To establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one’s own.
HENRY JAMESTo criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession.
More Henry James Quotes
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What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
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Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
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You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
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He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease.
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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.
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Don’t pass it by – the immediate, the real, the ours, the yours, the novelist’s that it waits for.
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Until you try, you don’t know what you can’t do.
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When you forget to eat, you know you’re alive.
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We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
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Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
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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.
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Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
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Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the window.
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Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.
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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