However British you may be, I am more British still.
HENRY JAMESInnocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
More Henry James Quotes
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It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
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 -
And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.
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 -
Don’t underestimate the value of irony-it is extremely valuable.
HENRY JAMES -
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
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 -
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.
HENRY JAMES -
One doesn’t defend one’s god: one’s god is in himself a defense.
HENRY JAMES -
I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.
HENRY JAMES -
All intimacies are based on differences.
HENRY JAMES -
Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.
HENRY JAMES -
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
HENRY JAMES -
Don’t try so much to form your character – it’s like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose.
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