Quotes from Henry James

His very quietness was part of it now, as always part of everything, of his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite public perversity, his inscrutable incalculable energy; and this quality perhaps it might be – all the more too as the result, for the present occasion, of an admirable traceable effort – that placed him in her eyes as no precious work of art probably had ever been placed in his own.

ten o'clock!" "What does it matter when my things are put up?" the young man said.  "There's no crowd at this moment; there will be cabins to spare.  I'm waiting for a telegram—that will settle

If you could see none but the people I like, my dear, you'd have a very small society.

I don't know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to me I shall always be ashamed.

It was in seeing her that he felt what their interruption had been, and that they met across it even as persons whose adventures, on either side, in time and space, of the nature of perils and exiles, had had a peculiar strangeness. He wondered if he were as different for her as she herself had immediately appeared.

On 10 August 1914, five days after war was declared, Henry James, in a letter to a friend, expressed his revulsion at the prospect of war, and articulated the illusion that had preceded it: `Black and hideous to me is the tragedy that gathers, and I'm sick beyond cure to have lived on to see it. You and I, the ornaments of our generation, should have been spared the wreck of our beliefs that through the long years we had seen civilization grow and the worst become impossible.

Adversity had not only ruined him, it had frightened him, and he was evidently going through his remnant of life on tiptoe, for fear of waking up the hostile fates.

The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps

It little matters, for relief arrived. I call it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it came with a rush.

It seemed to her at last that she would do well to take a book; formerly, when heavy-hearted, she had been able, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason.

This impression came out most for Maggie when, in their easier intervals, they had only themselves to regard, and when her companion's inveteracy of never passing first, of not sitting till she was seated, of not interrupting till she appeared to give leave, of not forgetting too familiarly that in addition to being important she was also sensitive, had the effect of throwing over their intercourse a kind of silver tissue of decorum. It

every one" was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their leisure, were profaning the tables.  The heat was insufferable

I don't know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you. You're the person in the world who has most right, he answered. I've given you assurances that I've never given any one else.

There may be unselfish natures, there may be disinterested feelings.

Is there really no hope? our young woman asked as she stood before her. None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful life. No — it has only been a beautiful one.

The English are the most romantic people in the world.

Oh they're every one—all sorts and sizes; of course I mean within limits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up. There are always artists—he's beautiful and inimitable to the cher confrère; and then gros bonnets of many kinds—ambassadors, cabinet ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above

But my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that's not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore.

strolled down the hill without meeting a creature, though I could see through the palings of the Common that that recreative expanse was peopled with dim forms.  I remembered Mrs. Nettlepoint's house—she lived in those days (they

getting out to sea.  I was even glad of what I had learned in the afternoon at the office of the company—that at the eleventh hour an old ship with a lower standard of speed had been put on in place of the vessel in which I had taken my passage.  America was roasting, England might very well be stuffy, and

He was gathering everything up, everything he should tell her.

It stretches, this little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else, comparatively, plays over the surface of it. The order, the form, the texture of my books will perhaps some day constitute for the initiated a complete representation of it.

perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert.  The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls.  As "every one" was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their leisure, were profaning the tables.  The heat was insufferable and I thought with

I don't go off easily, but when I'm touched, it's for life. It's for life, Miss Archer, it's for life.