Henry James Quotes

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

Ah darling, goodness, I think, never brought any one out. Goodness, when it's real, precisely, rather keeps people IN.

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

There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.

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.

Cats and monkeys - monkeys and cats - all human life is there!

He surveyed the edifice from the outside, and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows, and received an impression of proportions equally fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses, and that he had not yet stood under the roof. The door was fastened, and although he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of them would fit. She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature, but what was she going to do with herself?

Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures.

I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.

Everything had something behind it: life was like a long corridor with rows of closed doors.

You think too much.'

'I suppose I do; but I can’t help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous headaches — a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries her crown.

Don’t underestimate the value of irony — it is extremely valuable.

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.

An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.

He had thought, no doubt, from the day he was born, much more than he had acted; except indeed that he remembered thoughts — a few of them — which at the moment of their coming to him had thrilled him almost like adventures.