Quotes By Henry James
The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.
Henry James
I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.
Henry James
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
Henry James
It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them.
Henry James
It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.
Henry James
To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.
Henry James
I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.
Henry James
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
Henry James
If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land.
Henry James
The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?
Henry James
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Henry James
Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.
Henry James
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
Henry James
People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.
Henry James
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
Henry James
The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.
Henry James
There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.
Henry James
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
Henry James