed Themselves, Or Are Killing Themselves.

Do Anything, But Let It Produce Joy. Do Anything, But Let It Yield Ecstasy.

Everything Hinges On How You Look At Things

Who Hates The Jews More Than The Jew?

There Is Something Else To Be Said About This Immediate, Spontaneous Way Of Working, And That Is This: In Such Moments, One Is Playing At The Game Of Creation.

They Were Painfully Clean. But Inwardly They Stank. Never Once Had They Opened The Door Which Leads To The Soul; Never Once Did They Dream Of Taking A Blind Leap Into The Dark.

I Demanded A Realm In Which I Should Be Both Master And Slave At The Same Time: The World Of Art Is The Only Such Realm.

I Used To Think A Bird Couldn't Fly If Its Wings Got Wet.

By Choosing To Live Above The Ordinary Level We Create Extraordinary Problems For Ourselves.

All The Men She's Been With And Now You, Just You, And The Barges Going By, Masts And Hulls, The Whole Damned Current Of Life Flowing Through You, Through Her, Through All The Guys Behind You And After You, The Flowers And The Birds And The Sun Streaming In And The Fragrance Of It Choking You, Annihilating You.

Think Only What Is Right There, What Is Right Under Your Nose To Do. It's Such A Simple Thing - That's Why People Can't Do It.

I Soon Found Out You Can't Change The World. The Best You Can Do Is To Learn To Live With It.

Let Me Be, Was All I Wanted. Be What I Am, No Matter How I Am.

I Had To Learn To Think, Feel, And See In A Totally New Fashion, In An Uneducated Way, In My Own Way, Which Is The Hardest Thing In The World. I Had To Throw Myself Into The Current, Knowing That I Would Probably Sink. The Great Majority Of Artists Are Throwing Themselves In With Life Preservers Around Their Necks, And More Often Than Not It Is The Life Preserver, Which Sinks Them. Nobody Can Drown In The Ocean Of Reality Who Voluntarily Gives Herself Up To The Experience. Whatever There Be Of Progress In Life Comes Not Through Adaptation But Through Daring, Through Obeying The Blind Urge.

The Man Who Is Forever Disturbed About The Condition Of Humanity Either Has No Problems Of His Own Or Has Refused To Face Them.

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.

The History Of The World Is The History Of The Privileged Few.

We Create Our Fate Everyday

Every Man With A Bellyful Of The Classics Is An Enemy To The Human Race.

We Must Get Going. Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

And For That One Moment Of Freedom You Have To Listen To All That Love Crap... It Drive Me Nuts Sometimes... I Want To Kick Them Out Immediately... I Do Now And Then. But That Doesn't Keep Them Away. They Like It, In Fact. The Less You Notice Them The More They Chase After You. There's Something Perverse About Women... They're All Masochists At Heart.

Hell Is Probably Quite Similar To Most Paris Bistros ... A Bit Overheated, Somewhat Too Crowded, And A Little Too Noisy For My Tastes. The Waiters Will Surely Treat You Rudely And The Cashiers Will Always Add A Few Extra Francs To Your Bill But ... And This Is The Important Part ... The Food Will Be Marvelous.

My Hunger And Curiosity Drive Me Forward In All Directions At Once.

And What Is The Potential Man, After All? Is He Not The Sum Of All That Is Human? Divine, In Other Words?

There Is The Happiness Which Comes From Creative Effort. The Joy Of Dreaming, Creating, Building, Whether In Painting A Picture, Writing An Epic, Singing A Song, Composing A Symphony, Devising New Invention, Creating A Vast Industry.

Once I Thought That To Be Human Was The Highest Aim A Man Could Have, But I See Now That It Was Meant To Destroy Me. To-day I Am Proud To Say That I Am Inhuman, That I Belong Not To Men And Governments, That I Have Nothing To Do With Creeds And Principles. I Have Nothing To Do With The Creaking Machinery Of Humanity - I Belong To The Earth!

All Growth Is A Leap In The Dark.

From The Little Reading I Had Done I Had Observed That The Men Who Were Most In Life, Who Were Molding Life, Who Were Life Itself, Ate Little, Slept Little, Owned Little Or Nothing. They Had No Illusions About Duty, Or The Perpetuation Of Their Kith And Kin, Or The Preservation Of The State. They Were Interested In Truth And In Truth Alone. They Recognized Only One Kind Of Activity - Creation.

