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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.

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
Ends
Give
Tenths
Find
Vastly
Giving
Possess
Would
Somehow
People
Nine
Meet
Interesting

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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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The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.
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A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
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It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games
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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.
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I intend to judge things for myself to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.
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Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea.
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One can't judge till one's forty before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.
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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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To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.
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The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
Henry James
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His kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed.
Henry James
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She is written in a foreign tongue.
Henry James
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Deep experience is never peaceful.
Henry James
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If I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience and experience only,' I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.'
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