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The Effect, If Not The Prime Office, Of Criticism Is To Make Our Absorption And Our Enjoyment Of The Things That Feed The Mind As Aware Of Itself As Possible, Since That Awareness Quickens The Mental Demand, Which Thus In Turn Wanders Further And Further For Pasture. This Action On The Part Of The Mind Practically Amounts To A Reaching Out For The Reasons Of Its Interest, As Only By Its Ascertaining Them Can The Interest Grow More Various. This Is The Very Education Of Our Imaginative Life.

-Henry James

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The Effect, If Not

Henry James

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The Effect, If Not The Prime Office, Of Criticism Is To Make Our Absorption And Our Enjoyment Of The Things That Feed The Mind As Aware Of Itself As Possible, Since That Awareness Quickens The Mental Demand, Which Thus In Turn Wanders Further And Further For Pasture. This Action On The Part Of The Mind Practically Amounts To A Reaching Out For The Reasons Of Its Interest, As Only By Its Ascertaining Them Can The Interest Grow More Various. This Is The Very Education Of Our Imaginative Life.

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That Accurst Autobiographic Form Which Puts A Premium On The Loose, The Improvised, The Cheap, And The Easy.

I've Struck Up A Tremendous Intimacy With Conte Alberto, And We Literally Can't Live Without Each Other. He Is The First Object My Eyes Greet In The Morning, And The Last At Night.

To Live Only To Suffer—only To Feel The Injury Of Life Repeated And Enlarged—it Seemed To Her She Was Too Valuable, Too Capable, For That. Then She Wondered If It Were Vain And Stupid To Think So Well Of Herself. When Had It Even Been A Guarantee To Be Valuable? Wasn't All History Full Of The Destruction Of Precious Things? Wasn't It Much More Probable That If One Were Fine One Would Suffer?

A Tradition Is Kept Alive Only By Something Being Added To It.

To Believe In A Child Is To Believe In The Future. Through Their Aspirations They Will Save The World. With Their Combined Knowledge The Turbulent Seas Of Hate And Injustice Will Be Calmed.

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

The Practice Of "reviewing"... In General Has Nothing In Common With The Art Of Criticism.

Things Are Always Different From What They Might Be.

I Have In My Own Fashion Learned The Lesson That Life Is Effort, Unremittingly Repeated.

An Englishman's Never So Natural As When He's Holding His Tongue.

Her Memory's Your Love. You Want No Other.

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.

Life Is A Predicament Which Precedes Death.

She Had Her Own Way Of Doing All That She Did, And This Is The Simplest Description Of A Character Which, Although By No Means Without Liberal Motions, Rarely Succeeded In Giving An Impression Of Suavity.

She Had An Immense Curiosity About Life, And Was Constantly Staring And Wondering.

Her Reputation For Reading A Great Deal Hung About Her Like The Cloudy Envelope Of A Goddess In An Epic.

I Recall This Passage As The Hour Of Its First Fully Coming Over Me That She Was A Beautiful Liberal Creature. I Had Seen Her Personality In Glimpses And Gleams, Like A Song Sung In Snatches, But Now It Was Before Me In A Large Rosy Glow, As If It Had Been A Full Volume Of Sound. I Heard The Whole Of The Air, And It Was Sweet Fresh Music, Which I Was Often To Hum Over.(sir Edmund Orme)

Of Course What He Most Intensely Dreams Of Is Being Taken Out On Walks, And The More You Are Able To Indulge Him The More Will He Adore You And The More All The Latent Beauty Of His Nature Will Come Out.

To Treat A Big Subject In The Intensely Summarized Fashion Demanded By An Evening's Traffic Of The Stage When The Evening, Freely Clipped At Each End, Is Reduced To Two Hours And A Half, Is A Feat Of Which The Difficulty Looms Large.

Art Requires, Above All Things, A Suppression Of Self, A Subordination Of One's Self To An Idea.

No Sovereign, No Court, No Personal Loyalty, No Aristocracy, No Church, No Clergy, No Army, No Diplomatic Service, No Country Gentlemen, No Palaces, No Castles, Nor Manors, Nor Old Country-houses, Nor Parsonages, Nor Thatched Cottages Nor Ivied Ruins No Cathedrals, Nor Abbeys, Nor Little Norman Churches No Great Universities Nor Public Schools -- No Oxford, Nor Eton, Nor Harrow No Literature, No Novels, No Museums, No Pictures, No Political Society, No Sporting Class -- No Epsom Nor Ascot Some Such List As That Might Be Drawn Up Of The Absent Things In American Life.

