Experience was to be taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got a light for a cigarette; but one had to check the friendly impulse to ask for it in the same way. – Henry James
In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives. – Henry James
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. – Henry James
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. – Henry James
One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left. – Henry James
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? – Henry James
Moneys a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet. – 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 youre nice to the second housemaid. – Henry James
I think I dont regret a single excess of my responsive youth – I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didnt embrace. – Henry James
A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals. – Henry James
Ideas are, in truth, force. – Henry James
I adore adverbs they are the only qualifications I really much respect. – 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
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition. – 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
Deep experience is never peaceful. – Henry James
Life is a predicament which precedes death. – Henry James
In art economy is always beauty. – 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
Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. – Henry James
