Henry James

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."
54 Quotes
"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 The Middle Years
"People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid."
Henry James
"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
"Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet."
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
"The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master."
Henry James
"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process."
Henry James
"However British you may be, I am more British still."
Henry James
"If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land."
Henry James
"It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature."
Henry James
"It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition."
Henry James
"Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women."
Henry James
"A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals."
Henry James
"I adore adverbs they are the only qualifications I really much respect."
Henry James
"The real offence as she ultimately perceived was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his - attached to his own like a small garden plot to a deer park."
Henry James
"The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy ... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?"
Henry James
"Cats and monkeys - monkeys and cats - all human life is there."
Henry James
"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
"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
"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
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