Autobiography May Be The Preeminent Kind Of American Expression.

She Had An Unequalled Gift, Especially Pen In Hand, Of Squeezing Big Mistakes Into Small Opportunities.

She Is Written In A Foreign Tongue.

We Are Divided Of Course Between Liking To Feel The Past Strange And Liking To Feel It Familiar.

Be Generous, Be Delicate, And Always Pursue The Prize.

What Is Character But The Determination Of Incident? What Is Incident But The Illustration Of Character?

It Is Art That Makes Life, Makes Interest, Makes Importance.

If You Are Going To Be Pushed You Had Better Jump

In A Play, Certainly, The Subject Is Of More Importance Than In Any Other Work Of Art. Infelicity, Triviality, Vagueness Of Subject, May Be Outweighed In A Poem, A Novel, Or A Picture, By Charm Of Manner, By Ingenuity Of Execution; But In A Drama The Subject Is Of The Essence Of The Work-it Is The Work. If It Is Feeble, The Work Can Have No Force; If It Is Shapeless, The Work Must Be Amorphous.

I Take Up My Own Pen Again - The Pen Of All My Old Unforgettable Efforts And Sacred Struggles. To Myself - Today - I Need Say No More. Large And Full And High The Future Still Opens. It Is Now Indeed That I May Do The Work Of My Life. And I Will.

The Time-honored Bread-sauce Of The Happy Ending.

When You Forget To Eat, You Know You're Alive.

Ignorance Is Bliss

Though There Are Some Disagreeable Things In Venice There Is Nothing So Disagreeable As The Visitors.

It Might Seem That An Egg Which Has Succeeded In Being Fresh Has Done All That Can Reasonably Be Expected Of It.

There's No More Usual Basis Of Union Than Mutual Misunderstanding.

[thomas Henry] Huxley Is A Very Genial, Comfortable Being-yet With None Of The Noisy And Windy Geniality Of Some Folks Here, Whom You Find With Their Backs Turned When You Are Responding To The Remarks That They Have Made You.

Experience Is Never Limited, And It Is Never Complete

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.

Never Say You Know The Last Word About Any Human Heart.

Novelist-citizen Of Two Countries Interpreter Of His Generation On Both Sides Of The Sea.

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.

No, No—there Are Depths, Depths! The More I Go Over It, The More I See In It, And The More I See In It, The More I Fear. I Don’t Know What I Don’t See—what I Don’t Fear!

There Are Two Kinds Of Taste, The Taste For Emotions Of Surprise And The Taste For Emotions Of Recognition.

It Is Altogether An Extraordinary Growing, Swarming, Glittering, Pushing, Chattering, Good-natured, Cosmopolitan Place, And Perhaps In Some Ways The Best Imitation Of Paris That Can Be Found (with A Great Originality Of Its Own).

It Is Indeed Immensely Picturesque. I Can Fancy Sitting All A Summer's Day Watching Its Shadows Shorten And Lengthen Again, And Drawing A Delicious Contrast Between The World's Duration And The Feeble Span Of Individual Experience. There Is Something In Stonehenge Almost Reassuring; And If You Are Disposed To Feel That Life Is Rather A Superficial Matter, And That We Soon Get To The Bottom Of Things, The Immemorial Gray Pillars May Serve To Remind You Of The Enormous Background Of Time.

Art Without Life Is A Poor Affair.

It Is Difficult To Speak Adequately Or Justly Of London. It Is Not A Pleasant Place; It Is Not Agreeable, Or Cheerful, Or Easy, Or Exempt From Reproach. It Is Only Magnificent.

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.

It Was The Way The Autumn Day Looked Into The High Windows As It Waned; The Way The Red Light, Breaking At The Close From Under A Low Sombre Sky, Reached Out In A Long Shaft And Played Over Old Wainscots, Old Tapestry, Old Gold, Old Colour.

His Kiss Was Like White Lightning, A Flash That Spread, And Spread Again, And Stayed.

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.

The House Of Fiction Has In Short Not One Window, But A Million, ... But They Are, Singly, As Nothing Without The Posted Presence Of The Watcher.

