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

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

More quotes by Henry James

Image
In art economy is always beauty.
Henry James
Image
A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
Henry James
Image
Ideas are, in truth, force.
Henry James
Image
We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have.
Henry James
Image
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
Henry James
Image
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.
Henry James
Image
I've always expected the worst, and it's always worse than I expected.
Henry James
Image
We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generosity.
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
The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.
Henry James
Image
Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
Henry James
Image
Experience was to be taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got a light for a cigarette but one had to check the friendly impulse to ask for it in the same way.
Henry James
Image
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
Image
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
Henry James
Image
Always keep a window in the attic open not just cracked: open.
Henry James
Image
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.
Henry James
Image
Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea.
Henry James
Image
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
Image
I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.
Henry James
Image
To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.
Henry James