Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Isabel
Aunt
Shouldn
Asked
Choose
Always
Things

More quotes by Henry James

Image
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
Henry James
Image
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
Image
I adore adverbs they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
Henry James
Image
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
Image
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.
Henry James
Image
Ideas are, in truth, force.
Henry James
Image
There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.
Henry James
Image
In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
Henry James
Image
Until you try, you don't know what you can't do.
Henry James
Image
I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.
Henry James
Image
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
Henry James
Image
The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.
Henry James
Image
I've always expected the worst, and it's always worse than I expected.
Henry James
Image
Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea.
Henry James
Image
Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
Henry James
Image
Her chief dread in life, at this period of her development, was that she would appear narrow minded what she feared next afterwards was that she should be so.
Henry James
Image
The faculty of attention has utterly vanished from the Anglo-Saxon mind, extinguished at its source by the big bayad?re of journalism, of the newspaper and the picture magazine which keeps screaming, Look at me. Illustrations, loud simplifications... bill poster advertising ? only these stand a chance.
Henry James
Image
She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
Henry James
Image
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
Image
Happy you poets who can be present and so present by a simple flicker of your genius, and not, like the clumsier race, have to laya train and pile up faggots that may not after prove in the least combustible!
Henry James