Quote

To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that this, doubtless, is the right way to live.

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
Right
Deep
Something
Forever
Way
Waiting
Time
Use
Preconceived
Life
Inspirational
Doubtless
Live
Libertarian
Without
Actual
Take
Vain

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Experience is never limited, and it is never complete
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Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
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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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There were always people to snatch at you, and it would never occur to them that they were eating you up. They did that without tasting.
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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!
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I would give all I possess to get out of myself but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.
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Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!
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There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.
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You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.
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There are women who are for all your 'times of life.' They're the most wonderful sort.
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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.
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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.
Henry James
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I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
Henry James
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I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.
Henry James
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She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.
Henry James
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She is written in a foreign tongue.
Henry James
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Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.
Henry James
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To live in the world of creation-to get into it and stay in it-to frequent it and haunt it...to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation-this is the only thing.
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England always seems to me like a man swimming with his clothes on his head.
Henry James