I Saw Through To The Last Sign And Symbol, But I Could Not Read Her Face. I Could See Only The Eyes Shining Through, Huge, Fleshy-like Luminous Beasts, As Though I Were Swimming Behind Them In The Electric Effluvia Of Her Incandescent Vision.

Life, As We All Know, Is Conflict, And Man, Being Part Of Life, Is Himself An Expression Of Conflict. If He Recognizes The Fact And Accepts It, He Is Apt, Despite The Conflict, To Know Peace And To Enjoy It. But To Arrive At This End, Which Is Only A Beginning (for We Haven’t Begun To Live Yet!), A Man Has Got To Learn The Doctrine Of Acceptance, That Is, Of Unconditional Surrender, Which Is Love.

Analysis Brings No Curative Powers In Its Train; It Merely Makes Us Conscious Of The Existence Of An Evil, Which, Oddly Enough, Is Consciousness.

I'd Rather Sit Down And Write A Letter Than Call Someone Up. I Hate The Telephone.

All My Calvaries Were Rosy Crucifixions, Pseudo-tragedies To Keep The Fires Of Hell Burning Brightly For The Real Sinners Who Are In Danger Of Being Forgotten.

An Artist Earns The Right To Call Himself A Creator Only When He Admits To Himself That He Is But An Instrument.

A Book Lying Idle On A Shelf Is Wasted Ammunition. Like Money, Books Must Be Kept In Constant Circulation. Lend And Borrow To The Maximum.

Art Teaches Nothing, Except The Significance Of Life.

He Saw That Science Had Become As Great A Hoax As Religion, That Nationalism Was A Farce, Patriotism A Fraud, Education A Form Of Leprosy, And That Morals Were For Cannibals

No, There's Fifteen Francs Somewhere, Which Nobody Gives A Damn About Anymore And Which Nobody Is Going To Get In The End Anyhow, But The Fifteen Francs Is Like The Primal Cause Of Things And Rather Than Listen To One's Own Voice, Rather Than Walk Out On The Primal Cause, One Surrenders To The Situation, One Goes On Butchering And Butchering And The More Cowardly One Feels The More Heroically Does He Behave, Until A Day When The Bottom Drops Out And Suddenly All The Guns Are Silenced And The Stretcher-bearers Pick Up The Maimed And Bleeding Heroes And Pin Medals On Their Chest.

When I Reflect That The Task Which The Artist Implicitly Sets Himself Is To Overthrow Existing Values, To Make Of The Chaos About Him An Order Which Is His Own, To Sow Strife And Ferment So That By The Emotional Release Those Who Are Dead May Be Restored To Life, Then It Is That I Run With Joy To The Great And Imperfect Ones, Their Confusion Nourishes Me, Their Stuttering Is Like Divine Music To My Ears.

You Make Me Tremendously Happy To Hold Me Undivided - To Let Me Be The Artist, As It Were, And Yet Not Forgo The Man, The Animal, The Hungry, Insatiable Lover. No Woman Has Ever Granted Me All The Privileges I Need - And You, Why You Sing Out So Blithely, So Boldly, With A Laugh Even - Yes, You Invite Me To Go Ahead, Be Myself, Benture Anything. I Adore You For That. That Is Where You Are Truly Regal, A Woman Extraordinary. What A Woman You Are! I Laugh To Myself Now When I Think Of You. I Have No Fear Of Your Femaleness.

With This Book In My Hands, Reading Aloud To My Friends, Questioning Them, Explaining To Them, I Was Made Clearly To Understand That I Had No Friends, That I Was Alone In The World. Because In Not Understanding The Meaning Of The Words, Neither I Nor My Friends, One Thing Became Very Clear And That Was That There Were Ways Of Not Understanding And That The Difference Between The Non-understanding Of One Individual And The Non-understanding Of Another Created A World Of Terra Firma Even More Solid Than Differences Of Understanding.

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.

She Rises Up Out Of A Sea Of Faces And Embraces Me, Embraces Me Passionately--- A Thousand Eyes, Noses, Fingers, Legs, Bottles, Windows, Purses, Saucers All Glaring At Us An We In Each Other's Arm Oblivious. I Sit Down Beside Her And She Talks--- A Flood Of Talk. Wild Consumptive Notes Of Hysteria, Perversion, Leprosy. I Hear Not A Word Because She Is Beautiful And I Love Her And Now I Am Happy And Willing To Die.

