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.
HENRY JAMESWe 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.
More Henry James Quotes
-
-
Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!
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.
HENRY JAMES -
The superiority of one man’s opinion over another’s is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.
HENRY JAMES -
Love has nothing to do with good reasons.
HENRY JAMES -
Until you try, you don’t know what you can’t do.
HENRY JAMES -
If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
HENRY JAMES -
She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.
HENRY JAMES -
I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I’m very glad therefore you’ve been a part of it.
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 -
Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day.
HENRY JAMES -
Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
HENRY JAMES -
Don’t underestimate the value of irony-it is extremely valuable.
HENRY JAMES -
Things are always different from what they might be.
HENRY JAMES -
I think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.
HENRY JAMES -
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
HENRY JAMES