Henry James - People Quotes

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If I should certainly say to a novice, "Write from experience and experience only," I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost."

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
There were always people to snatch at you, and it would never occur to them that they were eating you up. They did that without tasting.

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
Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women.

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 undervalue them.

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
"I don't pretend to know what people are meant for," said Madame Merle. "I only know what I can do with them."

Henry James
I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.

Henry James