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

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

More quotes by Henry James

Image
I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it.
Henry James
Image
If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
Henry James
Image
What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?
Henry James
Image
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
Image
Always keep a window in the attic open not just cracked: open.
Henry James
Image
I've always expected the worst, and it's always worse than I expected.
Henry James
Image
Experience is never limited, and it is never complete it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.
Henry James
Image
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
Henry James
Image
To believe in a child is to believe in the future. Through their aspirations they will save the world. With their combined knowledge the turbulent seas of hate and injustice will be calmed.
Henry James
Image
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.
Henry James
Image
The germ, wherever gathered, has ever been for me, the germ of a story, and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.
Henry James
Image
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
Henry James
Image
Her memory's your love. You want no other.
Henry James
Image
Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active when the door was not open it jumped out the window.
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
Image
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Henry James
Image
The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
Henry James
Image
A solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy ball, with the whole family gathered around to admire her before she goes.
Henry James
Image
London is on the whole the most possible form of life.
Henry James
Image
There are women who are for all your 'times of life.' They're the most wonderful sort.
Henry James