Quotes from Henry James

And did your beastly papa, my precious angel, send any message to your own loving mamma?" Then it was that she found the words spoken by her beastly papa to be, after all, in her little bewildered ears, from which, at her mother's appeal, they passed, in her clear shrill voice, straight to her little innocent lips. "He said I was to tell you, from him," she faithfully reported, "that you're a nasty horrid pig!

That's a compliment, said Gertrude. I put all the compliments I receive into a little money-jug that has a slit in the side. I shake them up and down, and they rattle. There are not many yet - only two or three. (Chapter 6)

Julia would have got over the other woman, but she would never get over his becoming a nobody

I rushed up garret when the letter came, and tried to thank god for being so good to us, but I could only cry, and say, "I'm glad! I'm glad!" Didn't that do as well as a regular prayer? For I felt a great many in my heart.

Her character was simply to hold you by the particular spell;any other--the good nature of home, the relation of her mother, her friends, her lovers, her debts, the practice of virtues, or industries, or vices--was not worth speaking of. These things were the fictions and shadows, the representation was the deep substance.

Well, intensity with ignorance—what do you want worse?

for the modern indignity of travel—the promiscuities and vulgarities, the station and the hotel, the gregarious patience, the struggle for a scrappy attention, the reduction to a numbered state. The

Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom.

Why it would be a pleasure," I replied rather foolishly. "Do you mean for you?" "Well, yes—call

She sought to be eloquent in her garments, and to make up for her diffidence of speech by a fine frankness of costume

She felt the moment she looked at him that he was by far the most shining presence that had ever made her gape, and her pleasure in seeing him, in knowing that he took hold of her and kissed her, as quickly throbbed into a strange shy pride in him, a perception of his making up for her fallen state, for Susan's public nudges, which quite bruised her, and for all the lessons that, in the dead schoolroom, where at times she was almost afraid to stay alone, she was bored with not having.

He had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood over him, to have the last word. "Wasn't what you came out for to find out all?

She's a contemporary of the Medici; she must have been present at the burning of Savonarola, and I'm not sure she didn't throw a handful of chips into the flame.

If you knew some of the people he does have!" Maisie knew them all, and none indeed were to be compared to Sir Claude.

much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life.

galantuomo—'and no mistake.' There

Mama doesn't care for me, she said very simply. Not really. Child as she was, her little long history was in the words.

that's the delightful thing about art, that there's always more to learn and more to do;it grows bigger the more one uses it and meets more questions the more they come up...

There were moments," she explained, "when you struck me as grandly cynical; there were others when you struck me as grandly vague.

but she carries her head like a pretty woman. (Chapter 1)

he had never been alone with a jeune fille. It was a great moment; poor Rosier began to pat his forehead again. There was another room beyond the one in which they stood—a small room that had been thrown open and lighted, but that, the company not being numerous, had remained empty all the evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow; there were several lamps; through the open door it looked the very temple of authorised love.

She has such variety and yet such harmony.

But Daisy, on this occasion, continued to present herself as an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence.

But we've so befogged and befouled the whole question of liberty, of spontaneity, of good humour, and inclination, and enjoyment, that there's nothing that makes people stare so as to see on natural.