Quotes from Henry James

There was something between them. There was everything.

You like excitement and emotion and change, you like remarkable sensations, whereas I go in for a holy calm, for sweet repose.

Even iron sometimes melts.

I find that I really hang back; but I must take my horrid plunge.

Great statesmen oughtn't to waltz.

There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back, the business seems to me to have been all pure suffering.

It was the abyss of human illusion that was the real, the tideless deep.

the high brutality of good intentions ...

I was on the point of saying that a happy chance had favoured him, but it occurs to me that one is under no obligation to call chances by flattering epithets when they have been waited for so long.

She believed me, I was sure, absolutely; if she hadn't I don't know what would have become of me, for I couldn't have borne the strain alone.

I don't approve of myself in the least. Sometimes it comes over me — how I should object to myself if I were not myself.

She was to feel henceforth as if she were flattening her nose upon the hard window-pane of the sweet-shop of knowledge

She hadn't given up yet, and the broken sentence, if she was the last word, would end with a sort of meaning.

I can't escape unhappiness.

The stale September days, in the huge half-empty town, had a charm wrapped in them as a coloured gem might be wrapped in a dusty cloth.

Ah, be mine as I'm yours!

It was practically the end of everything. I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a moment in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry.

He fairly glittered in the gloom.

Life had met him so, half-way, and had turned round so to walk with him, placing a hand in his arm and fondly leaving him to choose the pace.

This was immense, and they thus took final possession of it. They

In American, the gentlemen obey the ladies.

When I'm bad I am bad !

Quote of the day: Quote of the day: We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. [info][add][mail][note] Henry James (1843 - 1916)

The chance had come - it was an extraordinary one - on the day she first met Densher; and it was to the girl's lasting honour that she knew on the spot what she was in the presence of.