Quote

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.

Henry James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Hands
Wherever
Sprung
Stories
Seeds
Hint
Ever
Shape
Germs
Shapes
Gathered
Single
Hints
Hand
Remote
Incubation
Small
Casual
Strained
Story
Seed
Germ

More quotes by Henry James

Image
Experience was to be taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got a light for a cigarette but one had to check the friendly impulse to ask for it in the same way.
Henry James
Image
To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.
Henry James
Image
London doesn't love the latent or the lurking, has neither time, nor taste, nor sense for anything less discernible than the red flag in front of the steam-roller. It wants cash over the counter and letters ten feet high.
Henry James
Image
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.
Henry James
Image
Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.
Henry James
Image
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
Image
I think patriotism is like charity -- it begins at home.
Henry James
Image
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Henry James
Image
The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.
Henry James
Image
Oxford lends sweetness to labour and dignity to leisure.
Henry James
Image
Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
Henry James
Image
The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.
Henry James
Image
I have lived too long in foreign parts
Henry James
Image
England always seems to me like a man swimming with his clothes on his head.
Henry James
Image
I could come back to America..to die..but never, never to live.
Henry James
Image
If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
Henry James
Image
I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
Henry James
Image
You must save what you can of your life you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
Henry James
Image
I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.
Henry James
Image
I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it.
Henry James