Henry James Quotes
brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James, was an American-born author and literary critic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
(1843 - 1916)
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A man who pretends to understand women is ad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
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An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.
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Art does not lie in copying nature. - Nature furnishes the material by means of which to express a beauty still unexpressed in nature. - The artist beholds in nature more than she herseif is conscious of.
[Art]
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Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
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Cats and monkeys - monkeys and cats - all human life is there.
[Cats]
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Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
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Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.
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For myself I live, live intensely and am fed by life, and my value, whatever it be, is in my own kind of expression of that.
[Writing]
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However British you may be, I am more British still.
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I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
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I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.
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I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
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I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.
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I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.
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Ideas are, in truth, force.
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If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land.
[America]
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In art economy is always beauty.
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In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives.
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It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
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