Henry James

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

Ideas are, in truth, force.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Deep experience is never peaceful.

Life is a predicament which precedes death.

In art economy is always beauty.

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.

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.

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.

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.