Henry James Quotes - Page 10

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A solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy ball, with the whole family gathered around to admire her before she goes.

Henry James

Daughter, Fall, Autumn

Henry James (1993). “Collected Travel Writings: Great Britain and America”, p.370, Library of America

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To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.

Henry James

Strong, Book, Imagination

Henry James (1994). “Henry James: selected works”, Random House Value Publishing

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I have lived too long in foreign parts

Henry James

Long

Henry James (1999). “Complete Stories, 1874-1884”, p.295, Library of America

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Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.

Henry James

Expression, May, Kind

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Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea.

Henry James

Country, Tombstone, Sea

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To treat a big subject in the intensely summarized fashion demanded by an evening's traffic of the stage when the evening, freely clipped at each end, is reduced to two hours and a half, is a feat of which the difficulty looms large.

Henry James

Fashion, Two, Theatre

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Am I solemn? I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear." "You look as if you were taking me to a prayer-meeting or a funeral. If that's a grin your ears are very near together." "Should you like me to dance a hornpipe on the deck?" "Pray do, and I'll carry round your hat. It'll pay the expenses of our journey.

Henry James

Prayer, Journey, Ideas

Todd K. Bender, Henry James (1987). “A concordance to Henry James's Daisy Miller”, Scholarly Title

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I've struck up a tremendous intimacy with Conte Alberto, and we literally can't live without each other. He is the first object my eyes greet in the morning, and the last at night.

Henry James

Morning, Eye, Night

Henry James (1974). “Letters”, p.113, Harvard University Press

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The effect, if not the prime office, of criticism is to make our absorption and our enjoyment of the things that feed the mind as aware of itself as possible, since that awareness quickens the mental demand, which thus in turn wanders further and further for pasture. This action on the part of the mind practically amounts to a reaching out for the reasons of its interest, as only by its ascertaining them can the interest grow more various. This is the very education of our imaginative life.

Henry James

Office, Mind, Criticism

Henry James (1969). “Notes on Novelists: With Some Other Notes”, p.315, Biblo & Tannen Publishers

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Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures.

Henry James

Thinking, Evil, Horror

Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.343, University of Chicago Press

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Though it might have its momentary alarms, paternity is not an exciting vocation.

Henry James

Alarms, Might, Exciting

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No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connection of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt, so dangling before us forever that bright hard medal, of so strange an alloy, one face of which is somebody's right and ease and the other somebody's pain and wrong.

Henry James

Hurt, Pain, Confusion

Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.318, University of Chicago Press

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It is altogether an extraordinary growing, swarming, glittering, pushing, chattering, good-natured, cosmopolitan place, and perhaps in some ways the best imitation of Paris that can be found (with a great originality of its own).

Henry James

New York, Paris, Growing

Henry James, Leon Edel (1987). “Henry James, Selected Letters”, p.184, Harvard University Press

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[Thomas Henry] Huxley is a very genial, comfortable being-yet with none of the noisy and windy geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when you are responding to the remarks that they have made you.

Henry James

Science, Noise, Biographies

Henry James, Jack Kerouac (1999). “Henry James: A Life in Letters”, Viking Press

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If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice , in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify.

Henry James

Artist, Choices, Faces

Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.175, University of Chicago Press

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The image of the presence, whatever it was, waiting there for him to go -this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short - he hung back from really seeing. The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this moment an awful specific form.

Henry James

Fear, Waiting, Risk

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We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donn´e: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.

Henry James

Artist, Ideas, Criticism

Henry James, Roger Gard (1987). “The critical muse: selected literary criticism”, Penguin Group USA

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The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant - no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes.

Henry James

Responsibility, Discovery, Luxury

Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.170, University of Chicago Press

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It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.

Henry James

Poetry, Effort, Mind

Henry James (2003). “The Portable Henry James”, p.405, Penguin

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Which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

Henry James

Thinking, Add, Stature

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Little by little, even with other cares, the slowly but surely working poison of the garden-mania begins to stir in my long-sluggish veins.

Henry James

Caring, Garden, Long

Henry James (2016). “The Letters of Henry James”, p.298, The Floating Press

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London doesn't love the latent or the lurking, has neither time, nor taste, nor sense for anything less discernible than the red flag in front of the steam-roller. It wants cash over the counter and letters ten feet high.

Henry James

Feet, Red Flags, Cash

Henry James (2015). “The Complete Novels of Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady + The Wings of the Dove + What Maisie Knew + The American + The Bostonian + The Ambassadors + Washington Square and more (Unabridged): Confidence + Roderick Hudson + The Awkward Age + The Europeans + The Golden Bowl + The Other House + The Outcry + The Princess Casamassima + The Reverberator + The Sacred Fount….”, p.1036, e-artnow

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To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?

Henry James

Stupid, Thinking, Suffering

Henry James (2013). “The Essential Henry James Collection”, p.921, eBookIt.com

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I had an excellent repast - the best repast possible - which consisted simply of boiled eggs and bread and butter. It was the quality of these simple ingredients that made the occasion memorable. The eggs were so good that I am ashamed to say how many of them I consumed ....It might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can be reasonably expected of it.

Henry James

Memorable, Simple, Eggs

Henry James (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry James (Illustrated)”, p.11484, Delphi Classics

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I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work; but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them.

Henry James

Bored, Feminism, Shut Up

Henry James (1974). “Letters”, p.603, Harvard University Press

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Born: April 15, 1843
Died: February 28, 1916
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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