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 JAMESIt takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
More Henry James Quotes
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Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.
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She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.
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To myself – today – I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.
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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.
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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.
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All intimacies are based on differences.
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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.
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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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Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
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…he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.
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Imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.
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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.
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The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.
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Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
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It’s never permitted to be surprised at the aberrations of born fools.
HENRY JAMES






