Excellence does not require perfection.
HENRY JAMESExcellence does not require perfection.
HENRY JAMESTo criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession.
HENRY JAMESI 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 JAMESI take up my own pen again – the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles.
HENRY JAMESEvery good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.
HENRY JAMESAn Englishman’s never so natural as when he’s holding his tongue.
HENRY JAMESInnocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
HENRY JAMESTo live in the world of creation-to get into it and stay in it-to frequent it and haunt it…to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation-this is the only thing.
HENRY JAMESUntil you try, you don’t know what you can’t do.
HENRY JAMESTo establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one’s own.
HENRY JAMESImbeciles 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 JAMESArt is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.
HENRY JAMESAnd we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.
HENRY JAMESInstead 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 JAMESThe success of a work of art, to my mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for the time that we have lived another life – that we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience.
HENRY JAMESAnd remember this, that if you’ve been hated, you’ve also been loved.
HENRY JAMES