Henry James: Trending quotes

Henry James trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
Henry James: 308 quotes26 likes

“What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

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

“Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: […].”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

XLIV
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

“The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.”

Henry James book The Tragic Muse

The Tragic Muse (1890), ch. IX.

“I don't pretend to know what people are meant for," said Madame Merle. "I only know what I can do with them.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

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

“She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.”

Henry James book The Ambassadors

The Ambassadors, book VII, ch. I.

“The ever importunate murmur, "Dramatize it, dramatize it!"”

Henry James book The Altar of the Dead

The Altar of the Dead.
Prefaces (1907-1909)

“It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration—I can call it by no other name—was that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I might.”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human soul—held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length—had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead.
Source: The Turn of the Screw (1898), Ch. XXIV.

“[T]here are women who are for all your "times of life."”

Henry James book The Ambassadors

They're the most wonderful sort.
Book V, ch. III.
The Ambassadors (1903)

“Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box.”

Henry James book The Awkward Age

Said by the Duchess in Book V, ch. XIX.
The Awkward Age (1899)

“I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies—in great towns and great crowds. It is a plant that takes times and space and air; and London society is a huge "squash," as we elegantly call it—an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob.”

Henry James book The Awkward Age

Said by Vanderbank in Book I, ch. II.
The Awkward Age (1899)

“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 book Confidence

Source: Confidence (1879), Ch. XIX.

“Don't undervalue irony; it is often of great use.”

Henry James book Washington Square

Source: Washington Square (1881), Ch. XXVII.

“When it's for each other that people give things up they don't miss them.”

Henry James book The Ambassadors

Book VI, ch. III
The Ambassadors (1903)

“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 Roderick Hudson

Source: Roderick Hudson (1875), Ch. V