Henry James quotes - page 7

What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. (Henry James)
Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: [...]. View quote
Henry James
I don't pretend to know what people are meant for," said Madame Merle. "I only know what I can do with them. View quote
Henry James
The ever importunate murmur, "Dramatize it, dramatize it!" View quote
Henry James
I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies-in great towns and great crowds. It is a plant that takes times and space and air; and London society is a huge "squash," as we elegantly call it-an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob. View quote
Henry James
In every disadvantage that a woman suffers at the hands of a man, there is inevitably, in what concerns the man, an element of cowardice. When I say "inevitably," I mean that this is what the woman sees in it. View quote
Henry James
However incumbent it may be on most of us to do our duty, there is, in spite of a thousand narrow dogmatisms, nothing in the world that anyone is under the least obligation to like - not even (one braces one's self to risk the declaration) a particular kind of writing. View quote
Henry James
Whatever question there may be of his [Thoreau's] talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial - he was parochial; it is only at his best that he is readable. View quote
Henry James
Mrs Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behaviour on returning to her husband's house after many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity. View quote
Henry James
There is, I think, no more nutritive or suggestive truth... than that of the perfect dependence of the "moral" sense of a work of art on the amount of felt life concerned in producing it. The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and the degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs. View quote
Henry James
Life's too short for chess. (Henry James)
Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong beauty enchanting but rare goodness very apt to be weak folly very apt to be defiant wickedness to carry the day imbeciles to be in great places, peolpe of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night we wake up to it again for ever and ever we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. View quote
Henry James
To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text. View quote
Henry James
if you are going to be pushed you had better jump. View quote
Henry James
Things are always different from what they might be. View quote
Henry James
I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will. View quote
Henry James
Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize. View quote
Henry James
No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches no great Universities nor public schools no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class no Epsom nor Ascot Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life. View quote
Henry James
I think patriotism is like charity -- it begins at home. View quote
Henry James
All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground. View quote
Henry James
He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him. (Henry James)
I don't care about anything but you, and that's enough for the present. I want you to be happy--not to think of anything sad; only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be pain? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there's something deeper. View quote
Henry James
I could come back to America..to die..but never, never to live. View quote
Henry James
England always seems to me like a man swimming with his clothes on his head. View quote
Henry James
Her chief dread in life, at this period of her development, was that she would appear narrow minded; what she feared next afterwards was that she should be so. View quote
Henry James