Henry James Citations
Henry James: Citations en anglais
“Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.”
Letter to Henry James Sr. (26 October 1869).
“I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.”
"Venice," The Century Magazine, vol. XXV (November 1882), reprinted in Portraits of Places (1883) and later in Italian Hours http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8ihou10.txt (1909), ch: I: Venice, pt. I.
“A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.”
"Robert Louis Stevenson," Century Magazine (April 1888).
The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)
“My choice is the old world — my choice, my need, my life.”
Notebook entry, Boston, (25 November 1881).
Letter to Hugh Walpole (21 August 1913).
Criticism.
“The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.”
Theatricals: Second Series (1895).
“She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.”
The Ambassadors, book VII, ch. I.
“The ever importunate murmur, "Dramatize it, dramatize it!"”
The Altar of the Dead.
Prefaces (1907-1909)
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."”
They're the most wonderful sort.
Book V, ch. III.
The Ambassadors (1903)
“Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box.”
Said by the Duchess in Book V, ch. XIX.
The Awkward Age (1899)
