Henry James Quotes

What there was no effective record of indeed was the small strange pathos on the child's part of an innocence so saturated with knowledge and so directed to diplomacy.

I don’t like it, but I’m a person, thank goodness, who can do what I don’t like.

The news that Daisy Miller was surrounded by half a dozen wonderful mustaches checked Winterbourne's impulse to go straightway to see her.

The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.

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.

- Do you know I love you ?
- I'm sure I don't care whether you do or not !

Mrs. Penniman always, even in conversation, italicised her personal pronouns.

I never know what I mean in my telegrams – especially those I send from America. Clearness is too expensive.

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.

Madame Merle had once said that, in her belief, when a friendship ceased to grow, it immediately began to decline - there was no point of equilibrium between liking a person more and liking him less.

It's never permitted to be surprised at the aberrations of born fools.

Her face was not young, but it was simple; it was not fresh, but it was mild. She had large eyes which were not bright, and a great deal of hair which was not 'dressed,' and long fine hands which were — possibly — not clean.

A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression

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.

"A fig for my opinion! If you fall in love with Mr. Osmond what will you care for that?"

"Not much, probably. But meanwhile it has a certain importance. The more information one has about one's dangers the better."

"I don't agree to that — it may make them dangers. We know too much about people in these days; we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our mouths, are stuffed with personalities. Don't mind anything any one tells you about any one else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself."