To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that; this, doubtless, is the right way to live.
HENRY JAMESYou were ground in the very mill of the conventional.
More Henry James Quotes
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You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
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Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.
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The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.
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Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.
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The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .
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Money’s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
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We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
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To establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one’s own.
HENRY JAMES -
I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort.
HENRY JAMES -
True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self; but the point is not only to get out – you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
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What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
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To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession.
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Make the short story tremendously succinct – with a very short pulse or rhythm – and the closest selection of detail.
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To myself – today – I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.
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A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
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We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have.
HENRY JAMES -
There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.
HENRY JAMES -
I call people rich when they’re able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
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Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
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An Englishman’s never so natural as when he’s holding his tongue.
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Don’t pass it by – the immediate, the real, the ours, the yours, the novelist’s that it waits for.
HENRY JAMES -
In other words summarise intensely and deeply and keep down the lateral development. It should be a little gem of bright, quick, vivid form
HENRY JAMES -
Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
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She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.
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We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.
HENRY JAMES -
And remember this, that if you’ve been hated, you’ve also been loved.
HENRY JAMES