Henry James Quotes

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.

I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

There are bad manners everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad manners organized.

My choice is the old world — my choice, my need, my life.

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

It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.

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.

Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.

I haven't a creature to talk to...How in Boston, when the evening arrives, and I am tired of reading, and know it would be better to do something else, can I go to the theater? I have tried it, ad nauseam. Likewise calling. Upon whom?"

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

[of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones] [it is] like a vast episode in a sermon preached by a grandly humorous divine; and however we may be entertained by the way, we must not forget that our ultimate duty is to be instructed.