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711f022
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Europe was best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for dissociating the confined American from that indispensable knowledge, and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these occasional stations of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs.
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Henry James |
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9376545
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When you lay down a proposition which is forthwith controverted, it is of course optional with you to take up the cudgels in its defence. If you are deeply convinced of its truth, you will perhaps be content to leave it to take care of itself; or, at all events, you will not go out of your way to push its fortunes; for you will reflect that in the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons. In the long run,..
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criticism
opinion
truth
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Henry James |
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68d7cf2
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If he was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles.
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Henry James |
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2a73207
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He had come abroad to enjoy the Flemish painters and all others; but what fair-tressed saint of Van Eyck or Memling was so interesting a figure as Madame de Mauves?
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Henry James |
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c1e2856
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She was a plain-faced old woman, without graces and without any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own motives. She was usually prepared to explain these--when the explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a case they proved totally different from those that had been attributed to her
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Henry James |
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37ca647
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It comes over me that I had then a strange alter ego deep down somewhere inside me, as the full-blown flower is in the small tight bud, and I just took the course, I just transferred him to the climate, that blighted him once and for ever.
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inspirational
pyschology
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Henry James |
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060e561
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some sunny empty grass-grown court lost in the heart of the labyrinthine pile.
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Henry James |
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ad46047
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Our men have been real Frenchmen, and their wives--I may say it--have been worthy of them. You may see all their portraits at our house in Auvergne; every one of them an "injured" beauty, but not one of them hanging her head. Not one of them had the bad taste to be jealous... These are great traditions, and it doesn't seem to me fair that a little American bourgeoise should come in and pretend to alter them, and should hang her photograph, ..
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Henry James |
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deb4221
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It would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the effect of the ribbon from which Miss Gostrey's trinket depended, had he not for the hour, at the best, been so given over to uncontrolled perception. What was it but an uncontrolled perception that his friend's velvet band somehow added, in her appearance, to the value of every other item - to that of her smile and of the way she carried her head, to that of her complexion, of..
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Henry James |
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0293c24
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Quote of the day: Quote of the day: 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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ccd994e
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One has not the alternative of speaking of London as a whole, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as the whole of it. It is immeasurable--embracing arms never meet. Rather it is a collection of many wholes, and of which of them is it most important to speak?
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Henry James |
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ec93a72
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Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon--the common unattainable art of taking things as they came. He appeared to himself to have given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they didn't come; but perhaps--as they would seemingly here be things quite other--this long ache might at last drop to rest.
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Henry James |
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954bf6f
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We see our lives from our own point of view; that is the privilege of the weakest and humblest of us;
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Henry James |
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df26b73
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I call it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it came with a rush.
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Henry James |
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42d8438
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What had the man had, to make him by the loss of it so bleed and yet live? Something--and this reached him with a pang--that he, John Marcher, hadn't; the proof of which was precisely John Marcher's arid end. No passion had ever touched him, for this was what passion meant; he had survived and maundered and pined, but where had been his deep ravage?... The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived.
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Henry James |
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60a7271
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She was afraid,' said Mrs. Bread, very confidently; 'she has always been afraid, or at least for a long time. That was the real trouble, sir. She was like a fair peach, I may say, with just one little speck. She had one little sad spot. You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and it almost disappeared. Then they pulled her back into the shade and in a moment it began to spread. Before we knew it she was gone. She was a delicate creature.
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Henry James |
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a1c099c
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He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little cries and protests and quick recognitions, movements like the darts of some fine high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand before life as before some full shop-window. You could fairly hear, as she selected and pointed, the tap of her tortoise-shell against the glass.
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Henry James |
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14158d8
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Everything fell together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished. The fate he had been marked for he had met with a vengeance--he had emptied the cup to the lees; he had been the man of his time, THE man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened. That was the rare stroke--that was his visitation. So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. ..
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Henry James |
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61ac9ec
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I would live for you still--if I could." Her eyes closed for a little, as if, withdrawn into herself, she were for a last time trying. "But I can't!" she said as she raised them again to take leave of him. She couldn't indeed, as but too promptly and sharply appeared, and he had no vision of her after this that was anything but darkness and doom."
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Henry James |
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c079da7
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You like excitement and emotion and change, you like remarkable sensations, whereas I go in for a holy calm, for sweet repose.
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Henry James |
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34ed5db
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Her tact had to reckon with the Atlantic Ocean, the General Post-Office and the extravagant curve of the globe.
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Henry James |
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1c602b8
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In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
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Henry James |
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bb9274b
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Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
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Henry James |
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6b03f0e
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Deep experience is never peaceful.
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Henry James |
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267f350
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Cats and monkeys -- monkeys and cats -- all human life is there!
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Henry James |
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dcfe7dd
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My choice is the old world -- my choice, my need, my life.
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Henry James |
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d0d899b
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There are bad manners everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad manners organized.
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Henry James |
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8737d0b
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I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
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Henry James |
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153db6f
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A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
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Henry James |
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c0eb1a0
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The practice of "reviewing"... in general has nothing in common with the art of criticism.
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Henry James |
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3c254d6
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Print it as it stands -- beautifully.
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Henry James |
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2820061
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The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
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Henry James |
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d16a012
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I'm glad you like adverbs -- I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
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Henry James |
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a7f0533
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The full, the monstrous demonstration that Tennyson was not Tennysonian.
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Henry James |
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fd9a489
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So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!
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Henry James |
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4f9c9e1
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It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
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Henry James |
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577df96
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Don't undervalue irony; it is often of great use.
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Henry James |
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6b69940
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There's no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding.
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Henry James |
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4b3e5ed
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Don't mind anything anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
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Henry James |
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9ed5eab
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The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
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Henry James |
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7a6227e
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There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason.
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Henry James |
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d6985fa
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Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box.
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Henry James |
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dec192b
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T]here are women who are for all your "times of life." They're the most wonderful sort.
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Henry James |
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91c6c64
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When it's for each other that people give things up they don't miss them.
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Henry James |