Henry James quotes - page 7
Whatever question there may be of his [Thoreau's] talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial - he was parochial; it is only at his best that he is readable.
Henry James
Mrs Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behaviour on returning to her husband's house after many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity.
Henry James
There is, I think, no more nutritive or suggestive truth... than that of the perfect dependence of the "moral" sense of a work of art on the amount of felt life concerned in producing it. The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and the degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs.
Henry James
Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong beauty enchanting but rare goodness very apt to be weak folly very apt to be defiant wickedness to carry the day imbeciles to be in great places, peolpe of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night we wake up to it again for ever and ever we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.
Henry James
No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches no great Universities nor public schools no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class no Epsom nor Ascot Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life.
Henry James
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.
Henry James
Henry James
Occupation: American Writer
Born: April 15, 1843
Died: February 28, 1916
Quotes count: 194
Wikipedia: Henry James
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