Quotes by Henry James

She couldnt have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep into her soul.

New York is appalling, fantastically charmless and elaborately dire.

Mrs. Almond lived much farther up town, in an embryonic street with a high number—a region where the extension of the city began to assume a theoretic air, where poplars grew beside the pavement (when there was one), and mingled their shade with the steep roofs of desultory Dutch houses, and where pigs and chickens disported themselves in the gutter. These elements of rural picturesqueness have now wholly departed from New York street scenery; but they were to be found within the memory of middle-aged persons, in quarters which now would blush to be reminded of them.

The ideal of quiet and of genteel retirement, in 1835, was found in Washington Square, where the Doctor built himself a handsome, modern, wide-fronted house, with a big balcony before the drawing-room windows, and a flight of marble steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white marble. This structure, and many of its neighbours, which it exactly resembled, were supposed, forty years ago, to embody the last results of architectural science, and they remain to this day very solid and honourable dwellings. In front of them was the Square, containing a considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and round the corner was the more august precinct of the Fifth Avenue, taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare—the look of having had something of a social history.

Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York, thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do, and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of Broadway.

Are you using me simply as a vulgar tool? Dont you care for me the least little bit? Let me suggest that for a girl in your-your ambiguous position, you are too proud, by several shades. Dont go back to Roger in a hurry! Youre not the unspotted maiden you were but two short days ago. Who am I, what am I, to the people whose opinion you care for? A very low fellow, madam; and yet with me youve gone far to cast your lot. If youre not prepared to do more, you should have done less. Nora, Nora, he went on, breaking into a vein none the less revolting for being more ardent, I confess I dont understand you! But the more you puzzle me the more you fascinate me; and the less you like me the more I love you. What has there been between you and Lawrence? Hang me if I can understand! Are you an angel of purity, or are you the most audacious of flirts?

She had been expecting me and was ready. She gave a long slow soundless headshake, merciful only in being inarticulate. This mercy didnt prevent its hurling at me the largest finest coldest Never! I had yet, in the course of a life that had known denials, had to take full in the face. I took it and was aware that with the hard blow the tears had come into my eyes. So for a while we sat and looked at each other; after which I slowly rose. I was wondering if some day she would accept me; but this was not what I brought out. I said as I smoothed my hat: I know what to think then. Its nothing!

Nothing is my last word on anything.

One never said the things one wanted — one remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other hand one usually said a lot of things one shouldnt, simply from a sense that one had to say something.

We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generositie.

It seemed to him he had waited an age for some stir of the great grim hush; the life of the town was itself under a spell--so unnaturally, up and down the whole prospect of known and rather ugly objects, the blankness and the silence lasted. Had they ever, he asked himself, the hard-faced houses, which had begun to look livid in the dim dawn, had they ever spoken so little to any need of his spirit? Great builded voids, great crowded stillnesses put on, often, in the heart of cities, for the small hours, a sort of sinister mask, and it was of this large collective negation that Brydon presently became conscious--all the more that the break of day was, almost incredibly, now at hand, proving to him what night he had made of it.

We must grant the artist his subject his idea his donnee: Our criticisms apply only to what he makes of it.

Deep experience is never peaceful.

True happiness we are told consists in getting out of ones self but the point is not only to get out you must stay out and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

Live all you can its a mistake not to. It doesnt so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you havent had that what have you had?

True happiness we are told consists in getting out of ones self. But the point is not only to get out you must stay out. And to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

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.

Cats and monkeys - monkeys and cats - all human life is there.

The only success worth ones powder was success in the line of ones idiosyncrasy ... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?

The real offence as she ultimately perceived was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his - attached to his own like a small garden plot to a deer park.