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

More quotes by Henry James

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Her chief dread in life, at this period of her development, was that she would appear narrow minded what she feared next afterwards was that she should be so.
Henry James
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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.
Henry James
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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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My sole wish is to frustrate as utterly as possible the post-mortem exploiter.
Henry James
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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
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Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!
Henry James
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The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?
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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.
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Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.
Henry James
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And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.
Henry James
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To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.
Henry James
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Until you try, you don't know what you can't do.
Henry James
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There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.
Henry James
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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.
Henry James
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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
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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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Summer afternoon, summer afternoon to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
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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The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.
Henry James
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Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
Henry James