Explore Quotes by Henry James

That accurst autobiographic form which puts a premium on the loose, the improvised, the cheap, and the easy.

In art economy is always beauty.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

Women never dine alone. When they dine alone they don't dine.

The fatal futility of Fact.

The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.

He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease.

A solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy ball, with the whole family gathered around to admire her before she goes.

The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?

Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea.

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.

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.

All the same don't forget that you're young — blessedly young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it. 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.

I think patriotism is like charity -- it begins at home.

Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!

Ideas are, in truth, force.

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

To live in the world of creation-to get into it and stay in it-to frequent it and haunt it...to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation-this is the only thing.

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.

London is on the whole the most possible form of life.

You think too much.' 'I suppose I do; but I can’t help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous headaches--a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries her crown.