Henry James

Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions are…

— Henry James

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

— 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

“He was an awkward mixture of strong moral impulse and restless aesthetic curiosity, and yet he would have made a most ineffective…

— Henry James

... since she might not be splendid, she would at least be immaculate.

— Henry James

The fatal futility of Fact.

— Henry James

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.…

— Henry James

I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more…

— Henry James

The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

“We don't run away from people unless we fear them and... we don't fear them unless we know that we are unarmed.”

— Henry James

“on so short an acquaintance remains shut up in his breast.  His mother, I know, went to his door”

— Henry James

“It's all a mere mistake and a worry and a joke—and we'll go home as fast as we can!”

— Henry James

The "germ," wherever gathered, has ever been for me, "the germ of a story," and most of the stories strained to shape…

— Henry James

To treat a big subject in the intensely summarized fashion demanded by an evening's traffic of the stage when the evening, freely…

— Henry James

I think patriotism is like charity -- it begins at home.

— Henry James

“Anger does not last, that way, for years. But there are other things. Impressions last, when they have been strong.”

— Henry James

“[A happy ending is] a distribution at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives, babies, millions, appended paragraphs, and cheerful remarks.”

— Henry James

God's creature is one. He makes man, not men. His true creature is unitary and infinite, revealing himself, indeed, in every finite…

— Henry James

“There is no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding”

— Henry James

“Make up to a good one and marry here, and your life will become much more interesting.”

— Henry James

“Try to be someone upon whom nothing is lost!”

— Henry James

“Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They looked for what they found; they knew what pleased them only…

— Henry James

“You can do a great many things if you're rich which would be severely criticised if you were poor. You can go…

— Henry James

“She had never yet encountered a personage so exotic, and she always felt more at ease in the presence of anything strange.…

— Henry James