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Henry James Quotes
1843–1916 United States
Henry James, OM (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language.
United States Critics Non-fiction authors Novelists Playwrights Also known as: James, Henry
Random Henry James quote
101 quotes
She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
The Ambassadors (1903)
In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
There are bad manners everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad manners organized.
A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
My choice is the old world — my choice, my need, my life.
There are two kinds of taste in the appreciation of imaginative literature: the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.
The real offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his — attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park.
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.
We stand like a race with shrunken muscles, staring helplessly at the weights our forefathers easily lifted.
Roderick Hudson (1875)
The practice of "reviewing"… in general has nothing in common with the art of criticism.
Criticism (1893)
We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donné: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.
She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was suffering in a romantic cause.
Washington Square (1881)
He would agree that life is a little worth living — or worth living a little; but would remark that, unfortunately, to live little enough, we have to live a great deal.
Hawthorne (1879)
One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.
Hawthorne (1879)
We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.
Prefaces (1907)
Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
New York is appalling, fantastically charmless and elaborately dire.
The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.
Prefaces (1907)
The ever importunate murmur, "Dramatize it, dramatize it!"
Prefaces (1907)
The terrible fluidity of self-revelation.
Prefaces (1907)
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