She Carried Within Herself A Great Fund Of Life, And Her Deepest Enjoyment Was To Feel The Continuity Between The Movement Of Her Own Heart And The Agitations Of The World. For This Reason, She Was Fond Of Seeing Great Crowds, And Large Stretches Of Country, Of Reading About Revolutions And Wars, Of Looking At Historical Pictures--a Class Of Efforts To Which She Had Often Gone So Far As To Forgive Much Bad Painting For The Sake Of The Subject.

You Are Good For Nothing Unless You Are Clever.

Don’t Underestimate The Value Of Irony—it Is Extremely Valuable.

He Is The Same Old Sausage, Fizzing And Sputtering In His Own Grease.

It Takes An Endless Amount Of History To Make Even A Little Tradition.

People Talk About The Conscience, But It Seems To Me One Must Just Bring It Up To A Certain Point And Leave It There. You Can Let Your Conscience Alone If You're Nice To The Second Housemaid.

The Effect, If Not The Prime Office, Of Criticism Is To Make Our Absorption And Our Enjoyment Of The Things That Feed The Mind As Aware Of Itself As Possible, Since That Awareness Quickens The Mental Demand, Which Thus In Turn Wanders Further And Further For Pasture. This Action On The Part Of The Mind Practically Amounts To A Reaching Out For The Reasons Of Its Interest, As Only By Its Ascertaining Them Can The Interest Grow More Various. This Is The Very Education Of Our Imaginative Life.

Most English Talk Is A Quadrille In A Sentry-box.

The Power To Guess The Unseen From The Seen, To Trace The Implication Of Things, To Judge The Whole Piece By The Pattern, The Condition Of Feeling Life, In General, So Completely That You Are Well On Your Way To Knowing Any Particular Corner Of It-this Cluster Of Gifts May Almost Be Said To Constitute Experience, And They Occur In Country And In Town, And In The Most Differing Stages Of Education.

Live As You Like Best, And Your Character Will Take Care Of Itself. Most Things Are Good For You; The Exceptions Are Very Rare.

The Girl Had A Certain Nobleness Of Imagination, Which Rendered Her A Good Many Services And Played Her A Great Many Tricks. She Spent Half Her Time In Thinking Of Beauty, Bravery, Magnanimity; She Had A Fixed Determination To Regard The World As A Place Of Brightness, Of Free Expansion, Of Irresistible Action, She Thought It Would Be Detestable To Be Afraid Or Ashamed. She Had An Infinite Hope That She Would Never Do Anything Wrong. She Had Resented So Strongly, After Discovering Them, Her Mere Errors Of Feeling.

Make (the Reader) Think The Evil, Make Him Think It For Himself, And You Are Released From Weak Specifications. My Values Are Positively All Blanks, Save So Far As An Excited Horror, A Promoted Pity, A Created Expertness... Proceed To Read Into Them More Or Less Fantastic Figures.

One Might Enumerate The Items Of High Civilization, As It Exists In Other Countries, Which Are Absent From The Texture Of American Life, Until It Should Become A Wonder To Know What Was Left.

The Faculty Of Attention Has Utterly Vanished From The Anglo-saxon Mind, Extinguished At Its Source By The Big Bayad?re Of Journalism, Of The Newspaper And The Picture Magazine Which Keeps Screaming, "look At Me." Illustrations, Loud Simplifications... Bill Poster Advertising ? Only These Stand A Chance.

I Don't Care Anything About Reasons, But I Know What I Like.

Innocent And Infinite Are The Pleasures Of Observation.

Of Course You're Always At Liberty To Judge The Critic. Judge People As Critics, However, And You'll Condemn Them All!

In Museums And Palaces We Are Alternate Radicals And Conservatives.

Take The Word For It Of A Man Who Has Made His Way Inch By Inch, And Does Not Believe That We'll Wake Up To Find Our Work Done Because We've Lain All Night A-dreaming Of It; Anything Worth Doing Is Devilish Hard To Do!

I Am Blackly Bored When They Are At Large And At Work; But Somehow I Am Still More Blackly Bored When They Are Shut Up In Holloway And We Are Deprived Of Them.

In Art Economy Is Always Beauty.

