The Beast in the Jungle Quotes

“It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything. ”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“You were to suffer your fate. That was not necessarily to know it.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“I’ll watch with you.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“When the possibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was failure. It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything.”
― Henry James, Beast in the Jungle

“He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most disinterested person in the world, carrying his concentrated burden, his perpetual suspense, ever so quietly, holding his tongue about it, giving others no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his life, asking of them no allowance and only making on his side all those that were asked. He hadn't disturbed people with the queerness of their having to know a haunted man, though he had had moments of rather special temptation on hearing them say they were forsooth "unsettled." If they were as unsettled as he was—he who had never been settled for an hour in his life—they would know what it meant. Yet it wasn't, all the same, for him to make them, and he listened to them civilly enough. This was why he had such good—though possibly such rather colourless—manners; this was why, above all, he could regard himself, in a greedy world, as decently—as in fact perhaps even a little sublimely—unselfish. Our point is accordingly that he valued this character quite sufficiently to measure his present danger of letting it lapse, against which he promised himself to be much on his guard. He was quite ready, none the less, to be selfish just a little, since surely no more charming occasion for it had come to him. "Just a little," in a word, was just as much as Miss Bartram, taking one day with another, would let him. He never would be in the least coercive, and would keep well before him the lines on which consideration for her—the very highest—ought to proceed. He would thoroughly establish the heads under which her affairs, her requirements, her peculiarities—he went so far as to give them the latitude of that name—would come into their intercourse. All this naturally was a sign of how much he took the intercourse itself for granted. There was nothing more to be done about that. It simply existed; had sprung into being with her first penetrating question to him in the autumn light there at Weatherend. The real form it should have taken on the basis that stood out large was the form of their marrying. But the devil in this was that the very basis itself put marrying out of the question. His conviction, his apprehension, his obsession, in short, wasn't a privilege he could invite a woman to share; and that consequence of it was precisely what was the matter with him. Something or other lay in wait for him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years, like a crouching Beast in the Jungle. It signified little whether the crouching Beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The definite point was the inevitable spring of the creature; and the definite lesson from that was that a man of feeling didn't cause himself to be accompanied by a lady on a tiger-hunt. Such was the image under which he had ended by figuring his life.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“He had gone in late to see her, but evening hadn't settled and she was presented to him in that long fresh light of waning April days which affects us often with a sadness sharper than the greyest hours of autumn.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“I would live for you still—if I could.” Her eyes closed for a little, as if, withdrawn into herself, she were for a last time trying. “But I can’t!” she said as she raised them again to take leave of him. She couldn’t indeed, as but too promptly and sharply appeared, and he had no vision of her after this that was anything but darkness and doom.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“Everything fell together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished. The fate he had been marked for he had met with a vengeance—he had emptied the cup to the lees; he had been the man of his time, THE man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened. That was the rare stroke—that was his visitation. So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. So she had seen it while he didn’t, and so she served at this hour to drive the truth home. It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One’s doom, however, was never baffled, and on the day she told him his own had come down she had seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she offered him. The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived. She had lived—who could say now with what passion?—since she had loved him for himself; whereas he had never thought of her (ah how it hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“How in the world--when what is such knowledge but suffering?”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking Beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him. His eyes darkened--it was close; and, instinctively turning, in his hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, face down, on the tomb.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“May Bartram smiled. “I don’t pretend it exactly shows that I’m not living for you. It’s my intimacy with you that’s in question.” He laughed as he saw what she meant. “Yes, but since, as you say, I’m only, so far as people make out, ordinary, you’re—aren’t you? no more than ordinary either. You help me to pass for a man like another. So if I am, as I understand you, you’re not compromised. Is that it?”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“The vanity of women had long memories, but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“What it all amounted to, oddly enough, was that in his finally so simplified world this garden of death gave him the few square feet of earth on which he could still most live.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“They had from an early hour made up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the margin allowed them by this had fairly become one of their commonplaces.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“Before he quitted London, however, he made a pilgrimage to May Bartram’s grave, took his way to it through the endless avenues of the grim suburban necropolis, sought it out in the wilderness of tombs, and, though he had come but for the renewal of the act of farewell, found himself, when he had at last stood by it, beguiled into long intensities. He stood for an hour, powerless to turn away and yet powerless to penetrate the darkness of death; fixing with his eyes her inscribed name and date, beating his forehead against the fact of the secret they kept, drawing his breath, while he waited, as if some sense would in pity of him rise from the stones. He kneeled on the stones, however, in vain; they kept what they concealed; and if the face of the tomb did become a face for him it was because her two names became a pair of eyes that didn’t know him. He gave them a last long look, but no palest light broke.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“Music doesn't give answers to questions I don't know how to ask. It doesn't tell me what I want. It reminds me that I may still be in love, though I'm no longer sure I know what that means, being in love.”
― André Aciman, The Beast in the Jungle

