The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1 Quotes

“The Countess was very good company and not really the featherhead she seemed; all one had to do with her was to observe the simple condition of not believing a word she said.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1

“He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1

“Why indeed should we perpetually be thinking whether things are good for us, as if we were patients lying in a hospital?”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1

“she freely admitted that of old she had been a little mad, and now she pretended to be perfectly sane.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1

“Ah, one doesn't give up one's country any more than one gives UP one's grandmother. They're both antecedent to choice—elements of one's composition that are not to be eliminated.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1

“You can do a great many things if you're rich which would be severely criticised if you were poor. You can go and come, you can travel alone, you can have your own establishment: I mean of course if you'll take a companion—some decayed gentlewoman, with a darned cashmere and dyed hair, who paints on velvet.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1

“It's out of all reason, the number of things you think wrong. Put back your watch. Diet your fever. Spread your wings; rise above the ground. It's never wrong to do that." She”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1

“I don't know what's the matter with you," she observed to him once; "but I suspect you're a great humbug.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1

“ignis fatuus.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1

“Enough is as good as a feast.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1