Henry Miller: My favorite

No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary to keep awake all day for that purpose. – Nietzsche
(This one was needed levity for me at one time: I was a hopeless insomniac for many years.)

To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul. To write is to sit in judgment on oneself. – Henrik Ibsen

What other significance can our existence have than to be ourselves fully and completely? – John Macmurray

The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is bound to be noticed. – Soren Kierkegaard

Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone. – Alan Lightman

Whoever uses the spirit within him creatively is an artist. – Henry Miller

To love or be loved is no crime. The really criminal thing is to make a person believe that he or she is the only one you could ever love. – Henry Miller

The neurotic is the flounder that lies on the bed of the river, securely settled in the mud, waiting to be speared. For him death is the only certainty, and the dread of that grim certainty immobilizes him in a living death far more horrible than the one he imagines but knows nothing about. – Henry Miller

There are two great tragedies in life, losing the one you love and winning the one you love. – Oscar Wilde

We are living a million lives in the space of a generation. – Henry Miller
(I have often thought similar thoughts-like we are all our own Lon Chaney Jr. in the space of a lifetime. This quote inspired a song by yours truly.)

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts. – Goethe

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people all the time. – George Bernard Shaw

Life is a drink and you get drunk when you’re young. – Paul Weller

People don’t value other people’s secrets, period. That’s why I keep my secrets to myself. – Douglas Coupland

I have no goal: the aimless wandering is sufficient unto itself. – Henry Miller

Music is the can opener of the soul. – Henry Miller

Football is war. – Rinus Michels
(REAL football, that is. This was uttered by the famed architect and genius behind Holland’s fabulous Total Football style, aka A Clockwork Oranje.)

You can’t make plans to be happy tomorrow if you’re not happy today. – Sonya Bushkanets

Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. – Kahlil Gibran

What other dungeon is so dark/as one’s heart? What jailer so inexorable/as oneself? – Nathaniel Hawthorne

The adventure is its own reward. – anonymous

Go West, young man. – Horace Greeley

A man writes in order to know himself, and thus get rid of self eventually. – Henry Miller

Wherever we go, we must go naked and alone. We must each of us learn what no other can teach us. We must do the ridiculous in order to touch the sublime. – Henry Miller

Hope is a good thing. Perhaps the best of things. – anonymous