“You take your ‘feelings’ for granted. You were to suffer your fate. That was not necessarily to know it.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“Nos salva, usted sabe, que respondamos por completo a una imagen muy común: el hombre y la mujer cuya amistad se convierte casi en un hábito diario, hasta volverse al fin indispensable.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“You've always spoken first. Say something to me. It's almost three a.m. where you are. What are you doing? Are you alone? Two words from you and everyone's reduced to a stand-in, including me, my life, my work, my home, my friends, my wife, my boys, Greek fire and Greek triremes, and this little romance with Mr. Paul and Ms. Erika, everything becomes a screen, until life itself turns into a diversion.”
― André Aciman, The Beast in the Jungle

“I’m afraid I’m too ill.”
“Too ill to tell me?” it sprang up sharp to him, and almost to his lips, the fear she might die without giving him light.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by himself quite without intention—spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance.

His eyes darkened—it was close; and, instinctively turning, in the hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, on his face, on the tomb.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“They looked at each other as with the feeling of an occasion missed; the present would have been so much better if the other, in the far distance, in the foreign land, hadn’t been so stupidly meagre. There weren’t, apparently, all counted, more than a dozen little old things that had succeeded in coming to pass between them; trivialities of youth, simplicities of freshness, stupidities of ignorance, small possible germs, but too deeply buried—too deeply (didn’t it seem?) to sprout after so many years. Marcher could only feel he ought to have rendered her some service—saved her from a capsized boat in the bay or at least recovered her dressing-bag, filched from her cab in the streets of Naples by a lazzarone with a stiletto. Or it would have been nice if he could have been taken with fever all alone at his hotel, and she could have come to look after him, to write to his people, to drive him out in convalescence. Then they would be in possession of the something or other that their actual show seemed to lack. It yet somehow presented itself, this show, as too good to be spoiled; so that they were reduced for a few minutes more to wondering a little helplessly why—since they seemed to know a certain number of the same people—their reunion had been so long averted. They didn’t use that name for it, but their delay from minute to minute to join the others was a kind of confession that they didn’t quite want it to be a failure.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“He knew it, and for the time quite welcomed it, as a continuation, but didn’t know what it continued, which was an interest or an amusement the greater as he was also somehow aware—yet without a direct sign from her—that the young woman herself hadn’t lost the thread. She hadn’t lost it, but she wouldn’t give it back to him, he saw, without some putting forth of his hand for it; and he not only saw that, but saw several things more, things odd enough in the light of the fact that at the moment some accident of grouping brought them face to face he was still merely fumbling with the idea that any contact between them in the past would have had no importance. If it had had no importance he scarcely knew why his actual impression of her should so seem to have so much;”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking Beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him. His eyes darkened—it was close; and, instinctively turning, in his hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, on his face, on the tomb.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“Così lei aveva visto mentre egli non vedeva, e così lei continuava ancora a ribadire la verità. Verità, vivida e mostruosa; la sua lunga attesa: quella era stata la sua sorte. La compagna della sua vigilia aveva a un certo momento capito, gli aveva offerto la possibilità di eludere la sorte. La propria sorte, però, non si elude mai, e il giorno in cui gli aveva detto che la sua si era compiuta, l'aveva soltanto veduto fissare stupidamente la scappatoia che gli offriva. La scappatoia sarebbe stata amare lei; allora, allora sì egli
