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Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.

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
Preeminent
Autobiography
Expression
American
May
Kind

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I have lived too long in foreign parts
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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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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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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.
Henry James
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There were always people to snatch at you, and it would never occur to them that they were eating you up. They did that without tasting.
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Excellence does not require perfection.
Henry James
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Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
Henry James
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Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.
Henry James
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In art economy is always beauty.
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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You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
Henry James
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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.
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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I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.
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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The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.
Henry James
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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.
Henry James
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One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.
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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Her chief dread in life, at this period of her development, was that she would appear narrow minded what she feared next afterwards was that she should be so.
Henry James