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 JAMESIt is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games
More Henry James Quotes
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The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.
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The superiority of one man’s opinion over another’s is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.
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…he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.
HENRY JAMES -
Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize.
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.
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Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.
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.’
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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.
HENRY JAMES -
Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
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Sorrow comes in great waves…but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us.
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It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
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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.
HENRY JAMES -
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
HENRY JAMES -
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.
HENRY JAMES -
One doesn’t defend one’s god: one’s god is in himself a defense.
HENRY JAMES