I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work; but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them.
—Henry James
Topics: Feminism, Women
In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives.
—Henry James
Topics: Museums
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
Topics: Tact
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.
—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 you’re nice to the second housemaid.
—Henry James
Topics: Conscience
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
—Henry James
Topics: Reading, Books
For myself I live, live intensely and am fed by life, and my value, whatever it be, is in my own kind of expression of that.
—Henry James
Topics: Writing
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
T. S. Eliot American-born British Poet
Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor American-born British Politician
Phyllis Bottome British Novelist
Graham Greene British Novelist
Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
Louis Leo Snyder American-born German Scholar
Israel Zangwill English Writer, Political Activist
Dodie Smith British Novelist
Agatha Christie British Novelist
H. G. Wells English Novelist, Historian