I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort.
HENRY JAMESWe must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art…what we are talking about and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered.
More Henry James Quotes
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I don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.
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Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
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And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.
HENRY JAMES -
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
HENRY JAMES -
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.
HENRY JAMES -
She is like a revolving lighthouse; pitch darkness alternating with a dazzling brilliancy!
HENRY JAMES -
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.’
HENRY JAMES -
She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.
HENRY JAMES -
Don’t try so much to form your character – it’s like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose.
HENRY JAMES -
Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.
HENRY JAMES -
I don’t care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.
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Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity.
HENRY JAMES -
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
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I think patriotism is like charity — it begins at home.
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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 JAMES






