Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Excellence does not require perfection.
Henry James
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Perfection
Doe
Require
Excellence
More quotes by Henry James
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
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.
Henry James
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
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.
Henry James
Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
Henry James
..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.
Henry James
London is on the whole the most possible form of life.
Henry James
My sole wish is to frustrate as utterly as possible the post-mortem exploiter.
Henry James
England always seems to me like a man swimming with his clothes on his head.
Henry James
I've always expected the worst, and it's always worse than I expected.
Henry James
The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.
Henry James
The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.
Henry James
I adore adverbs they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
Henry James
My idea is this, that when you only love a little you're naturally not jealous — or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn't matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you're in the very same proportion jealous your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity.
Henry James
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
Art is a point of view, and a genius way of looking at things.
Henry James
A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
Henry James
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
Henry James
Art does not lie in copying nature.- Nature furnishes the material by means of which is to express a beauty still unexpressed in nature.-The artist beholds in nature more than she herself is conscious of.
Henry James
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
