Henry James quotes - page 5

If I should cease to think of you at all for a prescribed time, I should find I could keep it up indefinitely. [...] You know that what you ask is impossible [...] I'm capable of nothing with regard to you," he went on, "but just of being infernally in love with you. If one's strong one loves only the more strongly. (Henry James)
Don't undervalue irony; it is often of great use. View quote
Henry James
When it's for each other that people give things up they don't miss them. View quote
Henry James
The curious thing is that the more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all one's ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different corners of a room and take boarders. View quote
Henry James
Excellence does not require perfection. View quote
Henry James
Sorrow comes in great waves... but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. View quote
Henry James
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. View quote
Henry James
There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition. View quote
Henry James
She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS. View quote
Henry James
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals. View quote
Henry James
I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet. (Henry James)
Don't underestimate the value of irony-it is extremely valuable. View quote
Henry James
An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue. View quote
Henry James
However British you may be, I am more British still. View quote
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. View quote
Henry James
If this was love, love had been overrated. View quote
Henry James
To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him. View quote
Henry James
In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives. View quote
Henry James
When I am wicked I am in high spirits. View quote
Henry James
She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth. View quote
Henry James
It was the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour. (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. View quote
Henry James
do you think it is better to be clever than to be good?” "Good for what?” asked the Doctor. "You are good for nothing unless you are clever. View quote
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? View quote
Henry James
I always want to know the things one shouldn't do." "So as to do them?" asked her aunt. "So as to choose." said Isabel. View quote
Henry James