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Until you try, you don't know what you can't do.

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
Trying

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It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.
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And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.
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I always want to know the things one shouldn't do. So as to do them? asked her aunt. So as to choose. said Isabel
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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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Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so.
Henry James
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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.
Henry James
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There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.
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.
Henry James
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Oxford lends sweetness to labour and dignity to leisure.
Henry James
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It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games
Henry James
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It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.
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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...and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.
Henry James
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The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.
Henry James
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Little by little, even with other cares, the slowly but surely working poison of the garden-mania begins to stir in my long-sluggish veins.
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One is oneself a fine consequence.
Henry James
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Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea.
Henry James
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There are women who are for all your 'times of life.' They're the most wonderful sort.
Henry James
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A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see--that’s my idea of happiness.
Henry James
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I think patriotism is like charity -- it begins at home.
Henry James