Quote

Art does not lie in copying nature.- Nature furnishes the material by means of which is to express a beauty still unexpressed in nature.-The artist beholds in nature more than she herself is conscious of.

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
Nature
Material
Stills
Materials
Doe
Conscious
Still
Beauty
Unexpressed
Mean
Lying
Beholds
Means
Furnishes
Artist
Copying
Art
Express

More quotes by Henry James

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I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it.
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.
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We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.
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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A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
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 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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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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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.
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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London doesn't love the latent or the lurking, has neither time, nor taste, nor sense for anything less discernible than the red flag in front of the steam-roller. It wants cash over the counter and letters ten feet high.
Henry James
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To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him.
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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To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.
Henry James
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I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
Henry James
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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!
Henry James
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She is written in a foreign tongue.
Henry James
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She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.
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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Oxford lends sweetness to labour and dignity to leisure.
Henry James