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e7ddada
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It has made me better loving you... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It's just as when one has be..
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satisfaction
love
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Henry James |
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ee266c6
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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.
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Henry James |
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a8e56d8
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There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
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Henry James |
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a9f57ee
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Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.
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reading
knowledge
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Henry James |
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01c4c3d
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I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.
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Henry James |
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8c11a5b
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I always want to know the things one shouldn't do." "So as to do them?" asked her aunt. "So as to choose." said Isabel"
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Henry James |
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6ba0393
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I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
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Henry James |
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b2cc2fd
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She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.
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Henry James |
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187d1b0
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Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispens..
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struggle
perseverance
life
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Henry James |
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1c14972
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Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?
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life
inspirational
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Henry James |
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9082184
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And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.
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Henry James |
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61d68ed
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She is written in a foreign tongue.
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Henry James |
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60f3c8f
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She was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts, and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar...It may be affirmed without delay that She was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she often surveyed with complacency the field of her o..
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Henry James |
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ca69c1c
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If this was love, love had been overrated.
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Henry James |
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9f8f613
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Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.
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Henry James |
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fd992f9
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If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
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Henry James |
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8b498ea
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Don't underestimate the value of irony--it is extremely valuable.
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Henry James |
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452d1a5
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and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.
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Henry James |
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dd07f1c
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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.
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happiness
philosophy
mindfulness
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Henry James |
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d60020b
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When I am wicked I am in high spirits.
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Henry James |
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5ac8393
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One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.
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Henry James |
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d36296c
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Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the window.
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Henry James |
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cf4e987
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You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.
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Henry James |
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44c725a
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You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
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Henry James |
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626f40f
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I don't think I pity her. She doesn't strike me as a girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her... I don't know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored...Very pretty indeed; but I don't insist upon that. It's her general air of being someone in particular that strikes me.
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Henry James |
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ca110fa
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I don't care about anything but you, and that's enough for the present. I want you to be happy--not to think of anything sad; only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be pain? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there's something deeper.
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Henry James |
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a31ca63
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The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, bravery, magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action, she thought it would be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she would never do anything wrong. She ha..
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Henry James |
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55e29e9
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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? ... I haven't done so enough before--and now I'm too old; too old at any rate for what I see. ... What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. ... Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be, like me, without the memory of that illusion. I was either, a..
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Henry James |
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cd21c90
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Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.
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Henry James |
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7acfd76
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My idea is this, that when you only love a little you're naturally not jealous-or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn't matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you're in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. When however you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all - whey then you're beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.
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Henry James |
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e9f8425
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She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movement of her own heart and the agitations of the world. For this reason, she was fond of seeing great crowds, and large stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures--a class of efforts to which she had often gone so far as to forgive much bad painting for the sake of the subje..
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Henry James |
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2ac34ff
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No, no--there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don't know what I don't see--what I don't fear!
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Henry James |
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8d28ced
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It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself, you could have made her blush any day of the year, by telling her she was selfish. She was always planning out her own development, desiring her own perfection, observing her own progress. Her nature had for her own imagination a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring bows, of shady bowers and of lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspec..
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Henry James |
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513e1b9
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To live only to suffer--only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged--it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?
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Henry James |
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8ab0bc0
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To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.
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Henry James |
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725cd52
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She had a certain way of looking at life which he took as a personal offense.
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Henry James |
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23291ca
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Love has nothing to do with good reasons.
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Henry James |
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d816db4
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The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.
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Henry James |
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816a19d
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I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do.
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women
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Henry James |
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bfe01bc
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Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.
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Henry James |
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8464101
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he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.
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Henry James |
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2bc63de
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A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see--that's my idea of happiness.
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Henry James |
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8030e2c
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It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be.
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Henry James |
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cadb2d7
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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.
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Henry James |