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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.

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
Experience
Patterns
Cluster
Power
Judge
Clusters
May
Piece
Constitute
Whole
Guess
Trace
Things
Judging
Implications
Pieces
Unseen
Seen
Pattern
Almost
Gifts

More quotes by Henry James

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I've always expected the worst, and it's always worse than I expected.
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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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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.
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My idea is this, that when you only love a little you're naturally not jealous — or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn't matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you're in the very same proportion jealous your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity.
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Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
Henry James
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The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.
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I always want to know the things one shouldn't do. So as to do them? asked her aunt. So as to choose. said Isabel
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It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
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Women never dine alone. When they dine alone they don't dine.
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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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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.
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There are women who are for all your 'times of life.' They're the most wonderful sort.
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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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Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.
Henry James
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Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
Henry James
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..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.
Henry James
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There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.
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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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Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.
Henry James
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Cats and monkeys monkeys and cats all human life is there.
Henry James