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Henry James Quotes

Henry James, OM was an American author regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James, Sr. and the brother of renowned philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.

He is best known for a number of novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between emigre Americans, English people, and continental Europeans – examples of such novels include The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often made use of a personal style in which ambiguous or contradictory motivations and impressions were overlaid or closely juxtaposed in the discussion of a single character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to impressionist painting.

In addition to voluminous works of fiction, James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man and eventually settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916.

✵ 15. April 1843 – 28. February 1916
Henry James photo

Works

The Portrait of a Lady
The Turn of the Screw
The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors
Henry James
Henry James: 154 quotes26 likes

Famous Henry James Quotes

“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

Overheard by his nephew, Billy James, in 1902; quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, vol V: The Master 1901-1916 (1972).

“Don't mind anything anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XXIII.

“She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was suffering in a romantic cause.”

Henry James book Washington Square

Washington Square, ch. XV.

“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 book The Middle Years

Source: The Middle Years (1893).

“She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.”

Henry James

Henry James Quotes about life

“You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

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

Henry James

“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

Henry James

William James, "Is Life Worth Living?," The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897).
Misattributed

“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

Letter to H.G. Wells (10 July 1915).

Henry James: Trending quotes

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

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“Love has nothing to do with good reasons.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James Quotes

“Sorrow comes in great waves… but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.”

Henry James

“Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XVI.

“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

"Nathaniel Hawthorne" in Library of the World's Best Literature, vol. XII (1897), ed. Charles Dudley Warner.

“Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the window.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.”

Henry James book The Europeans

Source: The Europeans

“do you think it is
better to be clever than to be good?”
“Good for what?” asked the Doctor. “You are good for
nothing unless you are clever.”

Henry James book Washington Square

Source: Washington Square

“Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

Henry James

Quoted by Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934), ch. 10.

“I'm glad you like adverbs — I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.”

Henry James

Letter to Miss M. Betham Edwards (5 January 1912).

“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.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“I always want to know the things one shouldn't do."
"So as to do them?" asked her aunt.
"So as to choose." said Isabel”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“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?”

Henry James book The Ambassadors

Source: The Ambassadors (1903), book V, ch. II.
Context: 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?.. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that... The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.. Live!

“And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“Never say you know the last word about any human heart.”

Henry James

“Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.”

Henry James

Source: The Art of Fiction

“She is written in a foreign tongue.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James quote: “If this was love, love had been overrated.”

“If this was love, love had been overrated.”

Henry James book The Europeans

Source: The Europeans

“Things are always different than what they might be… If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

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

Henry James book The Ambassadors

The Ambassadors (1903), book V, ch. II.
Context: 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?.. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that... The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.. Live!

“… and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“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 Roderick Hudson

Source: Roderick Hudson http://www.gutenberg.org/files/176/176.txt (1875), ch. I: Rowland.

“Excellence does not require perfection.”

Henry James

“When I am wicked I am in high spirits.”

Henry James book The Europeans

Source: The Europeans

“One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“You wanted to look at life for yourself — but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. LIV.

“Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“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

Notebook entry, London, 1889-05-12.

“No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see—what I don’t fear!”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

Source: The Turn of the Screw

“Life is a predicament which precedes death.”

Henry James

“Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live”

Henry James

Variant: ... I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live...

“Deep experience is never peaceful.”

Henry James

de Mauves http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/mauve10.txtMadame, 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).

“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”

Henry James

Hawthorne http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/hjj/nhhj1.html, (1879) ch. I: The Early Years.

“She had a certain way of looking at life which he took as a personal offense.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.”

Henry James book The Wings of the Dove

Source: The Wings of the Dove

“… he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“It was the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour.”

Henry James

“I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do.”

Henry James book Daisy Miller

Source: Daisy Miller

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

Henry James book What Maisie Knew

Source: What Maisie Knew

“A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see--that’s my idea of happiness.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

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

Henry James book Greville Fane

"Greville Fane" http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/gfane10.txt, from The Real Thing: and Other Tales (1893).

“.. her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.”

Henry James Roderick Hudson

Source: Roderick Hudson Ch. 1

“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 book Hawthorne

Hawthorne, ch. VI: England and Italy.

“It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“A second chance—that’s the delusion. There never was to be but one. 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 book The Middle Years

Source: The Middle Years

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

Henry James book The Wings of the Dove

Source: The Wings of the Dove

“The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.”

Henry James

The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)

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