Henry James Quotes

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

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

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

He valued life and literature equally for the light they threw upon each other; to his mind one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart.

She couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep into her soul.

She had always been fond of history, and here [in Rome] was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.

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

Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions are very rare.

You are good for nothing unless you are clever.

...he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss...

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners – all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. [...] But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. [...] It is the biggest aggregation of human life – the most complete compendium of the world.

"I could only get on at all by taking "nature" into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue."

Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does not believe that we'll wake up to find our work done because we've lain all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is devilish hard to do!

"My father ain't in Europe; my father's in a better place than Europe."

Winterbourne imagined for a moment that this was the manner in which the child had been taught to intimate that Mr. Miller had been removed to the sphere of celestial reward. But Randolph immediately added, "My father's in Schenectady."

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