Henry James Quotes about Art
Letter to H. G. Wells, 10 July 1915
The Altar of the Dead preface (1909)
Henry James (1852). “Lectures and miscellanies”, p.124
Henry James, F. O. Matthiessen, Kenneth B. Murdock (1981). “The Notebooks of Henry James”, p.10, University of Chicago Press
Henry James, John L. Sweeney (1956). “The Painter's Eye: Notes and Essays on the Pictorial Arts”, p.10, Univ of Wisconsin Press
Henry James, James Edwin Miller (1972). “Theory of fiction: Henry James”
Letter to Hugh Walpole, August 21, 1913.
The Spoils of Poynton preface (1909)
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.
Letter to H. G. Wells, 10 July 1915
Henry James (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry James (Illustrated)”, p.13640, Delphi Classics
Art requires, above all things, a suppression of self, a subordination of one's self to an idea.
Henry James (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry James (Illustrated)”, p.13602, Delphi Classics
Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.176, University of Chicago Press
Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.
1884 'The Art of Fiction', collected in Partial Portraits (1988).
The practice of "reviewing"... in general has nothing in common with the art of criticism.
Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.232, University of Chicago Press
Henry James (1996). “Complete Stories, 1892-1898”, p.496, Library of America