Henry James

Her memory's your love. You want no other.

— Henry James

Excellence does not require perfection.

— Henry James

“There is no generosity without sacrifice.”

— Henry James

When I am wicked I am in high spirits.

— Henry James

Writing is not primarily escape, but use.

— Henry James

Deep experience is never peaceful.

— Henry James

She is written in a foreign tongue.

— Henry James

One is oneself a fine consequence.

— Henry James

It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.

— Henry James

“...he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss...”

— Henry James

England always seems to me like a man swimming with his clothes on his head.

— Henry James

“I'm rather ashamed of my plans; I make a new one every day.”

— Henry James

My sole wish is to frustrate as utterly as possible the post-mortem exploiter.

— Henry James

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.

— Henry James

“sensation more complex than had ever before found itself consistent with sanity. ”

— Henry James

Though it might have its momentary alarms, paternity is not an exciting vocation.

— Henry James

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?

— Henry James

It might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it.

— Henry James

She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.

— Henry James

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as…

— Henry James

“...I looked at the place with my heart beating as I had known it to do in the dentist's parlor.”

— Henry James

“She often wondered indeed if she ever had been, or ever could be, intimate with anyone.”

— Henry James

“She gazed and wondered, like a child or peasant, and paid her silent tribute to visible grandeur.”

— Henry James

“upon, having—as I at least supposed—a life of his own and tastes and habits which had long since diverted him from the…

— Henry James

There are moods in which one feels the impulse to enter a tacit protest against too gross an appetite for pure aesthetics…

— Henry James

“He was allying himself to science, for what was science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of money? His…

— Henry James

“ten o’clock!” “What does it matter when my things are put up?” the young man said.  “There’s no crowd at this moment;…

— Henry James

“This purpose had not been preponderantly to make money--it had been rather to learn something and to do something. To learn something…

— Henry James

“The Countess was very good company and not really the featherhead she seemed; all one had to do with her was to…

— Henry James

“She was a plain-faced old woman, without graces and without any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own motives.…

— Henry James

“When the possibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated,…

— Henry James

The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .The success of a work of art, to my mind, may…

— Henry James

“He surveyed the edifice from the outside, and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows, and received an impression of…

— Henry James

“It was the air she wanted and the world she would now exclusively choose; the quiet chambers, nobly overwhelming, rich but slightly…

— Henry James

“When you lay down a proposition which is forthwith controverted, it is of course optional with you to take up the cudgels…

— Henry James

“It is enough to say that her perception of the endless interest of the place was such as might have been expected…

— Henry James

“When the congregation began to disperse, a number of persons, chiefly ladies, waited for him near the pulpit, and, as he came…

— Henry James

“Heaven preserve us! what a hotch-potch!” cried Hubert. “Is that what they are doing nowadays? I very seldom read a novel, but…

— Henry James

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the…

— Henry James

She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movement of…

— Henry James