Famous Quotes by Henry James

  • Happy you poets who can be present and so present by a simple flicker of your genius, and not,... More
  • The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient... More
  • He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful,... More
  • We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our... More
  • In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives. More
  • There are moods in which one feels the impulse to enter a tacit protest against too gross an... More
  • To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him. More
  • Money’s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet. More
  • She had an unequalled gift ... of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities. More
  • It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious... More
  • It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature. More
  • Whatever question there may be of his talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a... More
  • One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are... More
  • No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no... More
  • I am blackly bored when they are at large & at work; but somehow I am still more blackly... More
  • It’s a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting... More
  • It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance ... and I know of no substitute... More
  • An Englishman’s never so natural as when he’s holding his tongue. More
  • I mourn the safe and motherly old middle-class queen, who held the nation warm under the fold of... More
  • People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point... More
  • I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could... More
  • So here it is at last, the distinguished thing! More
  • Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in... More
  • Tell the boys to follow, to be faithful, to take me seriously. More
  • However British you may be, I am more British still. More
  • If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I... More
  • To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text. More
  • Of course you’re always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and... More
  • It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular... More
  • Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular,... More
  • In art economy is always beauty. More
  • She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table. More
  • The terrible fluidity of self-revelation. More
  • If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face,... More
  • The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the... More
  • What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of... More
  • The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life. More
  • Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of... More
  • The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of... More
  • The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending. More
  • To treat a “big” subject in the intensely summarized fashion demanded by an evening’s... More
  • Experience was to be taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got a light for... More
  • Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box. More
  • Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to... More
  • The fatal futility of Fact. More
  • The superiority of one man’s opinion over another’s is never so great as when the opinion is... More
  • You desire to embrace it, to caress it, to possess it; and finally a soft sense of possession... More
  • I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme. More
  • Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the... More
  • To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in... More

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