Quotes from Henry James

He had none of that wish to appear deep which is at the bottom of most forms of fatuity; he was perfectly willing to pass for decently superficial; he only aspired to be continuous. When you were not suitably shallow this presented difficulties; but he would have assented to the proposition that you must be as suitable as you can and that a high use of subtlety is in consuming the smoke of your inner fire. THE FIRE WAS THE GREAT THING, NOT THE CHIMNEY.

I am incapable of telling you not to repine and rebel, because I have so, to my cost, the imagination of all things, and because I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say – fell for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live, especially to live at this terrible pressure, and the only way to honor and celebrate these admirable beings who are our pride and our inspiration.

That was the refinement of his supreme scruple—

American girls are the best girls," he said cheerfully to his young companion.

Goethe recommended seeing human nature in the most various forms, and Mr. Babcock thought Goethe perfectly splendid.

And yet poor Babcock liked him, and remembered that even if he was sometimes perplexing and painful, this was not a reason for giving him up.

The weather had just become perfect; it was one of the dozen exquisite days of the English year — days stamped with a purity unknown in climates where fine weather is cheap.

It's very silly," she said, "but I go on with it in spite of myself. I'm afraid I'm too easily pleased; no novel is so silly I can't read it.

Nothing irritates me so as the flatness of people's imagination.

But the blots, Turkey, intimated I. True,-but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old. Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely urged against gray hairs. Old age-even if it blot the page-is honorable. With submission, sir, we both are getting old.

so that they were left together as if over the mere laid table of conversation. Her qualification of the mentioned connexion had rather removed than placed a dish, and there seemed nothing else to serve.

There were hours at which he almost caught himself wishing that certain of his friends would now die, that he might establish with them in this manner a connection more charming than, as it happened, it was possible to enjoy with them in life.

True admiration," said Mrs. Keith, "is one half respect and the other half self-denial.

In short, the truth of the matter was, Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted any thing

Oh," said Strether, "what I want is a thing I've ceased to measure or even to understand.

She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought her, gave her something that was the compensation of her case.

Mr. Longdon gave a headshake that was both sad and sharp. "It's all wrong. But YOU'RE all right!" he added in a different tone as he walked hastily away.

I must live for myself at last, while there is still a handful left of me

Well, you must be pretty desperate when you have got to go to Boston for your entertainment.

She paused again for an instant; she was looking at Winterbourne with all her prettiness in her lively eyes and in her light, slightly monotonous smile. 'I have always had,' she said, 'a great deal of gentlemen's society.

A man in trouble must be possessed somehow of a woman," she said; "if she doesn't come in one way she comes in another.

He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking Beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him. His eyes darkened--it was close; and, instinctively turning, in his hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, face down, on the tomb.

She was, moreover, mistress of a very pretty little fortune, and was accounted clever without detriment to her amiability and amiable without detriment to her wit.

Well," said little Bilham, "you're not a person to whom it's easy to tell things you don't want to know.