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..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.

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
Feature
Phrase
Phrases
Features
Smile
Sprightly
Pretty
Lurking
Never
Scratch
Scratches

More quotes by Henry James

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A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
Henry James
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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
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If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice , in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify.
Henry James
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I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them.
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.'
Henry James
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Ideas are, in truth, force.
Henry James
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A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
Henry James
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Deep experience is never peaceful.
Henry James
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Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.
Henry James
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Every governmental institution has been a standing testimony to the harmonic destiny of society, a standing proof that the life of man is destined for peace and amity, instead of disorder and contention.
Henry James
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She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
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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I could come back to America..to die..but never, never to live.
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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He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.
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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I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.
Henry James
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London is on the whole the most possible form of life.
Henry James
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If the artist is necessarily sensitive, does that sensitiveness form in its essence a state constantly liable to shade off into the morbid? Does this liability, moreover, increase in proportion as the effort is great and the ambition intense?
Henry James
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The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.
Henry James