Henry James Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old Henry James quotes, Henry James sayings, and Henry James proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

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
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. Henry James
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. Henry James
New York is appalling, fantastically charmless and elaborately dire. Henry James
I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth--I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace. Henry James
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
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. Henry James
Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup. Henry James
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
New York is appalling, fantastically charmless and elaborately dire. Henry James
A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it. Henry James
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. Henry James
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. Henry James
When you forget to eat, you know you're alive. Henry James
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
There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition. Henry James
London is on the whole the most possible form of life. Henry James
She had always been fond of history, and in Rome was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine. Henry James
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. Henry James
He looked at a pretty girl as he would have listened to a piece of music. Henry James
If you have been hated, you have also been loved. Henry James
There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. Henry James
Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out of the window. Henry James
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
Experience is...a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every airborne particle in its tissue. Henry James
The note I wanted; that of the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy. Henry James
The balloon of experience is in fact of course tied to the earth, and under that necessity we swing, thanks to a rope of remarkable length, in the more or less commodious car of the imagination; but it is by the rope we know where we are, and from the moment that cable is cut we are at large and unrelated. Henry James
Life being all inclusion and confusion, and art being all discrimination and selection. Henry James
Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there. Henry James
It is your own fault if people don’t care for you; you don’t care for them. That you should be indifferent to their good opinion is all very well; but you don’t care for their indifference. Henry James