Quotes from Henry James

She thought him very handsome as he said this, but reflected that unfortunately men didn't care for the truth, especially the new kinds, in proportion as they were good-looking. She had, however, a moral resource that should always fall back upon; it had already been a comfort to her, on occasions of acute feeling, that she hated men, as a class anyway.

It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask . . . advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever.

Why doesn't my brother like you? the Countess ingenuously added. I don't know and I don't care. He's perfectly welcome not to like me; I don't want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.

under the long and discurtained ordeal of the morrow's dawn, that

Heaven deliver me from my friends!

The superiority you discern in me," she concurred, "announces my futility. If you knew," she sighed, "the dreams of my youth!" But our realities are what has brought us together. We're beaten brothers in arms.

I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap.

Don't you know the soul is an immortal principle? How can it suffer alteration? I don't believe at all that it's an immortal principle. I believe it can perfectly be destroyed. That's what has happened to mine, which was a very good one to start with; and it's you I have to thank for it. You're very bad, she added with gravity in her emphasis.

What young man had ever paraded about that way, without a reason, a maiden in her flower? And

the Countess often asked more from one's attention than she gave in return

She wished to say everything; she was afraid he might die before she had done so.

The light of his plural pronoun was sufficiently reflected in his companion's face as he again met it; and he completed his demonstration.

What was at all events not permanently hidden from him was a truth much less invidious about his years of darkness. It was the strange scheme of things again: the years of darkness had been needed to render possible the years of light.

I shall find you delightful; I think you're enchanting just as you are.

It's as if he said to me: I like you very much, but if it doesn't please you I'll never say it again.

She liked him — she had liked him all the while; now anything might happen! She was ready — she had been ready always, waiting for him to speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever; but when the word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree.

He should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would always wear a mask.

They might in short have represented any mystery they would; the point being predominantly that the key to the mystery, the key that could wind and unwind it without a snap of the spring, was there in her pocket – or rather, no doubt, clasped at this crisis in her hand and pressed, as she walked back and forth, to her breast. She

Esta vez era otra persona…, una figura de inconfundible maldad: una mujer vestida de negro, pálida y horrible… ¡Oh, qué aire el suyo, qué cara…! Estaba del otro lado del lago. Yo estaba allí con la niña, muy tranquila en ese momento, cuando de repente apareció.

I've not made her my bosom-friend; but I like her in spite of her faults. Ah well, said Ralph, I'm afraid I shall dislike her in spit of her merits.

All these people—the people of the English mother's side—had been of condition more or less eminent; yet with oddities and disparities that had often since made Maria, thinking them over, wonder what they really quite rhymed to.

Advertising scientifically worked presented itself thus as the great new force. It really does the thing, you know.

He has made me believe in true love; I never did before!

What could be more dreary than final interviews? One never said the things one wanted — one remembered them all an hour afterwards.