Develop An Interest In Life As You See It.

Interest In Life

To Imagine A New World Is To Live It Daily, Each Thought, Each Glance, Each Step, Each Gesture, Killing And Recreating, Death Always A Step In Advance. To Spit On The Past Is Not Enough. To Proclaim The Future Is Not Enough. One Must Act As If The Past Were Dead And The Future Unrealizable.

Whenever A Taboo Is Broken, Something Good Happens, Something Vitalizing. Taboos After All Are Only Hangovers, The Product Of Diseased Minds, You Might Say, Of Fearsome People Who Hadn't The Courage To Live And Who Under The Guise Of Morality And Religion Have Imposed These Things Upon Us.

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.

Even If One’s Whole Life Were A Mistake, There Is Always Time To Change.

The Life Of A Creator Is Not The Only Life Nor Perhaps The Most Interesting Which A Man Leads. There Is A Time For Play And A Time For Work, A Time For Creation And A Time For Lying Fallow. And There Is A Time, Glorious Too In Its Own Way, When One Scarcely Exists, When One Is A Complete Void. I Mean-when Boredom Seems The Very Stuff Of Life.

Her Fluency Was Marvelous. She Would Say Things At Random, Intricate, Flamelike, Or Slide Off Into A Parenthetical Limbo Peppered With Fireworks-- Admirable Linguistic Feats Which A Practiced Writer Might Struggle For Hours To Achieve.

Every Day The Choice Is Presented To Us, To Live Up To The Spirit That Is In Us, Or Deny It.

What Holds The World Together, As I Have Learned From Bitter Experience, Is Sexual Intercourse.

All My Good Reading, You Might Say, Was Done In The Toilet. There Are Passages In Ulysses Which Can Be Read Only In The Toilet - If One Wants To Extract The Full Flavor Of Their Content.

If You Are Well Off And Can Afford To Spend Ten Or Twenty-five Dollars A Day To Hire Some Patient Soul To Listen To Your Troubles You Can Be Readjusted To The Crazy Scheme Of Things And Spare Yourself The Humiliation Of Becoming A Christian Scientist. You Can Have Your Ego Trimmed Or Removed, As You Wish, Just Like A Wart Or Bunion.

A New World Is Not Made Simply By Trying To Forget The Old. A New World Is Made With A New Spirit, With New Values. Our World May Have Begun That Way, But Today It Is Caricature. Our World Is A World Of Things. What We Dread Most, In The Face Of The Impending Debacle, Is That We Shall Be Obliged To Give Up Our Gewgaws, Our Gadgets, All The Little Comforts That Have Made Us So Uncomfortable. We Are Not Peaceful Souls; We Are Smug, Timid, Queasy And Quaky.

Everything We Shut Our Eyes To, Everything We Run Away From, Everything We Deny, Denigrate, Or Despise, Serves To Defeat Us In The End.

It's Good To Be Just Plain Happy, It's A Little Better To Know That You're Happy; But To Understand That You're Happy And To Know Why And How And Still Be Happy, Be Happy In The Being And The Knowing, Well That Is Beyond Happiness, That Is Bliss.

When I Think Of New York I Have A Very Different Feeling. New York Makes Even A Rich Man Feel His Unimportance. New York Is Cold, Glittering, Malign. The Buildings Dominate. There Is A Sort Of Atomic Frenzy To The Activity Going On; The More Furious The Pace, The More Diminished The Spirit. A Constant Ferment, But It Might Just As Well Be Going On In A Test Tube. Nobody Knows What It's All About. Nobody Directs The Energy. Stupendous. Bizarre, Baffling. A Tremendous Reactive Urge, But Absolutely Uncoordinated.

All My Good Reading, You Might Say, Was Done In The Toilet.

The City Of New York Is Like An Enormous Citadel, A Modern Carcassonne. Walking Between The Magnificent Skyscrapers One Feels The Presence On The Fringe Of A Howling, Raging Mob, A Mob With Empty Bellies, A Mob Unshaven And In Rags.

We Create Our Fate Every Day . . . Most Of The Ills We Suffer From Are Directly Traceable To Our Own Behavior.

