Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.
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
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Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
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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 -
Sorrow comes in great waves…but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us.
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If you have work to do, don’t wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it.
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If this was love, love had been overrated.
HENRY JAMES -
To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession.
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To believe in a child is to believe in the Future.
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.’
HENRY JAMES -
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.
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I don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.
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She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.
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Live as you like best and your character will take care of itself.
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And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.
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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.
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What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
HENRY JAMES