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 JAMESOne doesn’t defend one’s god: one’s god is in himself a defense.
More Henry James Quotes
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To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession.
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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.
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I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort.
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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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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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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.
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He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary.
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We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.
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Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.
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A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
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To establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one’s own.
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There’s no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.
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If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.
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I don’t care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.
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Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
HENRY JAMES