The Aspern Papers: (with Biographical Introduction)

by Henry James

she offered this happy suggestion that the way to become an acquaintance was first to become an inmate.

One doesn't defend one's god: one's god is in himself a defense.

The multitude, today, flocked to his temple, but of that temple he and I regarded ourselves as the ministers.

and it had an air not so much of decay as of quiet discouragement, as if it had rather missed its career.

It has the air of a Protestant Sunday.

Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance.

Her face was not young, but it was simple; it was not fresh, but it was mild. She had large eyes which were not bright, and a great deal of hair which was not "dressed," and long fine hands which were—possibly—not clean. She clasped these members almost convulsively as, with a confused, alarmed look, she broke out, "Oh, don't take it away from us; we like it ourselves!"

It was the study of the two ladies to live so that the world should not touch them, and yet they had never altogether accepted the idea that it never heard of them.

They were bad economists—I had never heard of such a waste of material.

with a kind of humorous firmness which did not exclude sympathy but was on the contrary founded on it.

"It's the idea of a garden in the middle of the sea."

"Whom should I be afraid of if I am not afraid of you?"

it must be added that where there is a perpetual fast there are very few crumbs on the floor.

There could be no Venetian business without patience,

That was what the old woman represented—esoteric knowledge; and this was the idea with which my editorial heart used to thrill.

Their motionless shutters became as expressive as eyes consciously closed, and I took comfort in thinking that at all events through invisible themselves they saw me between the lashes.

Moreover was not any fame fair enough that was so sure of duration and was associated with works immortal through their beauty?

When Americans went abroad in 1820 there was something romantic, almost heroic in it, as compared with the perpetual ferryings of the present hour, when photography and other conveniences have annihilated surprise.

That was originally what I had loved him for: that at a period when our native land was nude and crude and provincial, when the famous "atmosphere" it is supposed to lack was not even missed, when literature was lonely there and art and form almost impossible, he had found means to live and write like one of the first; to be free and general and not at all afraid; to feel, understand, and express everything.

My interlocutress appeared incapable of grasping more than one clause in any proposition,

The worst of it was that she looked terribly like an old woman who at a pinch would burn her papers.

"My door is shut, but you may sometimes knock."

Writing books, unless one be a great genius—and even then!—is the last road to fortune. I think there is no more money to be made by literature."

"I don't know that I know what you mean by raking it up; but how can we get at it unless we dig a little? The present has such a rough way of treading it down."

"Oh, I like the past, but I don't like critics," the old woman declared with her fine tranquility.

It is all vain words if there is nothing to measure it by."

my predicament was the just punishment of that most fatal of human follies, our not having known when to stop.

As my confusion cooled I was lost in wonder at the importance I had attached to Miss Bordereau's crumpled scraps; the thought of them became odious to me, and I was as vexed with the old witch for the superstition that had prevented her from destroying them as I was with myself for having already spent more money than I could afford in attempting to control their fate.