Quotes from Henry James

And it was in the mitigated midnight of these approximations that she had discerned the promise of her dawn.

It was nothing, but it was somehow everything—it was that something for each of them had happened.

What we often take to be the new is simply the old under some novel form.

there till we reached Liverpool—I never saw him.  His mother, after a little, at his request, left him alone. 

If you're ever bored, take my advice and get married. Your wife, indeed, may bore you in that case, but you'll never bore yourself.

The infirmity of art was the candour of affection, the grossness of pedigree the refinement of sympathy; the ugliest object in fact as a general thing were the bravest, the tenderest mementoes, and, as such, figured in glass cases apart, worthy doubtless of the home but not worthy of the temple – dedicated to the grimacing, not to the clear-faced gods. She

Few of the men she saw seemed worth an expenditure of imagination, and it made her smile to think that one of them should present himself as an incentive to hope and a reward of patience.

Because she has seen for herself. I've told her nothing. She's a person who does see.

Cara Isabel, la vita è meglio; perché nella vita c'è l'amore. È una buona cosa la morte... ma l'amore non c'è.

His long looks were the thing in the world she could never have enough of. What she felt was that, whatever might happen, she must keep them, must make them most completely her possession.

E non puoi sempre piacere a te stessa, qualche volta devi piacere agli altri! [...] ma c'è una cosa che è anche più importante: devi spesso dispiacere agli altri.

I'm a survivor—a survivor of a general wreck . . . everyone else has gone . . . I'm all that's left.

Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a question for the metaphysicians.

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—and I neglect it, far and away too much; from indolence, from vagueness, from inattention, and from a strange nervous fear of letting myself go. If I can vanquish that nervousness, the world is mine.

I'm sure you've an excellent spirit; but don't try to bear more things than you need.

Spiritual age is determined by the acts which make the mornings and evenings of the soul, and not by the motions of the physical globe. The soul should have its own cycles and revolutions, presenting in turn every portion of its existence to the vivifying influence of the great source of light.

It was as if her doom so floated her on that she couldn't stop.

She's beautiful, but I don't say she's easy to know. Ah, she's a thousand and one things!

the new high-class lively evening paper which was expected to meet a want felt in circles increasingly conscious that Conservatism must be made amusing, and unconvinced when assured by those of another political colour that it was already amusing enough.

She's the latest freshest fruit of our great American evolution. She's the self-made girl! (…) Well, to begin with, the self-made girl's a new feature. That, however, you know. In the second place she isn't self-made at all. We all help to make her, we take such an interest in her.

He gave me a look, but in the dusk I couldn't make out very well what it conveyed.  Then he bent over his mother, kissing her.  "My news isn't particularly satisfactory.  I'm going for you." "Oh you humbug!" she replied.  But she was of course delighted.

Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element- direct observation.

She had to take from him again, on this, one of his long looks, and she took it to its deepest, its headiest dregs.

se guardo indietro, mi pare che tutto sia stato pura sofferenza.