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America
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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.
-Henry James
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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
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No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor public schools -- no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class -- no Epsom nor Ascot! Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life.
-Henry James
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Animals
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Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
-Henry James
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Art
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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.
-Henry James
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-Henry James
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Authors & Writing
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...There are bad novels and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning... When one says picture, one says of character, when one says novel, one says of incident, and the terms may be transposed. What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?... It is an incident for a woman to stand up with her hand resting on a table and look out at you in a certain way; or if it be not an incident, I think it will be hard to say what it is. At the same time it is an expression of character. If you say you don't see it (character in that
-Henry James, The Art of Fiction, 1884
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He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.
-Henry James
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I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
-Henry James
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There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, which must have cost many a smile to the intending romancer who was keen about his work. It appears to me as little to the point as the equally celebrated distinction between the novel and the romance- to answer as little to any reality. There are bad novels and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning, and I can as little imagine speaking of a novel of character as I can imagine speaking of a picture of character. When one says picture, one says of character, when one says novel, one says of incident, and the terms may be transposed. What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? What is a picture or a novel that is not of character? What else do we seek in it and find in it?
-Henry James, essay The Art of Fiction published in Longman's Magazine
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In art economy is always beauty.
-Henry James
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The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
-Henry James
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The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
-Henry James
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Books
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It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
-Henry James
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Civilization
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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
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Coffee (or Tea)
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Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
-Henry James
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Conscience
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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.
-Henry James
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Criticism
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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.
-Henry James
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Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!
-Henry James
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Exile
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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
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Experience
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The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life in general so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it --this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.
-Henry James
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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
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Deep experience is never peaceful.
-Henry James
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Facts
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The fatal futility of Fact.
-Henry James
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Ideas
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Ideas are, in truth, force.
-Henry James
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Books by and about Henry James