Henry James quote: "Thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught."

Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
HENRY JAMES

He had dropped upon a seat halfway down the nave and, again in the museum mood, was trying with head...
HENRY JAMES

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
HENRY JAMES

In art economy is always beauty.
HENRY JAMES

The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
HENRY JAMES

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light...
HENRY JAMES

I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
HENRY JAMES

There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, whic...
HENRY JAMES

...There are bad novels and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is th...
HENRY JAMES

The image of the "presence," whatever it was, waiting there for him to go--this image had not yet be...
HENRY JAMES

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise -- although the ph...
HENRY JAMES

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the...
HENRY JAMES

The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a...
HENRY JAMES

Greville Fane's French and Italian were droll; the imitative faculty had been denied her, and she ha...
HENRY JAMES

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of thei...
HENRY JAMES

I think patriotism is like charity -- it begins at home.
HENRY JAMES

The terrible fluidity of self-revelation.
HENRY JAMES

Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
HENRY JAMES

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious peopl...
HENRY JAMES

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient lite...
HENRY JAMES

No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplo...
HENRY JAMES

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

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point an...
HENRY JAMES

Ideas are, in truth, force.
HENRY JAMES

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for...
HENRY JAMES

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine...
HENRY JAMES

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll...
HENRY JAMES

The fatal futility of Fact.
HENRY JAMES

Deep experience is never peaceful.
HENRY JAMES

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole...
HENRY JAMES

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge ...
HENRY JAMES

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for your...
HENRY JAMES

Experience was to be taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got a light for a ...
HENRY JAMES

If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I wou...
HENRY JAMES

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to th...
HENRY JAMES

Summer afternoon -- summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in t...
HENRY JAMES

To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.
HENRY JAMES

I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pron...
HENRY JAMES

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

To believe in a child is to believe in the future. Through their aspirations they will save the worl...
HENRY JAMES

She had an unequalled gift... of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.
HENRY JAMES

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self- conscious peop...
HENRY JAMES

She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.
HENRY JAMES

Summer afternoon-summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the ...
HENRY JAMES

Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.
HENRY JAMES

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoo...
HENRY JAMES

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

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

In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives.
HENRY JAMES

Life is a predicament which precedes death.
HENRY JAMES

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular...
HENRY JAMES

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know of no substitute whatever ...
HENRY JAMES

I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.
HENRY JAMES

Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for th...
HENRY JAMES

The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.
HENRY JAMES

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of charac...
HENRY JAMES

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine...
HENRY JAMES

Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
HENRY JAMES

The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
HENRY JAMES

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our pas...
HENRY JAMES

There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recog...
HENRY JAMES

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the...
HENRY JAMES

I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my c...
HENRY JAMES

She was a coquette; he was sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial l...
HENRY JAMES

A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad m...
HENRY JAMES

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the...
HENRY JAMES

There are two kinds of taste in the appreciation of imaginative literature: the taste for emotions o...
HENRY JAMES

One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absen...
HENRY JAMES

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in th...
HENRY JAMES

The great fact all the while however had been the incalculability; since he had supposed himself, fr...
HENRY JAMES

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so lon...
HENRY JAMES

To treat a big subject in the intensely summarized fashion demanded by an evening's traffic of the s...
HENRY JAMES

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors...
HENRY JAMES

A man who pretends to understand women is ad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad mo...
HENRY JAMES

I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work; but somehow I am still more blackly bored whe...
HENRY JAMES

Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize.
HENRY JAMES

There are women who are for all your 'times of life.' They're the most wonderful sort.
HENRY JAMES

Live all you can - it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so lo...
HENRY JAMES

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of bei...
HENRY JAMES

She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
HENRY JAMES

I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.
HENRY JAMES

They strike one, above all, as giving no account of themselves in any terms already consecrated by h...
HENRY JAMES

An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.
HENRY JAMES

It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting a...
HENRY JAMES

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious peopl...
HENRY JAMES

They had from an early hour made up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the mar...
HENRY JAMES

The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon its grass-grown court, which, h...
HENRY JAMES

It has made me better loving you... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a...
HENRY JAMES

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our pa...
HENRY JAMES

I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To my...
HENRY JAMES

...he felt the whole vision turn to darkness and his very feet give way. His head went round; he was...
HENRY JAMES

It seemed to him he had waited an age for some stir of the great grim hush; the life of the town was...
HENRY JAMES

It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated consciousness of his victim to become a real test fo...
HENRY JAMES

...though leaving him always to remark, portentously, on his probably having formed a relation, his ...
HENRY JAMES

I know at least what I am,' he simply went on; 'the other side of the medal's clear enough. I've not...
HENRY JAMES

It had begun to be present to him after the first fortnight, it had broken out with the oddest abrup...
HENRY JAMES

He was a dim secondary social success -- and all with people who had truly not an idea of him. It wa...
HENRY JAMES

He liked however the open shutters; he opened everywhere those Mrs. Muldoon had closed, closing them...
HENRY JAMES

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so lo...
HENRY JAMES

We work in the dark, We do what we can, We give what we have, Our doubt is our passion, And our pass...
HENRY JAMES

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in th...
HENRY JAMES

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and th...
HENRY JAMES

The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants mo...
HENRY JAMES

The ever important murmur, "Dramatize it, dramatize it!"
HENRY JAMES

No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplo...
HENRY JAMES

I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth-I only regret, in my chilled age, ce...
HENRY JAMES

I think patriotism is like charity / it begins at home.
HENRY JAMES

He himself was almost never bored, and there was no man with whom it would have been a greater mista...
HENRY JAMES

