I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort.
HENRY JAMESYou are good for nothing unless you are clever.
More Henry James Quotes
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Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.
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…he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.
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The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .
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What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
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We 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.
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One doesn’t defend one’s god: one’s god is in himself a defense.
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He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary.
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If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
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Until you try, you don’t know what you can’t do.
HENRY JAMES -
I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say – feel for all you’re worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.
HENRY JAMES -
To believe in a child is to believe in the Future.
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I’m yours for ever–for ever and ever. Here I stand; I’m as firm as a rock. If you’ll only trust me, how little you’ll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.
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Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
HENRY JAMES -
In art economy is always beauty.
HENRY JAMES -
Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance.
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It led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure.
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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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Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
HENRY JAMES -
When you forget to eat, you know you’re alive.
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To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession.
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She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.
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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.
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You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.
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We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.
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I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.
HENRY JAMES -
It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.
HENRY JAMES