One Thing Is Certain, That When You Die And Are Resurrected You Belong To The Earth And Whatever Is Of The Earth Is Yours Inalienably. You Become An Anomaly Of Nature, A Being Without Shadow; You Will Never Die Again But Only Pass Away Like The Phenomena About You.

That We Cannot Rise Equal To Situations When We Are In Them — That Is The Tragedy Of Life.

Next To Love Friendship, In My Opinion, Is The Most Valuable Thing Life Has To Offer.

Friendship Love

Fame Is An Illusive Thing - Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. The Fickle, Shallow Mob Raises Its Heroes To The Pinnacle Of Approval Today And Hurls Them Into Oblivion Tomorrow At The Slightest Whim; Cheers Today, Hisses Tomorrow; Utter Forgetfulness In A Few Months.

For One Crime Which Is Expiated In Prison Ten Thousand Are Committed Thoughtlessly By Those Who Condemn.

It Is Our Destiny To Live With The Wrong As Well As The Right Kind Of Citizens, And To Learn From Them, The Wrong-minded Ones, As Much Or More As From Others. If We Have Not Yet Succeeded -after How Many Centuries?- In Eliminating From Life The Elements Which Plague Us Perhaps We Need To Question Life More Closely. Perhaps Our Refusal To Face Reality Is The Only Ill We Suffer From, And All The Rest But Illusion And Delusion. (p.26)

A Book Lying Idle On A Shelf Is Wasted Ammunition.

Why Change The World? Change Worlds!

To Know Paris Is To Know A Great Deal.

The Aim Of Life Is To Live, And To Live Means To Be Aware, Joyously, Drunkenly, Serenely, Divinely Aware.

Words Are Loneliness.

Surrealism Is Merely The Reflection Of The Death Process. It Is One Of The Manifestations Of A Life Becoming Extinct, A Virus Which Quickens The Inevitable End.

Do Not Be Duped By Little Duties. Do Not Be A Chore Man All Your Days.

I Felt Free And Chained At The Same Time - Like One Feels Just Before Election, When All The Crooks Have Been Nominated And You Are Beseeched To Vote For The Right Man.

Those Who Are Truly Decrepit, Living Corpses, So To Speak, Are The Middle-aged, Middle-class Men And Woman Who Are Stuck In Their Comfortable Grooves And Imagine That The Status Quo Will Least Forever Or Else Are So Frightened It Won't, That They Have Retreated Into Their Mental Bomb Shelters To Wait It Out.

A Year Ago, Six Months Ago, I Thought That I Was An Artist. I No Longer Think About It, I Am. Everything That Was Literature Has Fallen From Me. There Are No More Books To Be Written, Thank God. This Then? This Is Not A Book. This Is Libel, Slander, Defamation Of Character. This Is Not A Book, In The Ordinary Sense Of The Word. No, This Is A Prolonged Insult, A Gob Of Spit In The Face Of Art, A Kick In The Pants To God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty . . . What You Will.

My One Thought Is To Get Out Of New York, To Experience Something Genuinely American.

In The Beginning Was The Word. Man Acts It Out. He Is The Act, Not The Actor.

Creation Of Man

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.

On The Meridian Of Time, There Is No Injustice: There Is Only The Poetry Of Motion Creating The Illusion Of Truth And Drama.

It Isn't The Oceans Which Cut Us Off From The World - It's The American Way Of Looking At Things.

Often, When Following The Trail Which Meanders Over The Hills, I Pull Myself Up In An Effort To Encompass The Glory And The Grandeur Which Envelops The Whole Horizon. Often, When The Clouds Pile Up In The North And The Sea Is Churned With White Caps, I Say To Myself: "this Is The California That Men Dreamed Of Years Ago, This Is The Pacific That Balboa Looked Out On From The Peak Of Darien, This Is The Face Of The Earth As The Creator Intended It To Look.

I Thought, When I Came Upon Her, That I Was Seizing Hold Of Life... Instead I Lost Hold Of Life Completely. I Reached Out For Something To Attach Myself To - And I Found Nothing. But In Reaching Out, In The Effort To Grasp, To Attach Myself, Left High And Dry As I Was, I Nevertheless Found Something I Had Not Looked For - Myself.

