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
My idea is this, that when you only love a little you're naturally not jealous — or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn't matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you're in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity.
Interpretation
Deeper love brings greater jealousy.
Henry James highlights the relationship between the depth of one's love and the intensity of jealousy that accompanies it. When love is shallow, jealousy may also be minimal and insignificant. However, as love intensifies, so too does jealousy, revealing the complexities and emotional investment involved in deep love.
In practice
In a discussion about the complexities of romantic relationships.
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 can’t see--that’s my idea of happiness.
Some words have to be explicitly uttered, Lenore. Only by actually uttering certain words does one really DO what one SAYS. 'Love' is one of those words, performative words. Some words can literally make things real.
Love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man, if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.
While I was an honorable man in her eyes, she did not love me. But the minute she understood what I was, when she breathed the true and foul odor of my soul, love was born in her – for she does love me! Well, well! There is nothing real, then, except evil.
In the summer I stretch out on the shore And think of you. Had I told the sea What I felt for you, It would have left its shores, Its shells, Its fish, And followed me.
I did not find him absurd. I saw he was kind, that he was on the verge of real love. I thought it would be nice for me to be in love with him, too.
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