Quotes from Henry James

It was all there, in short - it was what he wanted: it was Tremont Street, it was France, it was Lambinet. Moreover, he was freely walking about in it.

But the sense that it was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she would think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a lash and added a deep vibration to his low voice.

May Bartram smiled. "I don't pretend it exactly shows that I'm not living for you. It's my intimacy with you that's in question." He laughed as he saw what she meant. "Yes, but since, as you say, I'm only, so far as people make out, ordinary, you're—aren't you? no more than ordinary either. You help me to pass for a man like another. So if I am, as I understand you, you're not compromised. Is that it?

He saw her try, for a time, to appear to consider it; but he saw her also not consider it.

We shall be so right . . . that we shall be strong; we shall only wonder at our past fear. It will seem an ugly madness. It will seem a bad dream.

You look upset—you've certainly been tormented. You're not well.

But James, as an artist, was deeply suspicious of what gave him pleasure, or indeed satisfaction. In his own complex sensibility, there was an ambiguity about most things, and this moved him towards subtlety when he approached character, drama, and scene, and nudged him towards many modifying subclauses when he wrote a sentence. Nothing came to him simply.

He had never supposed she hadn't wings and the need of beautiful free movements.

Yes, you've something to hide. It's none of my business — very true. But I love you, said Caspar Goodwood.

Prettiness is terribly vulgar nowadays, and it is not every one that knows just the sort of ugliness that has chic.

That's the least part of it—after it nothing will matter.

People are free to find out the best and the worst of me!

Mrs. Nettlepoint stared.  "I couldn't do that." On which I was the more amused that I had to explain I was only amused.  "What does it signify now?" "I thought you thought everything signified.  You were so full," she cried, "of signification!" "Yes, but we're further out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything becomes absolute." "What else can

Jasper to her.  I was obliged

You see, people forget you

I love you. It's because I love you that I'm here.

Well, if you love me intensely let me as intensely alone.

There is always a place for chance in things.

I love you as I've never loved you.

She had not yet divested herself of a young faith that each new acquaintance would exert some momentous influence on her life.

Ah yes, there had been intention, there had been intention, Isabel said to herself; and she seemed to wake from a long pernicious dream.

Don't fail me. It would kill me.

She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a strange truth was filtering into her soul.

There was something deep within him that he had absolutely shown to no one—to the companion of these walks in particular not a bit more than he could help; but he was none the less haunted, under its shadow, with a dire apprehension of its publicity.