Henry James > Quotes

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James

“It has made me better loving you...it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“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.”
― Henry James

“She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.”
― Henry James

“Sorrow comes in great waves...but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.”
― Henry James

“It's time to start living the life you've imagined.”
― Henry James

“I don't want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.”
― Henry James

“I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“I always want to know the things one shouldn't do."
"So as to do them?" asked her aunt.
"So as to choose." said Isabel”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“If this was love, love had been overrated.”
― Henry James, The Europeans

“Never say you know the last word about any human heart.”
― Henry James

“Don't pass it by--the immediate, the real, the only, the yours.”
― Henry James

“I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.”
― Henry James

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.”
― Henry James

“When I am wicked I am in high spirits.”
― Henry James, The Europeans

“Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take you eyes off your goal.”
― Henry James

“Be not afraid of life believe that life is worth living and your belief will create the fact.”
― Henry James

“She is written in a foreign tongue.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Don't mind anything any one tells you about any one else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.”
― Henry James

“She was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts, and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar...It may be affirmed without delay that She was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she often surveyed with complacency the field of her own nature; she was in the habit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right; impulsively, she often admired herself...Every now and then she found out she was wrong, and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she held her head higher than ever again; for it was of no use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organization, should move in the realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“...and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.”
― Henry James

“My idea is this, that when you only love a little you’re naturally not jealous-or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn’t matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you’re in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. When however you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all – whey then you’re beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.”
― Henry James, The Golden Bowl

“Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.”
― Henry James, Washington Square

“I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as a girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her... I don’t know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored...Very pretty indeed; but I don’t insist upon that. It’s her general air of being someone in particular that strikes me.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.”
― Henry James

“To believe in a child is to believe in the future. Through their aspirations they will save the world. With their combined knowledge the turbulent seas of hate and injustice will be calmed. They will champion the causes of life's underdogs, forging a society without class discrimination. They will supply humanity with music and beauty as it has never known. They will endure. Towards these ends I pledge my life's work. I will supply the children with tools and knowledge to overcome the obstacles. I will pass on the wisdom of my years and temper it with patience. I shall impact in each child the desire to fulfill his or her dream. I shall teach. ”
― Henry James

“True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.”
― Henry James, Roderick Hudson

“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, The Portrait of a Lady

“You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“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, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.”
― Henry James, Theory of Fiction: Henry James

“She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movement of her own heart and the agitations of the world. For this reason, she was fond of seeing great crowds, and large stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures--a class of efforts to which she had often gone so far as to forgive much bad painting for the sake of the subject.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, bravery, magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action, she thought it would be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she would never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Life is a predicament which precedes death.”
― Henry James

“...I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live...”
― Henry James

“Excellence does not require perfection.”
― Henry James

“Whatever life you lead you must put your soul in it--to make any sort of success in it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you: it becomes grim reality! And you can't always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I admit, you're very ready to do; but there's another thing that's still more important--you must often displease others. You must always be ready for that--you must never shrink from it. That doesn't suit you at all--you're too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views--that's your great illusion, my dear. But we can't. You must be prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all--not even yourself.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
― Henry James

“She had an unequalled gift, usually pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into opportunities.”
― Henry James

“One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? … I haven’t done so enough before—and now I'm too old; too old at any rate for what I see. … What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. … Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be, like me, without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don’t quite know which. Of course at present I'm a case of reaction against the mistake. … Do what you like so long as you don't make my mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors