The Ambassadors Quotes

“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

“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

“Live all you can; it's a mistake not to.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“When it's for each other that people give things up they
don't miss them”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“Oh we're not loved. We're not even hated. We're only just sweetly ignored.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes—in a soft breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged soldier. He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with art, something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef. The”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“I'm a perfectly equipped failure. (...) 'Thank goodness you're a failure- it's why I so distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too hideous. Look about you- look at the successes. Would you be one, on your honour?”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“He was burdened, poor Strether—it had better be confessed at the outset—with the oddity of a double consciousness. There was detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“And she really had tones to make justice weep.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“He has depths of silence—which he breaks only at the longest intervals by a remark. And when the remark comes it’s always something he has seen or felt for himself—never a bit banal. That would be what one might have feared and what would kill me. But never.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“Her tact had to reckon with the Atlantic Ocean, the General Post-Office and the extravagant curve of the globe.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. "It isn't so much your BEING 'right'--it's your horrible sharp eye for what makes you so."

Oh but you're just as bad yourself. You can't resist me when I point that out."

She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. "I can't indeed resist you."

Then there we are!" said Strether.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“She [was] . . . one of those convenient types who don't keep you explaining --minds with doors as numerous as the many-tongued clusters of confessionals at St. Peters.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“He had again and again made out for himself that he might have kept his little boy, his little dull boy who had died at school of rapid diphtheria, if he had not in those years so insanely given himself to merely missing the mother. It was the soreness of his remorse that the child had in all likelihood not really been dull—had been dull, as he had been banished and neglected, mainly because the father had been unwittingly selfish. This was doubtless but the secret habit of sorrow, which had slowly given way to time; yet there remained an ache sharp enough to make the spirit, at the sight now and again of some fair young man just growing up, wince with the thought of an opportunity lost. Had ever a man, he had finally fallen into the way of asking himself, lost so much and even done so much for so little? There had been particular reasons why all yesterday, beyond other days, he should have had in one ear this cold enquiry. His name on the green cover, where he had put it for Mrs. Newsome, expressed him doubtless just enough to make the world—the world as distinguished, both for more and for less, from Woollett—ask who he was. He had incurred the ridicule of having to have his explanation explained. He was Lambert Strether because he was on the cover, whereas it should have been, for anything like glory, that he was on the cover because he was Lambert Strether. He would have done anything for Mrs. Newsome, have been still more ridiculous—as he might, for that matter, have occasion to be yet; which came to saying that this acceptance of fate was all he had to show at fifty-five.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“The smash was their walk, their déjeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, the view, their present talk and his present pleasure in it—to say nothing, wonder of wonders, of her own. To this tune and nothing less, accordingly, was his surrender made good. It sufficiently lighted up at least the folly of holding off. Ancient proverbs sounded, for his memory, in the tone of their words and the clink of their glasses, in the hum of the town and the plash of the river. It was clearly better to suffer as a sheep than as a lamb. One might as well perish by the sword as by famine.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“she had driven in by a single word a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt. He”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“He would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little cries and protests and quick recognitions, movements like the darts of some fine high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand before life as before some full shop-window. You could fairly hear, as she selected and pointed, the tap of her tortoise-shell against the glass.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“It would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the effect of the ribbon from which Miss Gostrey’s trinket depended, had he not for the hour, at the best, been so given over to uncontrolled perception. What was it but an uncontrolled perception that his friend’s velvet band somehow added, in her appearance, to the value of every other item – to that of her smile and of the way she carried her head, to that of her complexion, of her lips, her teeth, her eyes, her hair? What, certainly, had a man conscious of a man’s work in the world to do with red velvet bands? He would n’t for anything have so exposed himself as to tell Miss Gostrey how much he liked hers, yet he had none the less not only caught himself in the act – frivolous, no doubt, idiotic, and above all unexpected – of liking it: he had in addition taken it as a starting point for fresh backward, fresh forward, fresh lateral flights.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon--the common unattainable art of taking things as they came. He appeared to himself to have given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they didn't come; but perhaps--as they would seemingly here be things quite other--this long ache might at last drop to rest.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“It must be added however that, thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“It was all there, in short - it was what he wanted: it was Tremont Street, it was France, it was Lambinet. Moreover, he was freely walking about in it.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“But he didn't, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give the case much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over the mere laid table of conversation.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“The” thing was the thing that implied the greatest number of other things of the sort he had had to tackle; and it was queer of course, but so it was—the implication here was complete. Not”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“She certainly had been a fact of rapid growth; but the world was wide, each day was more and more a new lesson. There”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“All these people—the people of the English mother’s side—had been of condition more or less eminent; yet with oddities and disparities that had often since made Maria, thinking them over, wonder what they really quite rhymed to.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“What young man had ever paraded about that way, without a reason, a maiden in her flower? And”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being.”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“Strether wondered, desiring justice. “They seem—all the women—very harmonious.” “Oh in closer quarters they come out!” And then, while Strether was aware of fearing closer quarters, though giving himself again to the harmonies,”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors