The deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer...No good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind.
Henry JamesRead
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Interpretation
Writing literature requires a deep understanding of history and context.
Henry James suggests that the creation of literature is not merely an act of imagination but is deeply rooted in the historical context from which it arises. The complexities and intricacies of human experiences over time contribute significantly to the depth and quality of literary works, indicating that good literature often reflects or is influenced by the events and ideas of the past.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture about the importance of historical context in literature.
The deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer...No good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind.
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
Never say you know the last word about any human heart.
I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.
A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one canβt see--thatβs my idea of happiness.
It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.
A big part of me would be very proud never having anything of mine adapted, because if you want the real experience, there's only one way to get it. You're going to actually have to be a reader.
There are three difficulties in authorship;-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game; in which the Booksellers are the Kings; The Critics the Knaves; the Public, the Pack; and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.
For a lot of readers these days, a book is something you have to agree or disagree with. But you can't agree with a novel. For my generation, it was assumed that a book is a dramatic thing, that the eye of the book is not telling you what to think.
It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
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