When You Can't Create You Can Work

Everybody Says Sex Is Obscene. The Only True Obscenity Is War.

I Need To Be Alone. I Need To Ponder My Shame And My Despair In Seclusion; I Need The Sunshine And The Paving Stones Of The Streets Without Companions, Without Conversation, Face To Face With Myself, With Only The Music Of My Heart For Company.

The Earth Is Not A Lair, Neither Is It A Prison. The Earth Is A Paradise, The Only One We'll Ever Know. We Will Realize It The Moment We Open Our Eyes. We Don't Have To Make It A Paradise-it Is One. We Have Only To Make Ourselves Fit To Inhabit It. The Man With The Gun, The Man With Murder In His Heart, Cannot Possibly Recognize Paradise Even When He Is Shown It.

True Strength Lies In Submission Which Permits One To Dedicate His Life, Through Devotion, To Something Beyond Himself.

The World Itself Is Pregnant With Failure, Is The Perfect Manifestation Of Imperfection, Of The Consciousness Of Failure.

It Is Now The Fall Of My Second Year In Paris. I Was Sent Here For A Reason I Have Not Yet Been Able To Fathom. I Have No Money, No Resources, No Hopes. I Am The Happiest Man Alive. A Year Ago, Six Months Ago, I Thought I Was An Artist. I No Longer Think About It. I Am. There Are No More Books To Be Written, Thank God.

Life Has To Be Given A Meaning Because Of The Obvious Fact That It Has No Meaning.

Law Of Attraction

Remorse Is Impotence; It Will Sin Again. Only Repentance Is Strong - It Can End Everything.

Keep Your Exclamation Points Under Control!

Exclamation Points

Until We Lose Ourselves There Is No Hope Of Finding Ourselves.

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.

The Real Leader Has No Need To Lead - He Is Content To Point The Way.

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.

Any Genuine Philosophy Leads To Action And From Action Back Again To Wonder, To The Enduring Fact Of Mystery.

Voyages Are Accomplished Inwardly.

What Seems Nasty, Painful, Evil Can Become A Source Of Beauty, Joy, And Strength, If Faced With An Open Mind.

The World Dies Over And Over Again, But The Skeleton Always Gets Up And Walks.

Day By Day. No Yesterdays And No Tomorrows. The Barometer Never Changes, The Flag Is Always At Half-mast.

We Have Been Educated To Such A Fine - Or Dull - Point That We Are Incapable Of Enjoying Something New, Something Different, Until We Are First Told What It's All About. We Don't Trust Our Five Senses; We Rely On Our Critics And Educators, All Of Whom Are Failures In The Realm Of Creation. In Short, The Blind Lead The Blind. It's The Democratic Way.

Instead Of Asking 'how Much Damage Will The Work In Question Bring About?' Why Not Ask 'how Much Good? How Much Joy?'

The Poem Is The Dream Made Flesh, In A Two-fold Sense: As Work Of Art, And As Life, Which Is A Work Of Art.

The Concert Is A Polite Form Of Self Induced Torture.

Everything Remains Unsettled Forever, Depend On It

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.

Writing, Like Life Itself, Is A Voyage Of Discovery. The Adventure Is A Metaphysical One: It Is A Way Of Approaching Life Indirectly, Of Acquiring A Total Rather Than A Partial View Of The Universe. The Writer Lives Between The Upper And Lower Worlds: He Takes The Path In Order Eventually To Become The Path Himself.

What I Secretly Longed For Was To Disentangle Myself Of All Those Lives Which Had Woven Themselves Into The Pattern Of My Own Life And Were Making My Destiny A Part Of Theirs. To Shake Myself Free Of These Accumulating Experiences Which Were Mine Only By Force Of Inertia Required A Violent Effort. Now And Then I Lunged And Tore At The Net, But Only To Become More Enmeshed. My Liberation Seemed To Involve Pain And Suffering To Those Near And Dear To Me. Every Move I Made For My Own Private Good Brought About Reproach And Condemnation. I Was A Traitor A Thousand Times Over.

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?

For A Metaphysical Treat Stop At The Big Sur Inn, Which Is Also A Haven For Stray Cats And Dogs. Life Along The South Coast Is Just A Bed Of Roses, With A Few Thorns And Nettles Interspersed.

