Quote

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.

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
Importance
Interest
Makes
Art
Life
Substitutes

More quotes by Henry James

Image
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
Image
I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
Henry James
Image
The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be . . .
Henry James
Image
Don't pass it by - the immediate, the real, the ours, the yours, the novelist's that it waits for.
Henry James
Image
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.
Henry James
Image
No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see—what I don’t fear!
Henry James
Image
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.
Henry James
Image
The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.
Henry James
Image
Excellence does not require perfection.
Henry James
Image
We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generosity.
Henry James
Image
It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.
Henry James
Image
Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.
Henry James
Image
What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?
Henry James
Image
The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.
Henry James
Image
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
Henry James
Image
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
Henry James
Image
To live in the world of creation-to get into it and stay in it-to frequent it and haunt it...to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation-this is the only thing.
Henry James
Image
Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
Henry James
Image
The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
Henry James
Image
I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them.
Henry James