Cats and monkeys - monkeys and cats - all human life is there!
HENRY JAMES

The finer natures were those that shone at the larger times.
HENRY JAMES

The young girl inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; and Winterbourne presently ris...
HENRY JAMES

I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge ...
HENRY JAMES

The deep well of unconscious cerebration.
HENRY JAMES

This is a pretty serious-minded farm show. But it has to be when you're pulling the farmer away from...
HENRY JAMES

The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was ...
HENRY JAMES

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self, but the point is not only to get...
HENRY JAMES

It's time to start living the life you've imagined
HENRY JAMES

She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was suffe...
HENRY JAMES

What could the thing that was to happen to him be, after all, but just this thing that had begun to ...
HENRY JAMES

Life is a predicament which precedes death
HENRY JAMES

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature
HENRY JAMES

Changing the form of one's mission's almost as difficult as changing the shape of one's nose: there ...
HENRY JAMES

Always keep a window in the attic open; not just cracked: open
HENRY JAMES

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoo...
HENRY JAMES

Life's too short for chess
HENRY JAMES

Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
HENRY JAMES

New York is appalling, fantastically charmless and elaborately dire
HENRY JAMES

Kidd, turn off the light to spare my blushes.
HENRY JAMES

You will think you take generous views of her; but you will never begin to know through what a stran...
HENRY JAMES

Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an e...
HENRY JAMES

Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.
HENRY JAMES

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to.
HENRY JAMES

..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a sc...
HENRY JAMES

So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!
HENRY JAMES

It's time to start living the life you've imagined.
HENRY JAMES

..if I dont do something on the grand scale, it is that my genius is altogether imitative, and that ...
HENRY JAMES

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get...
HENRY JAMES

Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They looked for what they found; they knew what...
HENRY JAMES

The Baroness found it amusing to go to tea; she dressed as if for dinner. The tea-table offered an a...
HENRY JAMES

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.
HENRY JAMES

A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see--that�...
HENRY JAMES

Love has nothing to do with good reasons.
HENRY JAMES

...he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his da...
HENRY JAMES

She had a certain way of looking at life which he took as a personal offense.
HENRY JAMES

To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her sh...
HENRY JAMES

To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowl...
HENRY JAMES

She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuit...
HENRY JAMES

...It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself, you could have made her blush any...
HENRY JAMES

Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that s...
HENRY JAMES

The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played ...
HENRY JAMES

Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the windo...
HENRY JAMES

You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES

I don't care about anything but you, and that's enough for the present. I want you to be happy--not ...
HENRY JAMES

I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as a girl that suggests compassion. I think I en...
HENRY JAMES

You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish....
HENRY JAMES

One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition ...
HENRY JAMES

Whatever life you lead you must put your soul in it--to make any sort of success in it; and from the...
HENRY JAMES

...and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everyt...
HENRY JAMES

If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
HENRY JAMES

Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never...
HENRY JAMES

She was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fort...
HENRY JAMES

She is written in a foreign tongue.
HENRY JAMES

And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.
HENRY JAMES

I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
HENRY JAMES

I always want to know the things one shouldn't do."
"So as to do them?" asked her aunt.
"S...
HENRY JAMES

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,...
HENRY JAMES

Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does not believe that we'll wak...
HENRY JAMES

One doesn't defend one's god; one's god is in himself a defense.
HENRY JAMES

He was holding his breath so as not to inhale the odor of democracy.
HENRY JAMES

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agree...
HENRY JAMES

London is on the whole the most possible form of life.
HENRY JAMES

[Leaves of Grass is] monstrous because it pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the intelle...
HENRY JAMES

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very ...
HENRY JAMES

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular so long...
HENRY JAMES

I don't want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.
HENRY JAMES

Be not afraid of life believe that life is worth living and your belief will create the fact.
HENRY JAMES

Never say you know the last word about any human heart.
HENRY JAMES

By 3000 B.C. the art of Egypt was so ripe and so far advanced that it is surprising to find any stud...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

There is but little room for doubt that Egypt led the way in the creation of the earliest known grou...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

In any case, in so far as our knowledge of the universe carries us, the advent of civilization for t...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Disapproval is a very important factor in all progress. There has really never been any progress wi...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Life's to short for chess.
HENRY JAMES BYRON

Disapproval is a very important factor in all progress. There has really never been any progress wit...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always...
HENRY JAMES, JR.

We of America are especially fitted to visualize and to understand the marvellous transformation of ...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

It is the recognition of history as a record of human experience which has inevitably resulted in th...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

When the injured humerus is accompanied by a serious rupture of the overlying soft tissue the injury...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

[...] we have in our treatise a series of fifty-seven examinations, almost exclusively of injuries o...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

The attention given to the side of the head which has received the injury, in connection with a spec...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Speechlessness, however, affirmed in the diagnosis, is carefully based on the facts of the examinati...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Very often conditions are recorded as observable "under thy fingers" [...] Among such observations i...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

[...] the success of Egyptian surgery in setting broken bones is very fully demonstrated in the larg...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

It is this conception of the unity of the human career which is perhaps the greatest achievement of ...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Today the traveller on the Nile enters a wonderland at whose gates rise the colossal pyramids of whi...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that ...
HENRY JAMES SR.

There was an age, however, when the transition from savagery to civilization, with all its impressiv...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

To the present writer a careful study of the facts now available seems to leave no doubt that civili...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

But it is obvious that our fathers, whose efforts have planted these great and prosperous cities alo...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

the distinction between nerves and vessels was not demonstrated until the Third Century B.C., when i...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Increase Mather, President of Harvard University, in his treatise on Remarkable Providences, insists...
JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught.

Copied!

Henry James

Thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught.

Henry James

Share:

Related

More Henry James