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It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.

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
Lift
Lifts
Essentially
Poetry
Prosaic
Effort
Muscular
Mind
Prolonged
Exhibits
Strain

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The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.
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The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be . . .
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Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.
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It had been agreed between them that lighted candles at wayside inns, in strange countries amid mountain scenery, gave the evening meal a peculiar poetry.
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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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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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London is on the whole the most possible form of life.
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Her memory's your love. You want no other.
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Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
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There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.
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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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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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Art is a point of view, and a genius way of looking at things.
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Deep experience is never peaceful.
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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 power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.
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You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
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Happy you poets who can be present and so present by a simple flicker of your genius, and not, like the clumsier race, have to laya train and pile up faggots that may not after prove in the least combustible!
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She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.
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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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