But You Can’t Put Fight Into A Man’s Guts If He Hasn’t Any Fight In Him. There Are Some Of Us So Cowardly That You Can’t Ever Make Heroes Of Us, Not Even If You Frighten Us To Death. We Know Too Much, Maybe. There Are Some Of Us Who Don’t Live In The Moment, Who Live A Little Ahead, Or A Little Behind.

Life Moves On, Whether We Act As Cowards Or Heroes.

Whatever Needs To Be Maintained Through Force Is Doomed.

It Is The American Vice, The Democratic Disease Which Expresses Its Tyranny By Reducing Everything Unique To The Level Of The Herd.

All The Lies And Evasions By Which Man Has Nourished Himself Civilization, In A Word Is The Fruits Of The Creative Artist. It Is The Creative Nature Of Man Which Has Refused To Let Him Lapse Back Into That Unconscious Unity With Life Which Characterizes The Animal World From Which He Made His Escape.

The Only Difference Between The Adamic Man And The Man Of Today Is That The One Was Born To Paradise And The Other Has To Create It.

Hitler Is No Worse, Nay Better, In My Opinion, Than The Other Lugs. He Makes The German Mistake Of Being Tactless, That's All.

Living Apart And At Peace With Myself,i Came To Realize More Vividly The Meaning Of The Doctrine Of Acceptance. To Refrain From Giving Advice, To Refrain From Meddling In The Affairs Of Others, To Refrain Even Though The Motives Be The Highest, From Tampering With Anothers Way Of Life-so Simple, Yet So Difficult For An Active Spirit. Hands Off.

One Can Be Absolutely Truthful And Sincere Even Though Admittedly The Most Outrageous Liar. Fiction And Invention Are Of The Very Fabric Of Life.

I Took Care Of My Wheel As One Would Look After A Rolls Royce. If It Needed Repairs I Always Brought It To The Same Shop On Myrtle Avenue Run By A Negro Named Ed Perry. He Handled The Bike With Kid Gloves, You Might Say. He Would Always See To It That Neither Front Nor Back Wheel Wobbled. Often He Would Do A Job For Me Without Pay, Because, As He Put It, He Never Saw A Man So In Love With His Bike As I Was.

A Man Of Good Will With A Little Effort And Belief In His Own Powers Can Enjoy A Deep, Tranquil, Rich Life - Provided He Go His Own Way.... To Live One's Own Life Is Still The Best Way Of Life, Always Was And Always Will Be.

What I Want Is To Open Up. I Want To Know What's Inside Me. I Want Everybody To Open Up. I'm Like An Imbecile With A Can Opener In His Hand, Wondering Where To Begin-- To Open Up The Earth. I Know That Underneath The Mess Everything Is Marvelous. I'm Sure Of It.

The City Grows Like A Cancer; I Must Grow Like A Sun. The City Eats Deeper And Deeper Into The Red; It Is An Insatiable White Louse Which Must Die Eventually Of Inanition. I Am Going To Starve The White Louse Which Is Eating Me Up. I Am Going To Die As A City In Order To Become Again A Man. Therefore I Close My Ears, My Eyes, My Mouth.

The Word Civilization To My Mind Is Coupled With Death. When I Use The Word, I See Civilization As A Crippling, Thwarting Thing, A Stultifying Thing. For Me It Was Always So. I Don't Believe In The Golden Ages, You See... Civilization Is The Arteriosclerosis Of Culture.

The Best Technique Is None At All.

Obscenity Is A Cleansing Process, Whereas Pornography Only Adds To The Murk.

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.

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 Had To Learn, As I Soon Did, That One Must Give Up Everything And Not Do Anything Else But Write, That One Must Writer And Write And Write, Even If Everybody In The World Advises You Against It, Even If Nobody Believes In You.

Life, As It Is Called, Is For Most Of Us One Long Postponement.

Procrastination

I Had Learned To Harness Ignorance With Presumption. I Was Ready To Become An Unacknowledged Watercolorist.

To The Man Whose Senses Are Alive And Alert There Is Not Even The Need To Stir From One's Threshold.

The Essential Thing Is To Want To Sing. This Then Is A Song. I Am Singing.

I Wanted To Die; I Wanted To Surrender Because I Saw No Sense In Struggling. I Felt That Nothing Would Be Proved, Substantiated, Added Or Subtracted By Continuing An Existence Which I Had Not Asked For.

