Quotes by 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 as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?"

"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."

"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting."

"I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it."

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

"There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition."

"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?"

"It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them."

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

"If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land."

"However British you may be, I am more British still."

"Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women."

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

"Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there."

"To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own."

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

"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."

"What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?"

"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."

"Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself."