“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.”

I’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.

Never say you know the last word about any human heart.

Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.

If you have work to do, don’t wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it.

The superiority of one man’s opinion over another’s is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.

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.

An Englishman’s never so natural as when he’s holding his tongue.

Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.

She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.

If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.

Things are always different from what they might be.

The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .

We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have.

Sorrow comes in great waves…but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us.

And remember this, that if you’ve been hated, you’ve also been loved.

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.