Henry James Quotes

204 Sourced Quotes

Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

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
We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

Henry James
The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.

Henry James
The peculiar air of Oxford-the air of liberty to care for the things of the mind assured and secured by machinery which is in itself a satisfaction to sense.

Henry James
It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life except play games.

Henry James
My idea is this, that when you only love a little you're naturally not jealous-or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn't matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you're in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. When however you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all – whey then you're beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.

Henry James
He valued life and literature equally for the light they threw upon each other; to his mind one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart.

Henry James
The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.

Henry James
To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?

Henry James
Don't mind anything anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

Henry James
Of course what he most intensely dreams of is being taken out on walks, and the more you are able to indulge him the more will he adore you and the more all the latent beauty of his nature will come out.

Henry James
We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art... what we are talking about — and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. 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
There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason.

Henry James
We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.

Henry James
Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

Henry James
Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.

Henry James
She gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to plunge into the healing waters of action.

Henry James
He would agree that life is a little worth living — or worth living a little; but would remark that, unfortunately, to live little enough, we have to live a great deal.

Henry James
I've seen Rome, and I shall go to bed a wiser man than I last rose—yesterday morning.

Henry James
To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.

Henry James
My choice is the old world — my choice, my need, my life.

Henry James
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

Henry James
The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, and what was talent but the art of being completely whatever it was that one happened to be?

Henry James
So it has come at last—the Distinguished Thing.

Henry James