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 JAMESI don’t care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.
More Henry James Quotes
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It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
HENRY JAMES -
I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say – feel for all you’re worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.
HENRY JAMES -
Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.
HENRY JAMES -
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
HENRY JAMES -
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
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 don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.
HENRY JAMES -
However British you may be, I am more British still.
HENRY JAMES -
If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.
HENRY JAMES -
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
HENRY JAMES -
Live as you like best and your character will take care of itself.
HENRY JAMES -
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.
HENRY JAMES -
Love has nothing to do with good reasons.
HENRY JAMES -
Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.
HENRY JAMES -
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.
HENRY JAMES






