Quote

If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice , in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify.

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
Face
Presumption
Faces
Pretend
Freedom
Allow
Artist
Choice
Must
Cases
Respect
Particular
Presumptions
Choices
Innumerable

More quotes by Henry James

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God's creature is one. He makes man, not men. His true creature is unitary and infinite, revealing himself, indeed, in every finite form, but compromised by none.
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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.
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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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To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him.
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In art economy is always beauty.
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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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You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
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The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.
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...and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.
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Deep experience is never peaceful.
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An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.
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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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I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.
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It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.
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I have lived too long in foreign parts
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We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have.
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One doesn't defend one's god: one's god is in himself a defense.
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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 are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.
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One is oneself a fine consequence.
Henry James