It led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure.
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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To establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one’s own.
HENRY JAMES -
There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.
HENRY JAMES -
I take up my own pen again – the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles.
HENRY JAMES -
In other words summarise intensely and deeply and keep down the lateral development. It should be a little gem of bright, quick, vivid form
HENRY JAMES -
Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
HENRY JAMES -
Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else.
HENRY JAMES -
She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.
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 visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.
HENRY JAMES -
Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize.
HENRY JAMES -
I 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 JAMES -
It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games
HENRY JAMES -
…he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.
HENRY JAMES -
The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.
HENRY JAMES -
Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women.
HENRY JAMES