Henry James

"Form is content and substance are one."

"The desire for knowledge is in us an instinct."

"In life you have to risk it all."

"The art of living is the art of knowing how to suffer."

"The voice of experience speaks through the voice of sorrow."

"We must grant the artist his donnée."

"The most obvious fact about art is that it aims to give form to formlessness."

"To read is to aspire to something better."

"The power of the mind is the only power that truly matters."

"The human character is stronger than any circumstance."

"There is nothing like an exchange of confidences to create intimacy."

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."

"What is your taste in music?"

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind."

"The intellectual is a luxury."

"The true art of conversation is not to understand men, but to listen to them"

"Be kind, be kind, be kind. Kindness is the only thing that never fails"

"The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love"

"We work in the dark, doing what we can; and then we have the satisfaction of our good intentions"

"Do something every day that scares you"

"The greatest question of our time is not communism versus individualism, but is the union of souls possible"

"All life comes down to the matter of attention"

"Tell me something that will stay with me, that will mean something to me"

"The sense of the real is the most important possession a writer can have"

"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to"

"The pleasure we derive from the representation of present things is the principle of my endeavor"

"Observation is our mother, the source of all knowledge"

"The mind of man is like a sponge, which absorbs, assimilates, and reproduces"

"To be really happy one must be unhappy occasionally"

"The greatest luxury that our age has invented is the capacity for continuous distraction"