The Power To Guess The Unseen From The Seen, To Trace The Implications Of Things, To Judge The Whole Piece By The Pattern . . . This Cluster Of Gifts May Almost Be Said To Constitute Experience.

The Only Success Worth One's Powder Was Success In The Line Of One's Idiosyncrasy... What Was Talent But The Art Of Being Completely Whatever One Happened To Be?

Congratulations

Every Governmental Institution Has Been A Standing Testimony To The Harmonic Destiny Of Society, A Standing Proof That The Life Of Man Is Destined For Peace And Amity, Instead Of Disorder And Contention.

..her Smile, Which Was Her Pretty Feature, Was Never So Pretty As When Her Sprightly Phrase Had A Scratch Lurking In It.

One Of My Latest Sensations Was Going To Lady Airlie's To Hear Browning Read His Own Poems - With The Comport Of Finding That, At Least, If You Don't Understand Them, He Himself Apparently Understands Them Even Less. He Read Them As If He Hated Them And Would Like To Bite Them To Pieces.

Under Certain Circumstances There Are Few Hours In Life More Agreeable Than The Hour Dedicated To The Ceremony Known As Afternoon Tea.

If You Haven't Had Your Life What Have You Had?

Keep Making The Movements Of Life.

Sometimes She Went So Far As To Wish That She Should Find Herself In A Difficult Position, So That She Might Have The Pleasure Of Being As Heroic As The Occasion Demanded.

Until You Try, You Don't Know What You Can't Do.

I Mean That Everything This Afternoon Has Been Too Beautiful, And That Perhaps Everything Together Will Never Be So Right Again. I'm Very Glad Therefore You've Been A Part Of It.

The Story Had Held Us, Round The Fire, Sufficiently Breathless, But Except The Obvious Remark That It Was Gruesome, As, On Christmas Eve In An Old House, A Strange Tale Should Essentially Be . . .

He Was There Or Was Not There: Not There If I Didn't See Him.

I Had An Excellent Repast - The Best Repast Possible - Which Consisted Simply Of Boiled Eggs And Bread And Butter. It Was The Quality Of These Simple Ingredients That Made The Occasion Memorable. The Eggs Were So Good That I Am Ashamed To Say How Many Of Them I Consumed ....it Might Seem That An Egg Which Has Succeeded In Being Fresh Has Done All That Can Be Reasonably Expected Of It.

Try To Be One Of The People On Whom Nothing Is Lost!

If This Was Love, Love Had Been Overrated.

She Is Like A Revolving Lighthouse; Pitch Darkness Alternating With A Dazzling Brilliancy!

The Only Obligation To Which In Advance We May Hold A Novel, Without Incurring The Accusation Of Being Arbitrary, Is That It Be Interesting.

To Believe In A Child Is To Believe In The Future.

If The Artist Is Necessarily Sensitive, Does That Sensitiveness Form In Its Essence A State Constantly Liable To Shade Off Into The Morbid? Does This Liability, Moreover, Increase In Proportion As The Effort Is Great And The Ambition Intense?

Art Is Nothing More Than The Shadow Of Humanity.

Inspirational Running

Everything About Florence Seems To Be Colored With A Mild Violet, Like Diluted Wine.

... Since She Might Not Be Splendid, She Would At Least Be Immaculate.

A Man Who Pretends To Understand Women Is Bad Manners. For Him To Really To Understand Them Is Bad Morals.

Do You Think It Is Better To Be Clever Than To Be Good?” “good For What?” Asked The Doctor. “you Are Good For Nothing Unless You Are Clever.

She Envied Ralph His Dying, For If One Were Thinking Of Rest That Was The Most Perfect Of All. To Cease Utterly, To Give It All Up And Not Know Anything More — This Idea Was As Sweet As The Vision Of A Cool Bath In A Marble Tank, In A Darkened Chamber, In A Hot Land.

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, And Catching Every Air-borne Particle In Its Tissue.

Things Are Always Different Than What They Might Be...if You Wait For Them To Change, You Will Never Do Anything.

All The Same Don't Forget That You're Young — Blessedly Young; Be Glad Of It On The Contrary And Live Up To It. Live All You Can; It's A Mistake Not To. It Doesn't So Much Matter What You Do In Particular, So Long As You Have Your Life.

Little By Little, Even With Other Cares, The Slowly But Surely Working Poison Of The Garden-mania Begins To Stir In My Long-sluggish Veins.

