Henry James Quotes

..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.

It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games

Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it-this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education.

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.

"Madame Merle was very appreciative; she liked almost everything, including the English rain. "There is always a little of it, and never too much at once," she said; "and it never wets you, and it always smells good.

Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.

In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.

When it's for each other that people give things up they
don't miss them

When the possibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was failure. It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything.

I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies—in great towns and great crowds. It is a plant that takes times and space and air; and London society is a huge "squash," as we elegantly call it—an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.

I was a screen — I was their protector. The more I saw, the less they would.

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?