Life is a predicament which precedes death. – 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
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
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