Henry James – 16 Quotes

16 Quotes by Henry James

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.

– Henry James

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

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.

– Henry James

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

In art economy is always beauty.

– Henry James

Life is a predicament which precedes death.

– Henry James

Deep experience is never peaceful.

– Henry James

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

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

– Henry James

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

– Henry James

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.

– Henry James

Money’s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.

– Henry James

I adore adverbs they are the only qualifications I really much respect.

– Henry James

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?

– Henry James

Ideas are, in truth, force.

– Henry James

A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.

– Henry James