Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or as heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

—Henry Miller in The World of Sex

empathy love non-judgement acceptance clear-seeing beauty open-mindedness

About Henry Miller

Portrait of Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blends character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association,...

More quotations from Henry Miller

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

—Henry Miller

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

—Henry Miller

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.

—Henry Miller

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 another's way of life—so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands off!

—Henry Miller

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.

—Henry Miller

More quotations tagged with “beauty”

She had the sort of beauty that left you bleeding internally after gazing for too long.

—Lydia Kang in A Beautiful Poison

beauty pain bleeding

And here, after all that, is what I have come to believe about beauty: Laughter is beautiful. Kindness is beautiful. Cellulite is beautiful. Softness and plumpness and roundness are beautiful. It's more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous than to sit pretty for pictures. The soft tummy of a woman is a miracle of nature. Beauty comes from tenderness. Beauty comes from variety, from specificity, from the fact that no person in the world looks exactly like anyone else. Beauty comes from the tragedy that each person's life is destined to be lost to time.

—Katherine Center in Everyone is Beautiful

kindness beauty laughter nature variety specificity cellulite

Sometimes the most beautiful moments in our lives are things that hurt badly at the time. We only see them for what they really were when we stand at the very end and look back.

—Emily Henry in The Love That Split the World

Low self-esteem is the belief that we are not good or worthy enough. It's a self-perception. You can be wealthy, beautiful, or well-liked by others and still don't feel good about yourself. The way other people perceive you doesn't affect your self-esteem. It's how you perceive yourself that matters.

—Yong Kang Chan in Empty Your Cup

beauty enough perception self-esteem belief wealth worth

There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail. All exquisite niceties of weights and measures as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts, however indubitably detected, no effort of reason, however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.

—Ursula K. Le Guin in The Dispossessed

mind beauty perfection reason

History

2 Dec 2012 Added
8 Dec 2014 Edited (details weren’t recorded yet)