Poems List

The real leader has no need to lead—he is content to point the way.
The struggle is to synchronize the potential being with the actual being, to make a fruitful liaison between the man of yesterday and the man of tomorrow.
The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestion- ingly; they underwrite it with their lives.

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

"The Colossus of Maroussi" (1941)

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. I am going to sing for you, a little off key, perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse.

The New Yale Book of Quotations

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.

The Colossus of Maroussi

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.

The Henry Miller Reader (1959), "Reunion in Brooklyn

We do not talk—we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
We have two American flags always; one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it it means danger, revolution, anarchy.
We kill because were 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.

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