Quotes from Henry James

It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.

England always seems to me like a man swimming with his clothes on his head.

God's creature is one. He makes man, not men. His true creature is unitary and infinite, revealing himself, indeed, in every finite form, but compromised by none.

I've struck up a tremendous intimacy with Conte Alberto, and we literally can't live without each other. He is the first object my eyes greet in the morning, and the last at night.

The artist beholds in nature more than she herself Nature is conscious of.

I think patriotism is like charity -- it begins at home.

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

One doesn't defend one's god: one's god is in himself a defense.

Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.

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.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see--that's my idea of happiness.

She had always been fond of history, and here [in Rome] was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.

I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.

The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks.

It's time to start living the life you've imagined.

Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?

Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take you eyes off your goal.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.

If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice , in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify.