Henry James (April 15, 1843 - Feb 28, 1916) ''British-American Author, younger brother to William James
Verified She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was suffering in a romantic cause. Washington Square (1881) 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. Washington Square (1881) It was as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects before which we must stop short, turning suddenly out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing with a little bang that made us look at each other— for, like all bangs, it was something louder than we had intended— the doors we had indiscreetly opened. The Turn of the Screw (1898) The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be . . . The Turn of the Screw (1898) The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance— all strewn with crumpled playbills. The Turn of the Screw (1898) 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? The Ambassadors (1903) She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table. The Ambassadors\ (1903) The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have. The Ambassadors (1903) So here it is at last, the distinguished thing. (Of his own death) Attributed Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. Cats and monkeys— monkeys and cats— all human life is there. Deep experience is never peaceful. Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself. Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine. Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window. I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect. I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme. I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth— I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace. I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them. Ideas are, in truth, force. 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. 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. It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them. It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition. It's time to start living the life you've imagined. Life is a predicament which precedes death. Life's too short for chess. One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left. 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. She had an unequalled gift... of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities. Summer afternoon— summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. 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. The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life. 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? The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman. The terrible fluidity of self-revelation. The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending. There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition. Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors. 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. 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. What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
