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Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.

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
Innocent
Infinite
Pleasure
Pleasures
Observation

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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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The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.
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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Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active when the door was not open it jumped out the window.
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One can't judge till one's forty before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.
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We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generosity.
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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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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.
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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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She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.
Henry James
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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.
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All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground.
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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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In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
Henry James
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It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
Henry James
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Her memory's your love. You want no other.
Henry James
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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
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If you have work to do, don't wait to feel like it set to work and you will feel like it.
Henry James
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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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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