avrebbe vissuto. Ella aveva vissuto - chi avrebbe ora potuto dire con quale passione? - giacché l'aveva amato per se stesso; mentre egli non aveva mai pensato a lei (ah, con quale evidenza la verità fiammeggiava davanti ai suoi occhi, ora!) se non nel gelo del suo egoismo e al lume di utilità pratica in cui egli la vedeva. Le parole di May tornavano a lui; la catena si allungava all'infinito. La Belva era stata in agguato davvero, e la Belva, al momento giusto, era balzata; era balzata nel crepuscolo di quel freddo aprile quando, pallida, consunta, ma bella, e forse ancora in grado di guarire, si era alzata dalla sua sedia per rizzarsi in piedi davanti a lui e lasciarlo immaginosamente indovinare. Era balzata, la Belva, quando egli non aveva saputo capire; era balzata mentre ella si allontanava disperata da lui, e il marchio, quando oramai egli l'aveva lasciata, era caduto dove doveva cadere. Egli aveva giustificato il suo presentimento e compiuto il suo fato; era fallito, con assoluta esattezza, in tutto quello in cui doveva fallire; e un gemito gli salì ora alle labbra nel ricordare come May aveva supplicato di non voler mai sapere. Quell'orrore del risveglio -quella era la conoscenza, e sotto quel fiato le stesse lacrime sembrarono gelarsi. Attraverso le lacrime, nondimeno, egli cercava di fissarla e trattenerla: la teneva lì davanti a sé così da sentirne tutto il dolore. Almeno questo, in ritardo e con amarezza, aveva un poco il sapore della vita. Ma l'amarezza improvvisamente lo nauseò, e fu come se, orribilmente, avesse veduto, nella verità, nella crudeltà della raffigurazione, ciò che era stato scritto e compiuto. Vide la Giungla della sua vita, e vide la Belva in agguato; poi, mentre guardava, la senti in un fremito dell'aria ergersi, enorme e laida, per il balzo che doveva finirlo.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“- Qualunque cosa debba essere, - ella concluse chiaramente, -non è avvenuta ancora.
Egli scosse la testa, arreso del tutto ormai. - Non è avvenuta ancora. Soltanto, sappiatelo, non è qualche cosa ch'io debba fare, compiere nel mondo, e che mi darà reputazione e onori. Non sono asino sino a questo punto. Sarebbe molto meglio, senza dubbio, se lo fossi.
- Sarà qualche cosa che dovrete soltanto subire?
- Ebbene, diciamo attendere, una cosa che devo incontrare, affrontare, veder esplodere all'improvviso nella mia vita; distruggendo probabilmente ogni ulteriore coscienza, e probabilmente annientandomi; che d'altra parte, potrà alterare ogni cosa, colpendo alla radice tutto il mio mondo e abbandonandomi alle conseguenze, quali esse siano.
Ella lo ascoltò con attenzione, ma la luce nei suoi occhi continuava per lui a non essere quella della beffa. - Quanto descrivete non è forse soltanto l'attesa, o in ogni modo il senso del pericolo, ben noto a tanta gente, di innamorarsi?”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“They indeed had been wondrous for others while he was but wondrous for himself; which, however, was exactly the cause of his haste to renew the wonder by getting back, as he might put it, into his own presence. That had quickened his steps and checked his delay. If his visit was prompt it was because he had been separated so long from the part of himself that alone he now valued.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“Then it hasn't been love," said May Bartram.
"Well, I at least thought it was. I took it for that--I've taken it till now. It was agreeable, it was delightful, it was miserable," he explained.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

“It's to be something you're merely to suffer?"
"Well, say to wait for--to have to meet, to face, to see suddenly break out in my life; possibly destroying all further consciousness, possibly annihilating me; possibly, on the other hand, only altering everything, striking at the root of all my world and leaving me to the consequences, however they shape themselves.”
― Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle