She knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper, she might have looked out on the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side--a place which became, to the child's imagination, according to its different moods, a region of delight or terror.
("The Portrait of a Lady")
More Quotes from Henry James:
To live only to suffer-only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged-it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?Henry James
She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was suffering in a romantic cause.
Henry James
Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women.
Henry James
Experience was to be taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got a light for a cigarette but one had to check the friendly impulse to ask for it in the same way.
Henry James
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
Henry James
And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.
Henry James
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Based on Topics: Imagination & Visualization QuotesBased on Keywords: side--a, sidelights, well-worn
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