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We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

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
Life
Doubt
Passion
Dark
Inspirational
Art
Task
Give
Madness
Giving
Tasks
Work
Rest

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To believe in a child is to believe in the future. Through their aspirations they will save the world. With their combined knowledge the turbulent seas of hate and injustice will be calmed.
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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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I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
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The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.
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Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
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Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.
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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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The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.
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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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If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
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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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Women never dine alone. When they dine alone they don't dine.
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Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
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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.
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It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
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It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them.
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In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
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We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.
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Art without life is a poor affair.
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The faculty of attention has utterly vanished from the Anglo-Saxon mind, extinguished at its source by the big bayad?re of journalism, of the newspaper and the picture magazine which keeps screaming, Look at me. Illustrations, loud simplifications... bill poster advertising ? only these stand a chance.
Henry James