I don’t care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.
HENRY JAMESShe is like a revolving lighthouse; pitch darkness alternating with a dazzling brilliancy!
More Henry James Quotes
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Things are always different from what they might be.
HENRY JAMES -
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.
HENRY JAMES -
Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day.
HENRY JAMES -
I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.
HENRY JAMES -
…he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.
HENRY JAMES -
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
HENRY JAMES -
There’s no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.
HENRY JAMES -
I’m yours for ever–for ever and ever. Here I stand; I’m as firm as a rock. If you’ll only trust me, how little you’ll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.
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 -
She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.
HENRY JAMES -
if you are going to be pushed you had better jump
HENRY JAMES -
The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.
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’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.
HENRY JAMES -
The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.
HENRY JAMES -
Life is a predicament which precedes death.
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 -
Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.
HENRY JAMES -
You wanted to look at life for yourself – but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish.
HENRY JAMES -
A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
HENRY JAMES -
Sorrow comes in great waves…but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us.
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 -
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 -
I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort.
HENRY JAMES -
Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity.
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