Quotes from Henry James

He was lost in wonder at the mystery of things.

But if he isn't a gentleman — What is he? He's a horror.

you mustn't think life will be for you all hard things. You've the right to be happy. You must make up your mind to it. You must accept any form in which happiness may come.

There are no themes so human as those that reflect the closeness of bliss to bale.

I never was what I should be.

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

I can't make out what you're up to . . . You strike me as having mysterious purposes — vast designs.

Isabel, as she herself grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live for.

She sometimes felt a sort of passion of tenderness for memories which had led no other merit than that they belonged to her unmarried life.

She looked about her again, on her feet, at her scattered melancholy comrades -- some of them so melancholy as to be down on their stomachs in the grass, turned away, ignoring, burrowing; she saw once more, with them, those two faces of the question between which there was so little to choose for inspiration. It was perhaps superficially more striking that one could live if one would; but it was more appealing, insinuating, irresistible in short, that one would live if one could.

What's he like? I've been dying to tell you. But he's like nobody.

Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life? There was an everlasting weight on her heart — there was a livid light on everything.

Madame de Cintre's face had, to Newman's eye, a range of expression as delightfully vast as the wind-streaked, cloud-flecked distance on a Western prairie. But her mother's white, intense, respectable countenance, with its formal gaze, and its circumscribed smile, suggested a document signed and sealed; a thing of parchment, ink, and ruled lines.

Basil Ransom had got up just as Mrs. Luna made this last declaration; for a young lady had glided into the room, who stopped short as it fell upon her ears. She stood there looking, consciously and rather seriously, at Mr. Ransom; a smile of exceeding faintness played about her lips--it was just perceptible enough to light up the native gravity of her face. It might have been likened to a thin ray of moonlight resting upon the wall of a prison.

It was the idea . . . that led me straight out . . . of the inner chamber of my dread.

I welcomed the consciousness that I was charged with much to do, and I caused it to be known as well that, left thus to myself, I was quite remarkably firm.

It has been everything for me to see you.

He was distinguished to the tips of his polished nails, and there was not a movement of his fine perpendicular person that was not noble and majestic. Newman had never yet been confronted with such an incarnation of the art of taking oneself seriously; he felt a sort of impulse to step backward, as you do to get a view of a great facade.

Our men have been real Frenchmen, and their wives--I may say it--have been worthy of them. You may see all their portraits at our house in Auvergne; every one of them an injured beauty, but not one of them hanging her head. Not one of them had the bad taste to be jealous... These are great traditions, and it doesn't seem to me fair that a little American bourgeoise should come in and pretend to alter them, and should hang her photograph, with her obstinate little air penche

He was a dim secondary social success -- and all with people who had truly not an idea of him. It was all mere surface sound, this murmur of their welcome, this popping of their corks -- just as his gestures of response were the extravagant shadows, emphatic in proportion as they meant little, of some game of 'ombres chinoises' [French: shadow play].

When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you are in a difficulty, judge for yourself.

We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger.

Fanny Assingham had at this moment the sense as of a large heaped dish presented to her intelligence and inviting it to a feast-- so thick were the notes of intention in this remarkable speech.

I shall always think of you; I shall never think of anyone else. I came to England simply because you are here; I couldn't stay at home after you had gone: I hated the country because you were not in it. If I like this country at present it is only because it holds you.