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We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.

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
Familiar
Strange
Courses
Course
Past
Feel
Feels
Liking
Divided

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She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
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London is on the whole the most possible form of life.
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Art without life is a poor affair.
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To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him.
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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.
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The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.
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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?
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A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see--that’s my idea of happiness.
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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.
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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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I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
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In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
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To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.
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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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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.
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