Henry James Quotes

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.

Excellence does not require perfection.

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

It's time to start living the life you've imagined.

Until you try, you don't know what you can't do.

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.

You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.

If you have work to do, don't wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it.

I've always expected the worst, and it's always worse than I expected.

Deep experience is never peaceful.

Sorrow comes in great waves...but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.

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

To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.

Life is a predicament which precedes death.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.

Don't try so much to form your character - it's like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose. Live as you like best and your character will take care of itself.

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.

And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.

If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.

We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.

She is like a revolving lighthouse; pitch darkness alternating with a dazzling brilliancy!