Henry James Quotes

American and British writer (1843–1916)

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Henry James, OM (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of renowned philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.

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Alternative Names: Henricus James

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She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more - this idea was as sweet as a vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land. ... but Isabel recognized, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end.

She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.

There was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I must stay.

It's not my fate to give up — I know it can't be.

It was the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour.

A second chance — that’s the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

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.

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

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 are in a conspiracy to under-value them.

Her memory's your love. You want no other.

She had always observed that she got on better with clever women than silly ones like herself; the silly ones could never understand her wisdom; whereas the clever ones - the really clever ones - always understood her silliness.

She had an unequalled gift, usually pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into opportunities.

The summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights. 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.

Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.

If you have work to do, don't wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it.