Henry James

"To have a style, you must have something to say."

"The finest sensibilities respond most keenly to truth."

"Loneliness is a form of clarity."

"The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life."

"What a gift to be conscious and to feel deeply."

"The desire to please the reader is a good one."

"Character is revealed by choice."

"Reciprocity is not a law of nature."

"The proof of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas simultaneously."

"To live is to recognize the beauty in small moments."

"The greatest luxury is simplicity."

"The only obligation to which we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being lawless is that it be interesting."

"Be kind, be kind, be kind."

"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness."

"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."

"The greatest thing is to make somebody else feel superior to yourself."

"Sorrow comes in great waves, but it rolls over us and though it may almost suffocate us it leaves us on the shore, safe, rescued even, for the moment."

"I call people rich when they are able to meet the requirements of their imagination."

"The present state of the world seems to demand utterly new modes of thought and action."

"There is a magnificent vagueness about the age of American women."

"The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow."

"Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self."

"The real offence, as she now perceived, was in her.__awareness."

"What is character but the determination of incident and what is incident but the illustration of character?"

"If we were never to take risks, we would never accomplish anything at all."

"The writer is either serious or he is not serious, and all depends on this."

"The facts fail to convey the sense of the thing."

"The busiest man is the idlest."

"Manners are all that have stood between man and man since we emerged from the woods."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science."