Top Henry James Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Henry James Biography

Henry James, OM ((1843-04-15)15 April 1843 – (1916-02-28)28 February 1916) was an American author regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of renowned philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.

Read about Henry James in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Henry James Quotes

Keep making the movements of life.

Keep, Life, Making, Movement, Movements

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

Holding, Holding On, Literature, Natural, Tongue

She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more - this idea was as sweet as a vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land. . . . but Isabel recognized, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end.

Cool, Eye, Know, Passed, Sweet, Thinking

Ideas are, in truth, force.

Force, Ideas, Learning, Truth

If this was love, love had been overrated.

Ifs, Love, Overrated

Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box.

Boxes, Conversation, England, English, Quadrille, Talk

I ought to tell you I'm probably your cousin.

Cousin, Ought, Probably, Tell, Your Cousin

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

British, May, Stills

Women never dine alone. When they dine alone they don't dine.

Alone, Culture, Dine, Dining Alone, Food, Women

Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.

Art, Exercise, Flying, Derives, Part

If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.

Ifs, Loves, One Love, Strong, Strongly

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.

Birthday, Certain, Excess, Regret, Think, Thinking

The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, bravery, magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action, she thought it would be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she would never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling.

Determination, Discovering, Free, Girl, Thinking

A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.

Added, Alive, Kept, Tradition

Never say you know the last word about any human heart.

Heart, Human, Knowing, Novelists, Say, Word

No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches no great Universities nor public schools -- no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class -- no Epsom nor Ascot Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life.

Abbeys, Cathedrals, Country, Loyalty, Manors, School

Don't try so much to form your character - it's like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose. Live as you like best and your character will take care of itself.

Care, Character, Rose, Trying, Young

[Thomas Henry] Huxley is a very genial, comfortable being-yet with none of the noisy and windy geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when you are responding to the remarks that they have made you.

Backs, Biographies, Geniality, Noise, Science, Windy

Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so.

Appear, Artist, Circle, Circles, Nowhere, Problem

The faculty of attention has utterly vanished from the Anglo-Saxon mind, extinguished at its source by the big bayad?re of journalism, of the newspaper and the picture magazine which keeps screaming, "Look at me. " Illustrations, loud simplifications. . . bill poster advertising ? only these stand a chance.

Bill, Illustration, Media, Mind, Picture, Stand

1