Henry James Quotes

1. “It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.”

— Henry James

2. “Excellence does not require perfection.”

— Henry James

Featured in: Perfection Quotes

3. “Until you try, you don’t know what you can’t do.”

— Henry James

4. “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.”

— Henry James

5. “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.”

— Henry James

6. “Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.”

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

8. “I’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.”

— Henry James

9. “If you have work to do, don’t wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it.”

— Henry James

10. “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”

— Henry James

11. “You are good for nothing unless you are clever.”

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

13. “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”

— Henry James

14. “Deep experience is never peaceful.”

— Henry James

15. “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.”

— Henry James

16. “You must save what you can of your life; you musn’t lose it all simply because you’ve lost a part.”

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

18. “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.”

— Henry James

19. “To believe in a child is to believe in the Future.”

— Henry James

20. “All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground.”

— Henry James

21. “When I am wicked I am in high spirits.”

— Henry James

22. “To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.”

— Henry James

Featured in: Reading Quotes

23. “Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.”

— Henry James

24. “I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.”

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

26. “She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.”

— Henry James

27. “A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost.”

— Henry James

28. “Don’t underestimate the value of irony – it is extremely valuable.”

— Henry James

29. “Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.”

— Henry James

30. “It doesn’t matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life.”

— Henry James

31. “Never say you know the last word about any human heart.”

— Henry James

32. “I don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.”

— Henry James

33. “A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.”

— Henry James

34. “I call people rich when they’re able to meet the requirements of their imagination.”

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

36. “One doesn’t defend one’s god: one’s god is in himself a defense.”

— Henry James

37. “He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.”

— Henry James

38. “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.”

— Henry James

39. “Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.”

— Henry James

40. “Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions are very rare.”

— Henry James

41. “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.”

— Henry James

42. “Art is a point of view, and a genius way of looking at things.”

— Henry James

43. “How can I retrace to-day the strange steps of my obsession?”

— Henry James

44. “She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.”

— Henry James

45. “Little by little, even with other cares, the slowly but surely working poison of the garden-mania begins to stir in my long-sluggish veins.”

— Henry James

46. “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.”

— Henry James

47. “Art requires, above all things, a suppression of self, a subordination of one’s self to an idea.”

— Henry James

48. “When once the gate is opened to self-torture, the whole army of fiends files in.”

— Henry James

49. “Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints.”

— Henry James

50. “Keep making the movements of life.”

— Henry James