Quotes by "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.

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.

We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donnee: Our criticisms apply only to what he makes of it.

Deep experience is never peaceful.

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self, but the point is not only to get out; you must stay out, and to stay out, you must have some absorbing errand.

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self. But the point is not only to get out, you must stay out. And to stay out, you must have some absorbing errand.

Cats and monkeys - monkeys and cats - all human life is there.

The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy ... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?

It has made me better loving you... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story.

I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.

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, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.

Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

It's time to start living the life you've imagined.

She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.

Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take you eyes off your goal.

The charm turned on them a face that was cold in its beauty, that was full of a poetry never to be theirs, that spoke, with an ironic smile, of a possible but forbidden life. It all rolled afresh over Milly: 'Oh, the impossible romance—!' The romance for her, yet once more, would be to sit there for ever, through all her time, as in a fortress; and the idea became an image of never going down, of remaining aloft in the divine, dustless air, where she would hear but the plash of the water against stone. The great floor on which they moved was at an altitude, and this prompted the rueful fancy. 'Ah, not to go down—never, never to go down!' she strangely sighed to her friend.

It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask . . . advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever.

There's no romance here but what you may have brought with you.