Watch and Ward Quotes

“You decline?” he cried, almost defiantly. “ `Decline’ isn’t the word. A man doesn’t decline an insult.”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward

“When once the gate is opened to self-torture, the whole army of fiends files in.”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward

“You’re like a picture; you ought to be enclosed in a gilt frame and stand against the wall.”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward

“I have heard many a young unmarried lady exclaim with a bold sweep of conception, “Ah me! I wish I were a widow!” Mrs. Keith was precisely the widow that young unmarried ladies wish to be. With her diamonds in her dressing-case and her carriage in her stable, and without a feather’s weight of encumbrance, she offered a finished example of satisfied ambition.”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward

“When I read a novel my imagination starts off at a gallop and leaves the narrator hidden in a cloud of dust; I have to come jogging twenty miles back to the denouement.”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward

“People are free to find out the best and the worst of me!”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward

“I’ll piously gather up the crumbs of your feasts and make a meal of them,” said Nora. “I’ll let you know how they taste.”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward

“True admiration,” said Mrs. Keith, “is one half respect and the other half self-denial.”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward

“Nothing irritates me so as the flatness of people’s imagination.”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward

“It’s very silly,” she said, “but I go on with it in spite of myself. I’m afraid I’m too easily pleased; no novel is so silly I can’t read it.”
― Henry James, Watch and Ward