The 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 JAMESI take up my own pen again – the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles.
More Henry James Quotes
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She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.
HENRY JAMES -
To 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 JAMES -
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 JAMES -
Sorrow comes in great waves…but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us.
HENRY JAMES -
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
HENRY JAMES -
We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have.
HENRY JAMES -
And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.
HENRY JAMES -
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
HENRY JAMES -
If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.
HENRY JAMES -
Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
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 -
The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .
HENRY JAMES -
Instead 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 JAMES -
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
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