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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

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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
Understanding
Two
Something
Way
Several
Oneself
Meant
Neither
Ways

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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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Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
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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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Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active when the door was not open it jumped out the window.
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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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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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She is written in a foreign tongue.
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Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
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It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
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I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
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Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.
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Art is a point of view, and a genius way of looking at things.
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Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.
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I think patriotism is like charity -- it begins at home.
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Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
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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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The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.
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She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more — this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.
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You must save what you can of your life you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
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We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.
Henry James