A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.
Henry James

An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.
Henry James

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
Henry James

Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
Henry James

Deep experience is never peaceful.
Henry James

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
Henry James

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.
Henry James

However British you may be, I am more British still.
Henry James

I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
Henry James

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.
Henry James


I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
Henry James

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.
Henry James

I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.
Henry James

Ideas are, in truth, force.
Henry James

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.
Henry James

In art economy is always beauty.
Henry James

In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives.
Henry James

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.
Henry James

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.
Henry James

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Henry James