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There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.

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
Unions
Bases
Misunderstanding
Usual
Mutual
Union
Basis

More quotes by 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.
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Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.
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It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them.
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To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.
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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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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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When you forget to eat, you know you're alive.
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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Cats and monkeys monkeys and cats all human life is there.
Henry James
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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.
Henry James
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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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The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.
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I've always expected the worst, and it's always worse than I expected.
Henry James
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Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
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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I could come back to America..to die..but never, never to live.
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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The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
Henry James
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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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Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.
Henry James