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.