Quotes from Henry James

The practice of "reviewing"... in general has nothing in common with the art of criticism.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, and I know of no substitute for the force and beauty of it's process.

Try to be someone upon whom nothing is lost!

We must grant the artist his subject his idea his donnee: Our criticisms apply only to what he makes of it.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

In art economy is always beauty.

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be . . .

Oxford lends sweetness to labour and dignity to leisure.

Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance.

Excellence does not require perfection.

Deep experience is never peaceful.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete

No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don't know what I don't see—what I don't fear!

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.

People can be in general pretty well trusted, of course--with the clock of their freedom ticking as loud as it seems to do here--to keep an eye on the fleeting hour.

I don't want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.

I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth-I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.