“If I should certainly say to a novice, ‘Write from experience and experience only,’ I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, ‘Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.’”

The superiority of one man’s opinion over another’s is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.

The success of a work of art, to my mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for the time that we have lived another life – that we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience.

An Englishman’s never so natural as when he’s holding his tongue.

Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.

She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.

If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.

Things are always different from what they might be.

The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .

We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have.

Sorrow comes in great waves…but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us.

And remember this, that if you’ve been hated, you’ve also been loved.

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.

Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games

Imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.

And I’ve concluded, after careful consideration, that this person keeping score is me.

Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels.

Careful studies of cases dealing with supposed ‘mental disorder’ have at times revealed that many thought to be insane or warped in some fashion were actually simply highly sensitive individuals.

I am quite a spendthrift but just being careful because my family was not rich, was not a rich family.

What they suffered from was not mental debilitation, but personal and communal ignorance of psychic reality.

One has always got to be terribly careful, since the theater is made up of a whole bunch of prima donnas, not to let the distortions occur.

Be careful who you trust and tell your problems to.

Watch carefully the magic that occurs when you give a person enough comfort to just be themselves.