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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.

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
Creatures
Unitary
Makes
Compromised
True
Revealing
Form
Finite
Every
Creature
Men
Indeed
None
Infinite

More quotes by Henry James

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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
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England always seems to me like a man swimming with his clothes on his head.
Henry James
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A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
Henry James
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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?
Henry James
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Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.
Henry James
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A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
Henry James
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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?
Henry James
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One is oneself a fine consequence.
Henry James
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Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.
Henry James
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...and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.
Henry James
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To live in the world of creation-to get into it and stay in it-to frequent it and haunt it...to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation-this is the only thing.
Henry James
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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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Ideas are, in truth, force.
Henry James
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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.
Henry James
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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.
Henry James
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It was the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour.
Henry James
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I adore adverbs they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
Henry James
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It's never permitted to be surprised at the aberrations of born fools.
Henry James
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Things are always different from what they might be.
Henry James
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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