We Care What Happens To People Only In Proportion As We Know What People Are.

Experience Was To Be Taken As Showing That One Might Get A Five-pound Note As One Got A Light For A Cigarette; But One Had To Check The Friendly Impulse To Ask For It In The Same Way.

Really, Universally, Relations Stop Nowhere, And The Exquisite Problem Of The Artist Is Eternally But To Draw, By A Geometry Of His Own, The Circle Within Which They Shall Happily Appear To Do So.

New York Is Appalling, Fantastically Charmless And Elaborately Dire.

There Are Women Who Are For All Your 'times Of Life.' They're The Most Wonderful Sort.

I Hold Any Writer Sufficiently Justified Who Is Himself In Love With His Theme.

She Had Always Been Fond Of History, And Here [in Rome] Was History In The Stones Of The Street And The Atoms Of The Sunshine.

Which Of You With Taking Thought Can Add To His Stature One Cubit?

Summer Afternoon, Summer Afternoon; To Me Those Have Always Been The Two Most Beautiful Words In The English Language.

Do Not Mind Anything That Anyone Tells You About Anyone Else. Judge Everyone And Everything For Yourself.

Ideas Are, In Truth, Force.

You Think Too Much.' 'i Suppose I Do; But I Can’t Help It, My Mind Is So Terribly Active. When I Give Myself, I Give Myself. I Pay The Penalty In My Headaches, My Famous Headaches--a Perfect Circlet Of Pain! But I Carry It As A Queen Carries Her Crown.

In The Long Run An Opinion Often Borrows Credit From The Forbearance Of Its Patrons.

Happy You Poets Who Can Be Present And So Present By A Simple Flicker Of Your Genius, And Not, Like The Clumsier Race, Have To Laya Train And Pile Up Faggots That May Not After Prove In The Least Combustible!

You Wanted To Look At Life For Yourself - But You Were Not Allowed; You Were Punished For Your Wish. You Were Ground In The Very Mill Of The Conventional.

God's Creature Is One. He Makes Man, Not Men. His True Creature Is Unitary And Infinite, Revealing Himself, Indeed, In Every Finite Form, But Compromised By None.

One Is Oneself A Fine Consequence.

If One Is Strong, One Loves The More Strongly.

However British You May Be, I Am More British Still.

People Can Be In General Pretty Well Trusted, Of Course--with The Clock Of Their Freedom Ticking As Loud As It Seems To Do Here--to Keep An Eye On The Fleeting Hour.

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.

The "germ," Wherever Gathered, Has Ever Been For Me, "the Germ Of A Story," And Most Of The Stories Strained To Shape Under My Hand Have Sprung From A Single Small Seed, A Seed As Remote And Windblown As A Casual Hint.

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.

If We Pretend To Respect The Artist At All We Must Allow Him His Freedom Of Choice , In The Face, In Particular Cases, Of Innumerable Presumptions That The Choice Will Not Fructify.

It's Time To Start Living The Life You've Imagined.

He Valued Life And Literature Equally For The Light They Threw Upon Each Other; To His Mind One Implied The Other; He Was Unable To Conceive Of Them Apart.

I Always Want To Know The Things One Shouldn't Do." "so As To Do Them?" Asked Her Aunt. "so As To Choose." Said Isabel

Deep Experience Is Never Peaceful.

To Take What There Is In Life And Use It, Without Waiting Forever In Vain For The Preconceived, To Dig Deep Into The Actual And Get Something Out Of That; This, Doubtless, Is The Right Way To Live.

A Solitary Maple On A Woodside Flames In Single Scarlet, Recalls Nothing So Much As The Daughter Of A Noble House Dressed For A Fancy Ball, With The Whole Family Gathered Around To Admire Her Before She Goes.

Art Derives A Considerable Part Of Its Beneficial Exercise From Flying In The Face Of Presumptions.

If I Were To Live My Life Over Again, I Would Be An American. I Would Steep Myself In America, I Would Know No Other Land.

Young Men Of This Class Never Do Anything For Themselves That They Can Get Other People To Do For Them, And It Is The Infatuation, The Devotion, The Superstition Of Others That Keeps Them Going. These Others In Ninety-nine Cases Out Of A Hundred Are Women.

