Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American-born writer. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth15 April 1843
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
responsibility fate fighting
It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.
acceptance thinking self
It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them.
men moral manners
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
birthday regret thinking
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.
men judging literature
The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.
kindness air imperfection
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.
nice people leave-me-alone
People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.
country civilization texture
One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.
long matter ambassadors
It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life.
caring garden long
Little by little, even with other cares, the slowly but surely working poison of the garden-mania begins to stir in my long-sluggish veins.
next development periods
Her chief dread in life, at this period of her development, was that she would appear narrow minded; what she feared next afterwards was that she should be so.
strong book imagination
To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.
wicked spirit
When I am wicked I am in high spirits.
jealous ideas doubt
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. When however you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all – whey then you’re beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.