The American Quotes

“He was holding his breath so as not to inhale the odor of democracy.”
― Henry James, The American

“He himself was almost never bored, and there was no man with whom it would have been a greater mistake to suppose that silence meant displeasure.”
― Henry James, The American

“Intelligent, unscrupulous, determined, and capable of seeing a man strangled without changing color.”
― Henry James, The American

“You will think you take generous views of her; but you will never begin to know through what a strange sea of feeling she passed before she accepted you. As she stood there in front of you the other day, she plunged into it. She said 'Why not?' to something which, a few hours earlier, had been inconceivable. She turned about on a thousand gathered prejudices and traditions as on a pivot, and looked where she had never looked hitherto.”
― Henry James, The American

“The truth is that circumstances had done much to cultivate in Mrs. Tristram a marked tendency to irony. Her taste on many points differed from that of her husband, and though she made frequent concessions it must be confessed that her concessions were not always graceful. They were founded upon a vague project she had of some day doing something very positive, something a trifle passionate. What she meant to do she could by no means have told you; but meanwhile, nevertheless, she was buying a good conscience, by installments.”
― Henry James, The American

“He was "distinguished" to the tips of his polished nails, and there was not a movement of his fine perpendicular person that was not noble and majestic. Newman had never yet been confronted with such an incarnation of the art of taking oneself seriously; he felt a sort of impulse to step backward, as you do to get a view of a great facade.”
― Henry James, The American

“The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width to have given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard. Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they slanted into the grass.”
― Henry James, The American

“One's theories, after all, matter little, it is one's humor that is the great thing.”
― Henry James, The American

“Which of my two critics was I to believe? I didn't worry about it and very soon made up my mind they were both idiots.”
― Henry James, The American

“It had come back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not all been made by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers.”
― Henry James, The American

“People are proud only when they have something to lose, and humble when they have something to gain.”
― Henry James, The American

“I want to bring them down,—down, down, down! I want to turn the tables upon them—I want to mortify them as they mortified me. They took me up into a high place and made me stand there for all the world to see me, and then they stole behind me and pushed me into this bottomless pit, where I lie howling and gnashing my teeth! I made a fool of myself before all their friends; but I shall make something worse of them.”
― Henry James, The American

“It is very wrong to make love to a woman who is engaged, but it is very wrong not to make love to a woman who is married.”
― Henry James, The American

“When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you are in a difficulty, judge for yourself.”
― Henry James, The American

“She was afraid,' said Mrs. Bread, very confidently; 'she has always been afraid, or at least for a long time. That was the real trouble, sir. She was like a fair peach, I may say, with just one little speck. She had one little sad spot. You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and it almost disappeared. Then they pulled her back into the shade and in a moment it began to spread. Before we knew it she was gone. She was a delicate creature.”
― Henry James, The American

“Adversity had not only ruined him, it had frightened him, and he was evidently going through his remnant of life on tiptoe, for fear of waking up the hostile fates.”
― Henry James, The American

“Madame de Cintre's face had, to Newman's eye, a range of expression as delightfully vast as the wind-streaked, cloud-flecked distance on a Western prairie. But her mother's white, intense, respectable countenance, with its formal gaze, and its circumscribed smile, suggested a document signed and sealed; a thing of parchment, ink, and ruled lines.”
― Henry James, The American

“You take things easily, and you have fewer prejudices even than I, who pretend to have none, but who in reality have three or four. Happy man, you are strong and you are free.”
― Henry James, The American

“The place suggested a convent with the modern improvements—an asylum in which privacy, though unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation, and meditation, though monotonous, might be of a cheerful cast.”
― Henry James, The American

“And yet poor Babcock liked him, and remembered that even if he was sometimes perplexing and painful, this was not a reason for giving him up.”
― Henry James, The American

“Goethe recommended seeing human nature in the most various forms, and Mr. Babcock thought Goethe perfectly splendid.”
― Henry James, The American