Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense. James Agee More Quotes by James Agee More Quotes From James Agee Of those that are drawn away, each is drawn elsewhere toward another: once more a man and a woman, in a loneliness they are not liable at that time to notice, are tightened together upon a bed: and another family has begun. James Agee family loneliness men I believe that every human being is potentially capable within his 'limits' of fully 'realizing' his potentialities; that this, his being cheated and choked of it, is infinitely the ghastliest, commonest, and most inclusive of all the crimes of which the human world can assure itself. James Agee limits believe world It is the middle and pure height and whole of summer and a summer night, the held breath, of a planet's year; high shored sleeps the crested tide: what day of the month I do not know, which day of the week I am not sure, far less what hour of the night. James Agee summer sleep night It is a peculiar part of the good photographer's adventure to know where luck is most likely to lie in the stream, to hook it, and to bring it in without unfair play and without too much subduing it. James Agee photography lying travel Children, taught either years beneath their intelligence or miles wide of relevance to it, or both: their intelligence becomes hopelessly bewildered, drawn off its centers, bored, or atrophied. James Agee hope children years It is clear enough by now to most people that the camera never lies is a foolish saying. Yet it is doubtful whether most people realize how extraordinarily slippery a liar the camera is. James Agee liars lying people How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. James Agee home heart long I suspect the fault...is in me: that I hate any job on earth, as a job and a hindrance and a semi-suicide. James Agee hate suicide jobs All of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is James Agee radiance effort consciousness It is probably well on the conservative side to estimate that during the past ten to fifteen years the camera has destroyed a thousand pairs of eyes, corrupted ten thousand, and seriously deceived a hundred thousand, for every one pair that it has opened, and taught. James Agee eye past years The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor. . . . Official acceptance is the one unmistakable symptom that salvation is beaten again, and is the one surest sign of fatal misunderstanding, and is the kiss of Judas. James Agee kissing acceptance blow The camera is just a machine, which records with impressive and as a rule very cruel faithfulness. James Agee machines records cameras A girl's brain is mysterious, but only in a superficial way-a way very exasperating to me. James Agee intelligence girl brain God doesn't believe in the easy way. James Agee belief believe way It's kind of a test, Mary, and it's the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens, then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That's all. James Agee rotten adversity choices He used this great, sad, motionless face to suggest various related things: a one-track mind near the track's end of pure insanity; mulish imperturbability under the wildest of circumstances; how dead a human being can get and still be alive . . . James Agee track mind insanity We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child. James Agee june summer children This continent, an open palm spread frank before the sky. James Agee palms frank sky When he ran from a cop, his transitions from accelerating walk to easy jog trot to brisk canter to headlong gallop to flogged-piston sprint . . . were as distinct and as soberly in order as an automatic gearshift. James Agee cop transition order Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption. James Agee gumption spunk success
