Henry James, Jr. Quotes (11 Quotes)

Novelist Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea. New York April 15, 1843 London February 28, 1916

Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.

She felt in italics and thought in capitals.

I don't want everyone to like me I should think less of myself if some people did.

The final futility of fact.

To take what there 'is', and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that this doubtless is the right way to live.

She had an unequaled gift. . . of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.

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.

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self, but the point is not only to get out you must stay out and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt- no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes.