Henry James

"Happiness is not a reward—it is a consequence."

"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance."

"The life of the mind is the life of enlightenment."

"A touch of the hand, an impression of the eyes, and all is changed."

"The faculty for taking trouble is the sine qua non of achievement."

"The morality of a work of art is in its tone."

"Deception is the thing we can least afford in any quarter."

"Consciousness is an illimitable power."

"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."

"We work in the dark—we do what we can—and we leave the rest to Providence."

"Power is the pleasure of obedience."

"The human heart is very much what is meant by the humanities."

"The effort really to see and represent is no idle business."

"Every man has his own characters."

"The great thing is to be saturated with something."

"Taste is a luxury to me that I cannot dispense with."

"Life is in fact a battle."

"The supreme virtue is to speak the truth."

"Character is action and not motive."

"The writer may always be trusted to exaggerate."

"We find what we expect to find."

"A writer without a sense of responsibility is simply a man of letters."

"The novel is of all imaginative things the most capable of embracing the whole of experience."

"The greatest luxury is solitude."

"How can a man achieve anything great who is not willing to risk it?"

"What is exhilarating in bad taste is the insolence, the violence, the personal will that it asserts."

"The deep wells of truth are very still."

"It matters not what you believe, but how deeply you believe it."

"Aspiration is a beautiful thing."

"The capacity for friendship requires the capacity for solitude."