Quotes from Henry James

Well, said Winterbourne, when you deal with natives you must go by the custom of the place. Flirting is a purely American custom; it doesn't exist here. So when you show yourself in public with Mr. Giovanelli, and without your mother— Gracious!

But even while they pretend to be lost in their fairy-tale they're steeped in their vision of the dead restored to them.

I know at least what I am,' he simply went on; 'the other side of the medal's clear enough. I've not been edifying--I believe I'm thought in a hundred quarters to have been barely decent. I've followed strange paths and worshipped strange gods; it must have come to you again and again--in fact you've admitted to me as much--that I was leading, at any time these thirty years, a selfish frivolous scandalous life. And you see what it has made of me.

The strangest thing of all for Milly was perhaps the uplifted assurance and indifference with which she could simply give back the particular bland stare that appeared in such cases to mark civilisation at its highest. It

They haven't been good — they've only been absent. It has been easy to live with them because they're simply leading a life of their own.

though leaving him always to remark, portentously, on his probably having formed a relation, his probably enjoying a consciousness, unique in the experience of man. People enough, first and last, had been in terror of apparitions, but who had ever before so turned the tables and become himself, in the apparitional world, an incalculable terror? He might have found this sublime had he quite dared to think of it; but he didn't too much insist, truly, on that side of his privilege.

And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the work of demons, is what brings the others back.

I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies - in great towns and great crowds. It's a plant that takes time and space and air; and London society is a huge squash, as we elegantly call it - an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob.

The element of the unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater than any other.

I was ready to know the very worst that was to be known.

How can I retrace to-day the strange steps of my obsession?

When you're successful you naturally feel more at home.

From lapsing into eagerness on this point she earnestly prayed she might be delivered; she held that a woman ought to be able to live to herself, in the absence of exceptional flimsiness, and that it was perfectly possible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarse-minded person of another sex.

I reflected that I had already, with him, hurt myself beyond repair.

These three words from her were in a flash like the glitter of a drawn blade, the jostle of the cup that my hand for weeks and weeks had held high and full to the brim and that now, even before speaking, I felt overflow in a deluge.

There was literally, in the ebbing . . . an extraordinarily sweet sadness.

She lost herself in infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of his deception.

The perfection of her success, decidedly, was like some strange shore to which she had been noiselessly ferried and where, with a start, she found herself quaking at the thought that the boat might have put off again and left her. The

Avete ragione che Millie non è facile a conoscere. Uno la vede, con intensità: la vede più di quanto non veda nessun altro; ma poi scopre che ciò non significa conoscerla, e che si può conoscere meglio una persona che non si riesca, diciamo, a vedere neppure appena la metà.

Between nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture--he was moving in these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever canvas--he drew a long breath: it was so presented to him from the first that the spell of his luxury wouldn't be broken.

He found on the spot the image of his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the old clock at Berne. THEY came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged along their little course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too had jigged his little course--him too a modest retreat awaited.

You're a very nice girl, but I wish you'd flirt with me, and me only.

more charming than that over there, you know!"  She made me very welcome, but her son had told her about the Patagonia, for which she was sorry, as this would mean a longer voyage.  She was a poor creature in any boat and mainly confined to her

She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her detached hand. "Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom—" "To kiss me? No!" I took the good creature in my arms and, after we had embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant.