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I always want to know the things one shouldn't do. So as to do them? asked her aunt. So as to choose. said Isabel

Henry James

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Henry James
Age: 73 †
Born: 1843
Born: January 1
Died: 1916
Died: January 1
Contributing Editor
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet Lawyer
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Henricus James
Choose
Always
Things
Isabel
Aunt
Shouldn
Asked

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You think too much.' 'I suppose I do but I can’t help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous headaches--a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries her crown.
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The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.
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do you think it is better to be clever than to be good?” “Good for what?” asked the Doctor. “You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
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It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.
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It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
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The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.
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It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.
Henry James
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We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.
Henry James
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Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!
Henry James
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Women never dine alone. When they dine alone they don't dine.
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Every governmental institution has been a standing testimony to the harmonic destiny of society, a standing proof that the life of man is destined for peace and amity, instead of disorder and contention.
Henry James
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We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
Henry James
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There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.
Henry James
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Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.
Henry James
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All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground.
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I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.
Henry James
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The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.
Henry James
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The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.
Henry James
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It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.
Henry James
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She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more — this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.
Henry James