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 JAMESInnocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
More Henry James Quotes
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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.
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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 -
if you are going to be pushed you had better jump
HENRY JAMES -
To 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.
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Make the short story tremendously succinct – with a very short pulse or rhythm – and the closest selection of detail.
HENRY JAMES -
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 JAMES -
Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.
HENRY JAMES -
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
HENRY JAMES -
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
HENRY JAMES -
One doesn’t defend one’s god: one’s god is in himself a defense.
HENRY JAMES -
It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games
HENRY JAMES -
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
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In art economy is always beauty.
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You must save what you can of your life; you musn’t lose it all simply because you’ve lost a part.
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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