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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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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
Doesn
Defend
Defense

More quotes by Henry James

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One is oneself a fine consequence.
Henry James
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Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.
Henry James
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Any point of view is interesting that is a direct impression of life. You each have an impression colored by your individual conditions make that into a picture, a picture framed by your own personal wisdom, your glimpse of the American world.
Henry James
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There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.
Henry James
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The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
Henry James
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You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.
Henry James
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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
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What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?
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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To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him.
Henry James
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I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.
Henry James
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Art without life is a poor affair.
Henry James
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Excellence does not require perfection.
Henry James
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Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
Henry James
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One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.
Henry James
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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
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Oxford lends sweetness to labour and dignity to leisure.
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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I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.
Henry James
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Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea.
Henry James