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

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
Art
Life
Substitutes
Importance
Interest
Makes

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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.
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Excellence does not require perfection.
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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.
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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.
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It's never permitted to be surprised at the aberrations of born fools.
Henry James
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One doesn't defend one's god: one's god is in himself a defense.
Henry James
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Experience is never limited, and it is never complete
Henry James
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Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
Henry James
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Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!
Henry James
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In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
Henry James
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If the artist is necessarily sensitive, does that sensitiveness form in its essence a state constantly liable to shade off into the morbid? Does this liability, moreover, increase in proportion as the effort is great and the ambition intense?
Henry James
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Don't pass it by - the immediate, the real, the ours, the yours, the novelist's that it waits for.
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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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
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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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I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.
Henry James
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Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
Henry James
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It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
Henry James
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I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
Henry James
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My sole wish is to frustrate as utterly as possible the post-mortem exploiter.
Henry James