Quote

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

More quotes by Henry James

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I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
Henry James
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All the same don't forget that you're young — blessedly young be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.
Henry James
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Art is a point of view, and a genius way of looking at things.
Henry James
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She is written in a foreign tongue.
Henry James
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Until you try, you don't know what you can't do.
Henry James
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I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.
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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Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
Henry James
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Deep experience is never peaceful.
Henry James
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There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.
Henry James
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It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
Henry James
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Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.
Henry James
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His kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed.
Henry James
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Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
Henry James
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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 . . .
Henry James
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No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see—what I don’t fear!
Henry James
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If I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience and experience only,' I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.'
Henry James
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I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.
Henry James
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In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
Henry James
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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.
Henry James