No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connection of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt, so dangling before us forever that bright hard medal, of so strange an alloy, one face of which is somebody's right and ease and the other somebody's pain and wrong.

Henry James

Categorized in : Hurt Confusion Pain

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

inspirational friendship life

It's time to start living the life you've imagined.

Henry James

positive inspirational life

Excellence does not require perfection.

Henry James

excellence perfection doe

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

Henry James

judging relationship friendship

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

Henry James

consideration process art

Deep experience is never peaceful.

Henry James

inspirational love peace

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

Henry James

inspirational life art

Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance.

Henry James

criticism world art

Until you try, you don't know what you can't do.

Henry James

knows trying

You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.

Henry James

loses lost

Sorrow comes in great waves...but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.

Henry James

hard-times sorrow strong

There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.

Henry James

understanding two way

if you are going to be pushed you had better jump

Henry James

ifs

I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.

Henry James

way-to-live half life

Make the short story tremendously succinct - with a very short pulse or rhythm - and the closest selection of detail - in other words summarise intensely and deeply and keep down the lateral development. It should be a little gem of bright, quick, vivid form

Henry James

pulse details stories

And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.

Henry James

hated remember love

...he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.

Henry James

laughter should long

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.

Henry James

feels thinking

I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.

Henry James

giving people interesting

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

Henry James

autumn beautiful fall