Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Henry James

109 quotes

“[of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones] [it is] like a vast episode in a sermon preached by a grandly humorous divine; and however we may be entertained by the way, we must not forget that our ultimate duty is to be instructed.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An early critical review, North American Review (1864)
“In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Essays in Criticism by Matthew Arnold," North American Review (July 1865)
“I haven't a creature to talk to...How in Boston, when the evening arrives, and I am tired of reading, and know it would be better to do something else, can I go to the theater? I have tried it, ad nauseam. Likewise calling. Upon whom?”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William James (between 1866 and 1869)
“Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Henry James Sr. (26 October 1869)
“The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination... To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Charles Eliot Norton (16 January 1871)
“It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Charles Eliot Norton (4 February 1872)
“Deep experience is never peaceful.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: de Mauves, Galaxy Magazine (February/March 1874), ch. V, reprinted in A Passionate Pilgrim (1875) and later in The Madonna of the Future and Other Tales (1879) and the New York Edition of James' works, vol. 13 (1908)
“Cats and monkeys — monkeys and cats — all human life is there!”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Madonna of the Future (1879)
“My choice is the old world — my choice, my need, my life.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notebook entry, Boston, (25 November 1881)
“There are bad manners everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad manners organized.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: [HTTP://BOOKS.GOOGLE.COM/books?id=FrQRAAAAYAAJ&q=%22there+are+bad+manners+everywhere+but+an+aristocracy+is+bad+manners+organized%22&pg=PA289#v=onepage The Point of View] (1882)
“I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Venice," The Century Magazine, vol. XXV (November 1882), reprinted in Portraits of Places (1883) and later in Italian Hours (1909), ch: I: Venice, pt. I
“Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Venice," The Century Magazine, vol. XXV (November 1882), reprinted in Portraits of Places (1883) and later in Italian Hours (1909), ch. I: Venice, pt. II
“There are two kinds of taste in the appreciation of imaginative literature: the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Anthony Trollope," Century Magazine (July 1883); reprinted in Partial Portraits (1888)
“A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert Louis Stevenson," Century Magazine (April 1888)
“If the artist is necessarily sensitive, does that sensitiveness form in its essence a state constantly liable to shade off into the morbid? Does this liability, moreover, increase in proportion as the effort is great and the ambition intense?”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Journal of the Brothers de Goncourt," Fortnightly Review (October 1888)
“To take what there is, and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived — to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that — this doubtless is the right way to live.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notebook entry, London (12 May 1889)
“The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1890 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Tragic Muse (1890), ch. IX
“The practice of "reviewing"… in general has nothing in common with the art of criticism.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Criticism (1893)
“The critical sense is so far from frequent that it is absolutely rare, and the possession of the cluster of qualities that minister to it is one of the highest distinctions... In this light one sees the critic as the real helper of the artist, a torchbearing outrider, the interpreter, the brother... Just in proportion as he is sentient and restless, just in proportion as he reacts and reciprocates and penetrates, is the critic a valuable instrument.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“However incumbent it may be on most of us to do our duty, there is, in spite of a thousand narrow dogmatisms, nothing in the world that anyone is under the least obligation to like — not even (one braces one's self to risk the declaration) a particular kind of writing.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Flaubert (1893)
“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 (1843–1916) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Middle Years (1893)
“She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Greville Fane", from The Real Thing: and Other Tales (1893)
“Print it as it stands — beautifully.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Death of the Lion (1894)
“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 (1843–1916) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Next Time," The Yellow Book, vol. VI (July 1895)
“The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Theatricals: Second Series (1895)
“Vereker’s secret, my dear man — the general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Figure in the Carpet (1896)
“He is outside of everything, and an alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nathaniel Hawthorne" in Library of the World's Best Literature, vol. XII (1897), ed. Charles Dudley Warner
“I'm glad you like adverbs — I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Miss M. Betham Edwards (5 January 1912)
“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 (1843–1916) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Hugh Walpole (21 August 1913)
“I still, in presence of life... have reactions — as many as possible... It's, I suppose, because I am that queer monster, the artist, an obstinate finality, an inexhaustible sensibility. Hence the reactions — appearances, memories, many things, go on playing upon it with consequences that I note and "enjoy" (grim word!) noting. It all takes doing — and I do. I believe I shall do yet again — it is still an act of life.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Henry Adams (21 March 1914)
“The effect, if not the prime office, of criticism is to make our absorption and our enjoyment of the things that feed the mind as aware of itself as possible, since that awareness quickens the mental demand, which thus in turn wanders further and further for pasture. This action on the part of the mind practically amounts to a reaching out for the reasons of its interest, as only by its ascertaining them can the interest grow more various. This is the very education of our imaginative life.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The New Novel (1914)
“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to H.G. Wells (10 July 1915)
“The full, the monstrous demonstration that Tennyson was not Tennysonian.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Middle Years (1917), ch. VI
“If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land.”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Said to Hamlin Garland in 1906 and quoted by Garland in Roadside Meetings (1930; reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, 2005, , ch. XXXVI: Henry James at Rye, p. 461
“Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934), ch. 10
“So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!”
Henry James (1843–1916) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: After suffering a stroke (1915-12-02), the first of several which led to his death, as recounted by Edith Wharton in A Backward Glance (1934), ch. 14: "He is said to have told his old friend Lady Prothero, when she saw …
“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 (1843–1916) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Overheard by his nephew, Billy James, in 1902; quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, vol V: The Master 1901-1916 (1972)
“Cecilia had moreover a turn for sarcasm, and her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The curious thing is that the more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all one's ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different corners of a room and take boarders.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We stand like a race with shrunken muscles, staring helplessly at the weights our forefathers easily lifted.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is nothing against the validity of a friendship that the parties to it have not a mutual resemblance. There must be a basis of agreement, but the structure reared upon it may contain a thousand disparities.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know, of course, nothing about vice, but I have known virtue when it was very tiresome." "Ah, then it was a poor affair. It was poor virtue. The best virtue is never tiresome." Miss Vivian looked at him a little, with her fine discriminating eye. "What a dreadful thing to have to think any virtue poor!”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In every disadvantage that a woman suffers at the hands of a man, there is inevitably, in what concerns the man, an element of cowardice. When I say "inevitably," I mean that this is what the woman sees in it.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever question there may be of his [Thoreau's] talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial — he was parochial; it is only at his best that he is readable.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source