Henry James

Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.

She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
Henry James - "The Ambassadors", Book Ninth, Chapter 2
She had fortunately always her appetite for news. The pure flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine vault.

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
Henry James - "The Ambassadors", Book Eleventh, Chapter 1
"There are certainly moments," said Chad, "when you seem to me too good to be true. Yet if you are true," he added, "that seems to be all that need concern me."

Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
Henry James - "The Ambassadors", Book Eighth, Chapter 2
He had the entertainment of thinking that if he had for that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next minute this still livelier motion.
Henry James - "The Ambassadors", Book Fifth, Chapter 2
People can be in general pretty well trusted, of course--with the clock of their freedom ticking as loud as it seems to do here--to keep an eye on the fleeting hour.

She had an unequalled gift... of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.

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 - "The Ambassadors", Book Seventh, Chapter 2
I feel how little she can like being told of her owing me anything. No woman ever enjoys such an obligation to another woman.

Deep experience is never peaceful.
Henry James - "The Ambassadors", Book Seventh, Chapter 3
It struck him really that he had never so lived with her as during this period of her silence; the silence was a sacred hush, a finer clearer medium, in which her idiosyncrasies showed.

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self- conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations are in a conspiracy to under-value them.

There are three things that are important in human life. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.
Henry James - "The Ambassadors", Book Fourth, Chapter 2
Thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught.

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