...the Peculiar Air Of Oxford-the Air Of Liberty To Care For The Things Of The Mind Assured And Secured By Machinery Which Is In Itself A Satisfaction To Sense.

The Main Object Of The Novel Is To Represent Life. . .the Success Of A Work Of Art, To My Mind, May Be Measured By The Degree To Which It Produces A Certain Illusion; That Illusion Makes It Appear To Us For The Time That We Have Lived Another Life - That We Have Had A Miraculous Enlargement Of Experience.

Women Never Dine Alone. When They Dine Alone They Don't Dine.

Instead Of Leading To The High Places Of Happiness, From Which The World Would Seem To Lie Below One, So That One Could Look Down With A Sense Of Exaltation And Advantage, And Judge And Choose And Pity, It Led Rather Downward And Earthward, Into Realms Of Restriction And Depression, Where The Sound Of Other Lives, Easier And Freer, Was Heard As From Above, And Served To Deepen The Feeling Of Failure.

I Have Only To Let Myself Go! So I Have Said All My Life, Yet I Have Never Fully Done It.

It Takes A Great Deal Of History To Produce A Little Literature.

I Don't Care About Anything But You, And That's Enough For The Present. I Want You To Be Happy--not To Think Of Anything Sad; Only To Feel That I'm Near You And I Love You. Why Should There Be Pain? In Such Hours As This What Have We To Do With Pain? That's Not The Deepest Thing; There's Something Deeper.

Americans Will Eat Garbage Provided You Sprinkle It Liberally With Ketchup.

The Fatal Futility Of Fact.

The Visible World Is But Man Turned Inside Out That He May Be Revealed To Himself.

The Black And Merciless Things That Are Behind The Great Possessions.

If I Should Certainly Say To A Novice, 'write From Experience And Experience Only,' I Should Feel That This Was Rather A Tantalizing Monition If I Were Not Careful Immediately To Add, 'try To Be One Of The People On Whom Nothing Is Lost.'

...he Had Long Decided That Abundant Laughter Should Be The Embellishment Of The Remainder Of His Days.

A Swift Carriage, Of A Dark Night, Rattling With Four Horses Over Roads That One Can’t See--that’s My Idea Of Happiness.

My Father Ain't In Europe; My Father's In A Better Place Than Europe." Winterbourne Imagined For A Moment That This Was The Manner In Which The Child Had Been Taught To Intimate That Mr. Miller Had Been Removed To The Sphere Of Celestial Reward. But Randolph Immediately Added, "my Father's In Schenectady.

The Superiority Of One Man's Opinion Over Another's Is Never So Great As When The Opinion Is About A Woman.

Love Has Nothing To Do With Good Reasons.

Adjectives Are The Sugar Of Literature And Adverbs The Salt.

Oxford Lends Sweetness To Labour And Dignity To Leisure.

...and The Great Advantage Of Being A Literary Woman, Was That You Could Go Everywhere And Do Everything.

My Sole Wish Is To Frustrate As Utterly As Possible The Post-mortem Exploiter.

Art Does Not Lie In Copying Nature.- Nature Furnishes The Material By Means Of Which Is To Express A Beauty Still Unexpressed In Nature.-the Artist Beholds In Nature More Than She Herself Is Conscious Of.

One Doesn't Defend One's God: One's God Is In Himself A Defense.

She Had A Certain Way Of Looking At Life Which He Took As A Personal Offense.

I Could Come Back To America..to Die..but Never, Never To Live.

I Ought To Tell You That I'm Probably Your Cousin.

To Read Between The Lines Was Easier Than To Follow The Text.

Read Between The Lines

We Must For Dear Life Make Our Own Counter-realities.

I Call People Rich When They're Able To Meet The Requirements Of Their Imagination.

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.

I Intend To Judge Things For Myself; To Judge Wrongly, I Think, Is More Honorable Than Not To Judge At All.

It Doesn't So Much Matter What You Do In Particular, So Long As You Have Your Life.

My Idea Is This, That When You Only Love A Little You're Naturally Not Jealous — Or Are Only Jealous Also A Little, So That It Doesn't Matter. But When You Love In A Deeper And Intenser Way, Then You're In The Very Same Proportion Jealous; Your Jealousy Has Intensity And, No Doubt, Ferocity.

