Henry James Quotes About Literature
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Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.
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The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.
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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.
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Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
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I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
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It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
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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?
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He valued life and literature equally for the light they threw upon each other; to his mind one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him.
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An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.
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I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
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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.
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Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
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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.
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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.
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It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
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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.
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What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
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