Henry James Quotes

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

Life is a predicament which precedes death.

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.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

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?

Ideas are, in truth, force.

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

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?

The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.

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.

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.

The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.

The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

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

Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

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.

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

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.

Deep experience is never peaceful.

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

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.

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