Quotes About Henry James

Poor Catherine's dignity was not aggressive; it never sat in state; but if you pushed far enough you could find it. Her father had pushed very far.

To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong.

She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment.

He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his hands behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his hunting-crop. "Do you know I'm very much afraid of it – of that remarkable mind of yours?

I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.

Madame Merle was very appreciative; she liked almost everything, including the English rain. There is always a little of it, and never too much at once, she said; and it never wets you, and it always smells good.

She was a coquette; he was sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial little visage there was no mockery, no irony. Before long it became obvious that she was much disposed towards conversation.

The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, scientifically considered, was no better than a villainous miasma

His physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded or not, according to the charm you found in a blue eye of remarkable fixedness and a jaw of somewhat angular mold, which is supposed to bespeak resolution.

A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression

But you must remember that justice to a lovely being is after all a florid sort of sentiment.

My first impulse is always to behave, about everything, as if I feared complications. But I don't fear them— I really like them. They're quite my element.

No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of which—and in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my feet—there was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness.

You decline?" he cried, almost defiantly. " `Decline' isn't the word. A man doesn't decline an insult.

If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to TWO children—? We

It was the first time, in a manner, that I had known space and air and freedom, all the music of summer and all the mystery of nature.

He was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, dangerous presence.

The days, whether lapsing or lingering, were a stiff reality; the suppression of anxiety was a thin idea; the taste of life itself was the taste of suspense.

The old-world quality in everything that she now saw had all the charm of strangeness.

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

It was the abyss of human illusion that was the real, the tideless deep.

There was literally, in the ebbing . . . an extraordinarily sweet sadness.

there till we reached Liverpool—I never saw him.  His mother, after a little, at his request, left him alone. 

If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children—?