Henry James on Philosophy
Browse 6 quotations attributed to Henry James, catalogued under Philosophy, with dates where available.
This page displays 6 quotations attributed to Henry James and filed under "Philosophy" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to Henry James, entry #183446: "There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason."
Attributed to Henry James, entry #100909: "It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe."
6 Quotes by Henry James on Philosophy
"There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason."
"It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe."
"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting."
"The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, and what was talent but the art of being completely whatever it was that one happened to be?"
"I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on earth was I?"
"He had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of what I was doing. To do it in ANY way was an act of violence, for what did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasn't it base to create for a being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it couldn't have had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to come."