Henry James: Quotes about life (page 2)

Henry James was American novelist, short story author, and literary critic. Explore interesting quotes on life.

Henry James: 308 quotes 26 likes

“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

Letter to Henry Adams (21 March 1914).

Life , Appearance , Memory

“The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.”

Henry James

Variant text: The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life.
The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)

Life

“There is, I think, no more nutritive or suggestive truth… than that of the perfect dependence of the "moral" sense of a work of art on the amount of felt life concerned in producing it. The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and the degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady.
Prefaces (1907-1909)

Life , Truth , Art , Spring

“My choice is the old world — my choice, my need, my life.”

Henry James

Notebook entry, Boston, (25 November 1881).

Life , World

“[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)

Life , Time , Women