Quote

There are moods in which one feels the impulse to enter a tacit protest against too gross an appetite for pure aesthetics in this starving and sinning world. One turns half away, musingly, from certain beautiful useless things.

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
World
Beauty
Appetite
Turns
Protest
Half
Enter
Tacit
Away
Impulse
Sinning
Beautiful
Useless
Moods
Certain
Mood
Aesthetics
Feels
Sin
Starving
Things
Pure
Gross

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If you haven't had your life what have you had?
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To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.
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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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When you forget to eat, you know you're alive.
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I would give all I possess to get out of myself but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.
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A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
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I've always expected the worst, and it's always worse than I expected.
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In art economy is always beauty.
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Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!
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She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
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Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.
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If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
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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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Always keep a window in the attic open not just cracked: open.
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It's never permitted to be surprised at the aberrations of born fools.
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The faculty of attention has utterly vanished from the Anglo-Saxon mind, extinguished at its source by the big bayad?re of journalism, of the newspaper and the picture magazine which keeps screaming, Look at me. Illustrations, loud simplifications... bill poster advertising ? only these stand a chance.
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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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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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