One can’t judge till one’s forty; before that we’re too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.
HENRY JAMESI think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.
More Henry James Quotes
-
-
I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.
HENRY JAMES -
Money’s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
HENRY JAMES -
I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I’m very glad therefore you’ve been a part of it.
HENRY JAMES -
if you are going to be pushed you had better jump
HENRY JAMES -
…he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.
HENRY JAMES -
I call people rich when they’re able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
HENRY JAMES -
It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.
HENRY JAMES -
And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.
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 -
I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort.
HENRY JAMES -
Don’t underestimate the value of irony-it is extremely valuable.
HENRY JAMES -
You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
HENRY JAMES -
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 JAMES -
Love has nothing to do with good reasons.
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