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Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.

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
Place
Test
Ever
Tests
Nothing
Criticism
Take
Ultimate
Work
Fashion
Liking
Good
Courses
Abolish
Course
Improved
Art
Primitive

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We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have.
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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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Experience is never limited, and it is never complete it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.
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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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You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
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I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it.
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Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!
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It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
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To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.
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It's never permitted to be surprised at the aberrations of born fools.
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Art is a point of view, and a genius way of looking at things.
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The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.
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What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?
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The germ, wherever gathered, has ever been for me, the germ of a story, and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.
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I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
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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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All the same don't forget that you're young — blessedly young be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.
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Things are always different from what they might be.
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Don't pass it by - the immediate, the real, the ours, the yours, the novelist's that it waits for.
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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