Henry James: Trending quotes

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“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.

“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

“Love has nothing to do with good reasons.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“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

“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

“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.

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

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“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

“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).

“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

“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).

“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

“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

“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.

“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.

“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 feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.”

Henry James

“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).