Authors — Quotes

Henry James Quotes: 13

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.
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.
She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.
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.
It's time to start living the life you've imagined.
I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.
The Portrait of a Lady
Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.
The Portrait of a Lady
Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?
The Ambassadors
Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take you eyes off your goal.
True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
Roderick Hudson
Life is a predicament which precedes death.
She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.
What Maisie Knew
Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance.