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 JAMESTo 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.
More Henry James Quotes
-
-
God’s creature is one. He makes man, not men. His true creature is unitary and infinite, revealing himself, indeed, in every finite form, but compromised by none.
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.
HENRY JAMES -
Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.
HENRY JAMES -
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
HENRY JAMES -
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
HENRY JAMES -
Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else.
HENRY JAMES -
Things are always different than what they might be…If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.
HENRY JAMES -
Love has nothing to do with good reasons.
HENRY JAMES -
Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.
HENRY JAMES -
I call people rich when they’re able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
HENRY JAMES -
When you forget to eat, you know you’re alive.
HENRY JAMES -
Never say you know the last word about any human heart.
HENRY JAMES -
An Englishman’s never so natural as when he’s holding his tongue.
HENRY JAMES -
I think patriotism is like charity — it begins at home.
HENRY JAMES -
The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.
HENRY JAMES