Henry James

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

You were reserved for my future

They had from an early hour made up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the margin allowed them by this had fairly become one of their commonplaces.

It__ very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it that every one bears some mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I__ rather stout, but if I must tell you the truth I__e beenshockingly chipped and cracked. I do very well for service yet, because I__e been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard__he quiet, dusky cupboard where there__ an odour of stale spices__s much as I can. Butwhen I__e to come out and into a strong light__hen, my dear, I__ a horror!

I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do.

Try to be someone upon whom nothing is lost!

She__ the latest freshest fruit of our great American evolution. She__ the self-made girl!(_)Well, to begin with, the self-made girl__ a new feature. That, however, you know. In the second place she isn__ self-made at all. We all help to make her, we take such an interest in her.

What we often take to be the new is simply the old under some novel form.

Before he went away, he had heard all about the self-made girl, and there was something in the picture that strongly impressed him. She was possible doutbless only in America; American life had smoothed the way for her. She was not fast, nor emancipated, nor crude, nor loud, and there wasn__ in her, of necessity at least, a grain of the stuff of which the adventuress is made.She was simply very successful, and her success was entirely personal. She hadn__ been born with the silver spoon of social opportunity, she had grasped it by honest exertion. You knew her by many different signs, but chiefly, infallibly, by the appearance of her parents. It was her parents who told her story; you always saw how little her parents could have made her. Her attitude with regard to them might vary in different ways. As the great fact on her own side was that she had lifted herself from a lower social plane, done it all herself, and done it by the simple lever of her personality, it was naturally to be expected that she would leave the authors of her mere material being in the shade.(_)But the general characteristic of the self-made girl was that, though it was frequently understood that she was privately devoted to her kindred, she never attempted to impose them on society, and it was striking that, though in some of her manifestations a bore, she was at her worst less of a bore than they. They were almost always solemn and portentous, and they were for the most part of a deathly respectability. She wasn__ necessarily snobbish, unless it was snobbish to want the best. She didn__ cringe, she didn__ make herself smaller than she was, she took on the contrary a stand of her own and attracted things to herself.Naturally she was possible only in America, only in a country where whole ranges of competition and comparison were absent.

Let us be vulgar and have some fun, let us invite the President.

I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself.

It has made me better loving you... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can__ think of anything better. It__ just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it__ a delightful story.

Our relation, all round, exists--it's a reality, and a very good one; we're mixed up, so to speak, and it's too late to change it. We must live IN it and with it

She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.

I don't know why we live__he gift of life comes to us from I don't know what source or for what purpose; but I believe we can go on living for the reason that (always of course up to a certain point) life is the most valuable thing we know anything about and it is therefore presumptively a great mistake to surrender it while there is any yet left in the cup. In other words consciousness is an illimitable power, and though at times it may seem to be all consciousness of misery, yet in the way it propagates itself from wave to wave, so that we never cease to feel, though at moments we appear to, try to, pray to, there is something that holds one in one's place, makes it a standpoint in the universe which it is probably good not to forsake. You are right in your consciousness that we are all echoes and reverberations of the same, and you are noble when your interest and pity as to everything that surrounds you, appears to have a sustaining and harmonizing power. Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses__emember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own. Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can. We all live together, and those of us who love and know, live so most. We help each other__ven unconsciously, each in our own effort, we lighten the effort of others, we contribute to the sum of success, make it possible for others to live. Sorrow comes in great waves__o one can know that better than you__ut it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see _

Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does not believe that we'll wake up to find our work done because we've lain all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is devilish hard to do!

I should think that to hear such lovely music as that would really make him feel better."The lady gave a discriminating smile. __ am afraid there are moments in life when even Beethoven has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they are our worst moments.

There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.