One Can See Now How The Idea Of Heaven Takes Hold Of Men's Consciousness, How It Gains Ground Even When All The Props Have Been Knocked From Under It. There Must Be Another World Beside This Swamp In Which Everything Is Dumped Pell-mell. It's Hard To Imagine What It Can Be Like, This Heaven That Men Dream About.

To Be Silent The Whole Day Long, See No Newspaper, Hear No Radio, Listen To No Gossip, Be Thoroughly And Completely Lazy, Thoroughly And Completely Indifferent To The Fate Of The World Is The Finest Medicine A Man Can Give Himself.

Topographically The Country Is Magnificent - And Terrifying. Why Terrifying? Because Nowhere Else In The World Is The Divorce Between Man And Nature So Complete. Nowhere Have I Encountered Such A Dull, Monotonous Fabric Of Life As Here In America. Here Boredom Reaches Its Peak.

The Light Of Greece Opened My Eyes, Penetrated My Pores, Expanded My Whole Being.

To Sing You Must First Open Your Mouth. You Must Have A Pair Of Lungs, And A Little Knowledge Of Music. It Is Not Necessary To Have An Accordion, Or A Guitar. The Essential Thing Is To Want To Sing. This Then Is A Song. I Am Singing.

Life's Wildest Moment---she Kneels On The Sidewalk. Everything Else She Does Is Lies, Lies.

Even The Idiot May Have A Message For Us

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.

To Have Her Here In Bed With Me, Breathing On Me, Her Hair In My Mouth—i Count That Something Of A Miracle.

The Learning We Received Only Tended To Obscure Our Vision. From The Day We Went To School We Learned Nothing; On The Contrary, We Were Made Obtuse, We Were Wrapped In A Fog Of Words And Abstractions.

I Had A Microscopic Eye For The Blemish, For The Grain Of Ugliness Which To Me Constituted The Sole Beauty Of The Object.

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.

I Haven't Any Allegiance, Any Responsibilities, Any Hatreds, Any Worries, Any Prejudices, Any Passion. I'm Neither For Nor Against. I'm A Neutral.

In Expanding The Field Of Knowledge We But Increase The Horizon Of Ignorance.

You Can Travel Fifty Thousand Miles In America Without Once Tasting A Piece Of Good Bread.

Through Endless Night The Earth Whirls Toward A Creation Unknown.

Every Day That We Fail To Live Out The Maximum Of Our Potentialities We Kill The Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ Which Is In Us.

I Am Of The Order Whose Purpose Is Not To Teach The World A Lesson But To Explain That School Is Over.

Perhaps I Am Still Very Much Of An American. That Is To Say, Naïve, Optimistic, Gullible. In The Eyes Of A European, What Am I But An American To The Core, An American Who Exposes His Americanism Like A Sore. Like It Or Not, I Am A Product Of This Land Of Plenty, A Believer In Superabundance, A Believer In Miracles.

If One Believes, Then Miracles Occur.

Your Nearness Is The Nearness Of Planets. I Am The Void Between You. If I Withdraw There Will Be No Void For You To Swim In.

A Book Is A Part Of Life, A Manifestation Of Life, Just As Much As A Tree Or A Horse Or A Star. It Obeys Its Own Rhythms, Its Own Laws, Whether It Be A Novel, A Play, Or A Diary. The Deep, Hidden Rhythm Of Life Is Always There - That Of The Pulse, The Heart Beat.

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.

Sex Is One Of The Nine Reasons For Reincarnation... The Other Eight Are Unimportant.

My Understanding Of The Meaning Of A Book Is That The Book Itself Disappears From Sight, That It Is Chewed Alive, Digested And Incorporated Into The System As Flesh And Blood Which In Turn Creates New Spirit And Reshapes The World.

The Moment One Is On The Side Of Life; Peace And Security Drop Out Of Consciousness. The Only Peace, The Only Security, Is In Fulfillment.

It Was Only In My Forties That I Started Feeling Young.

I'm An Egotist, But I'm Not Selfish. There's A Difference. I'm A Neurotic, I Guess. I Can't Stop Thinking About Myself. It Isn't That I Think Myself So Important. I Simply Can't Think About Anything Else, That's All.

Falling In Love

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Malcolm Muggeridge

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