Top 500 Henry James Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Excellence does not require perfection.”

— Henry James

Featured in: Perfection Quotes

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

— Henry James

3. “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

Featured in: Blessed Quotes, Empathy Quotes, Be Kind Quotes, Values Quotes, Kindness Quotes

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

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— Henry James

18. “Deep experience is never peaceful.”

— Henry James

19. “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

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

22. “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

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

27. “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

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

39. “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

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

— Henry James

41. “No, no – there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see – what I don’t fear!”

— Henry James

42. “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.”

— Henry James

43. “The more you know the more unhappy you are.”

— Henry James

44. “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

45. “It’s a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.”

— Henry James

46. “To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that; this, doubtless, is the right way to live.”

— Henry James

47. “A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see – that’s my idea of happiness.”

— Henry James

48. “Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.”

— Henry James

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

— Henry James

50. “There is no generosity without sacrifice.”

— Henry James