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Henry James [1843-1916] American

Rank: 101
Writer

Henry James was an American-born British writer. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.

Patriotism, Art, Beauty, Chance, Experience, History, Imagination, Money, Respect, Women, Work

Quote	Tags	Rank
Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.		92
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?		101
The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.		102
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.		103
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?		104
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.	Women	105
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.	Art, Work	106
Deep experience is never peaceful.	Experience	107
The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.	Chance	108
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.		109
There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.		111
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.	Beauty	112
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.		113
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.	Imagination	114
Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.		115
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.		116
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.		117
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.		118
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.	History	119
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.		120
Life is a predicament which precedes death.		121
Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.	Money	122
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.		123
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.		124
It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.		125
I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.	Respect	126
Ideas are, in truth, force.		201
However British you may be, I am more British still.	Patriotism	202
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.		203
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.		204
An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.		205
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.		206
The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.		207
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?		208
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.		209
In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives.		210
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.		211
There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.		212
I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.		213
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.		214
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.	Patriotism	215
In art economy is always beauty.		216
To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him.		217

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