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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
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Ultimate
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Fashion
Liking
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Abolish
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Ever
Tests
Nothing
Criticism

More quotes by Henry James

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One of my latest sensations was going to Lady Airlie's to hear Browning read his own poems - with the comport of finding that, at least, if you don't understand them, he himself apparently understands them even less. He read them as if he hated them and would like to bite them to pieces.
Henry James
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My sole wish is to frustrate as utterly as possible the post-mortem exploiter.
Henry James
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An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.
Henry James
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You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
Henry James
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The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.
Henry James
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Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
Henry James
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The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?
Henry James
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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
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Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
Henry James
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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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In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
Henry James
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The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.
Henry James
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I adore adverbs they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
Henry James
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God's creature is one. He makes man, not men. His true creature is unitary and infinite, revealing himself, indeed, in every finite form, but compromised by none.
Henry James
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There are moods in which one feels the impulse to enter a tacit protest against too gross an appetite for pure aesthetics in this starving and sinning world. One turns half away, musingly, from certain beautiful useless things.
Henry James
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The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be . . .
Henry James
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Any point of view is interesting that is a direct impression of life. You each have an impression colored by your individual conditions make that into a picture, a picture framed by your own personal wisdom, your glimpse of the American world.
Henry James
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The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
Henry James
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...and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.
Henry James
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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.
Henry James