To Say That She Had A Book Is To Say That Her Solitude Did Not Press Upon Her; For Her Love Of Knowledge Had A Fertilizing Quality And Her Imagination Was Strong. There Was At This Time, However, A Want Of Lightness In Her Situation, Which The Arrival Of An Unexpected Visitor Did Much To Dispel.

The Women One Meets - What Are They But Books One Has Already Read? You're A Library Of The Unknown, The Uncut. Upon My Word I've A Subscription.

We Work In The Dark -- We Do What We Can -- We Give What We Have.

If You Have Work To Do, Don't Wait To Feel Like It; Set To Work And You Will Feel Like It.

Always Keep A Window In The Attic Open; Not Just Cracked: Open.

...the Great Merit Of The Place Is That One Can Arrange One's Life Here Exactly As One Pleases...there Are Facilities For Every Kind Of Habit And Taste, And Everything Is Accepted And Understood.

There Were Always People To Snatch At You, And It Would Never Occur To Them That They Were Eating You Up. They Did That Without Tasting.

When I Am Wicked I Am In High Spirits.

Her Imagination Was By Habit Ridiculously Active; When The Door Was Not Open It Jumped Out The Window.

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.

To Live In The World Of Creation-to Get Into It And Stay In It-to Frequent It And Haunt It...to Think Intently And Fruitfully, To Woo Combinations And Inspirations Into Being By A Depth And Continuity Of Attention And Meditation-this Is The Only Thing.

It's A Complex Fate, Being An American, And One Of The Responsibilities It Entails Is Fighting Against A Superstitious Valuation Of Europe.

Every Good Story Is Of Course Both A Picture And An Idea, And The More They Are Interfused The Better.

Nothing, Of Course, Will Ever Take The Place Of The Good Old Fashion Of 'liking' A Work Of Art Or Not Liking It; The More Improved Criticism Will Not Abolish That Primitive, That Ultimate, Test.

The Image Of The Presence, Whatever It Was, Waiting There For Him To Go -this Image Had Not Yet Been So Concrete For His Nerves As When He Stopped Short Of The Point At Which Certainty Would Have Come To Him. For, With All His Resolution, Or More Exactly With All His Dread, He Did Stop Short - He Hung Back From Really Seeing. The Risk Was Too Great And His Fear Too Definite: It Took At This Moment An Awful Specific Form.

It Is, I Think, An Indisputable Fact That Americans Are, As Americans, The Most Self-conscious People In The World, And The Most Addicted To The Belief That The Other Nations Of The Earth Are In A Conspiracy To Under Value Them.

And Remember This, That If You've Been Hated, You've Also Been Loved.

We Must Know, As Much As Possible, In Our Beautiful Art...what We Are Talking About And The Only Way To Know Is To Have Lived And Loved And Cursed And Floundered And Enjoyed And Suffered. I Think I Don't Regret A Single "excess" Of My Responsive Youth I Only Regret, In My Chilled Age, Certain Occasions And Possibilities I Didn't Embrace.

Am I Solemn? I Had An Idea I Was Grinning From Ear To Ear." "you Look As If You Were Taking Me To A Prayer-meeting Or A Funeral. If That's A Grin Your Ears Are Very Near Together." "should You Like Me To Dance A Hornpipe On The Deck?" "pray Do, And I'll Carry Round Your Hat. It'll Pay The Expenses Of Our Journey.

We Must Grant The Artist His Subject, His Idea, His Donn´e: Our Criticism Is Applied Only To What He Makes Of It.

The Only Reason For The Existence Of A Novel Is That It Does Attempt To Represent Life.

Excellence Does Not Require Perfection.

Live All You Can; It's A Mistake Not To.

Inspirational Life

The Artist Beholds In Nature More Than She Herself Nature Is Conscious Of.

It Had Been Agreed Between Them That Lighted Candles At Wayside Inns, In Strange Countries Amid Mountain Scenery, Gave The Evening Meal A Peculiar Poetry.

It Is No Wonder He Wins Every Game. He Has Never Done A Thing In His Life Exept Play Games

Make Him [the Reader] Think The Evil, Make Him Think It For Himself, And You Are Released From Weak Specifications.

I Adore Adverbs; They Are The Only Qualifications I Really Much Respect.

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.

I Think Patriotism Is Like Charity -- It Begins At Home.

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Michael W. Smith

Constantin Brancusi

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