Quotes from Henry James

His mind contained several millions of facts, packed too closely together for the light breeze of the imagination to draw through the mass.

The past came back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which persons of sensibility are visited at odd hours.

But I think on the whole I would rather be myself than you. I'm quite content to be myself; I don't want to change.

Don't you know ? How should I, my dear—in the absence of everything?

If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to TWO children—? We say, of course, somebody exclaimed, that they give two turns! Also that we want to hear about them.

I know how you suffer, and that's why I'm here.

The vanity of women had long memories, but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake.

The mere sense of his grasp in her own covered the ground of loss just as much as the ground of gain. His presence was like an object brought so close to her face that she couldn't see round its edges

We must see the old king; we must "do" the cathedral,' he said; 'we must know all about it. If we could but take,' he exhaled, 'the full opportunity!' And then while, for all they seemed to give him, he sounded again her eyes: 'I feel the day like a great gold cup that we must somehow drain together.

Le cose non sono mai come dovrebbero essere, - osservò il vecchio. - Se aspetti che cambino non combinerai mai nulla.

upon, having—as I at least supposed—a life of his own and tastes and habits which had long since diverted him from the maternal side.  If he did

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 a slow passage (which at that season of the year would probably also be a fine one) was a guarantee of ten or twelve days of fresh air. I strolled down

I don't care how I live, nor where I live, said Millicent, so long as I can do as I like.

secret of what passed between him and the strange girl who would have sacrificed her marriage to him on so short an acquaintance remains

Charlotte was in pain, Charlotte was in torment, but he himself had given her reason enough for that; and, in respect to the rest of the whole matter of her obligation to follow her husband, that personage and she, Maggie, had so shuffled away every link between consequence and cause that the intention remained, like some famous poetic line in a dead language subject to varieties of interpretation. What

It would have been impossible to carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence.

of a spying servant, on the other side of

They had exchanged vows and tokens, sealed their rich compact, solemnized, so far as breathed words and murmured sounds and lighted eyes and clasped hands could do it, their agreement to belong only, and to belong tremendously, to each other.

It isn't a question of any beauty,' said Maggie; 'it's only a question of the quantity of truth.' 'Oh the quantity of truth!' the Prince richly though ambiguously murmured.

The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance - all strewn with crumpled playbills.

Absence was a sign that when it might be a question of gratifying him she had grown used to spare no pains, and I fancied her rummaging in some.

I don't care who you may be--I don't want to know; it signifies very little to-day.

I thought with joy of the morrow

Art is long. If we work for ourselves of course we must hurry. If we work for her we must often pause.