Henry James Quotes

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

Life, Human, Cats

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

There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.
Henry James

Two, Emotions, Surprise

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
Henry James

Nothing, Though, Venice

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?
Henry James

Life, Live, Long

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

Love, Himself, Writer

In art economy is always beauty.
Henry James

Beauty, Art, Economy

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

Museums, Radicals, Alternate

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

Great, History, Takes

It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.
Henry James

Fighting, American, Against

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Henry James

May, Accusation, Hold

To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him.
Henry James

Human, Him, After

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

Women, Men, Others

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

Hate, Different, American

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.
Henry James

Alone, Nice, Talk

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.
Henry James

Life, Become, American

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.
Henry James

Nature, Country, American

The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?
Henry James

Success, Art, Whatever

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Writer

Born: April 15, 1843

Died: February 28, 1916

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