Explore Quotes by Henry James

I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.

You seemed to me to be soaring far up in the blue - to be sailing in the bright light, over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud - a missile that should never have reached you - and down you drop to the ground.

We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have.

I have in my own fashion learned the lesson that life is effort, unremittingly repeated.

It's time to start living the life you've imagined.

She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.

I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.

She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.

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

She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.

She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more — this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.

I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.

I don't care about anything but you, and that's enough for the present. I want you to be happy--not to think of anything sad; only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be pain? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there's something deeper.

Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.

The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.

You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.