Margaret > Margaret's Quotes

“I don't want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.”
― Henry James

“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

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors

“If this was love, love had been overrated.”
― Henry James, The Europeans

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.”
― Henry James

“Don't mind anything any one tells you about any one else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.”
― Henry James

“She was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts, and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar...It may be affirmed without delay that She was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she often surveyed with complacency the field of her own nature; she was in the habit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right; impulsively, she often admired herself...Every now and then she found out she was wrong, and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she held her head higher than ever again; for it was of no use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organization, should move in the realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.”
― Henry James, Washington Square

“True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.”
― Henry James, Roderick Hudson

“The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.”
― Henry James

“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!”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Excellence does not require perfection.”
― Henry James

“...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

“One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
― Henry James

“She had an unequalled gift, usually pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into opportunities.”
― Henry James

“...It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself, you could have made her blush any day of the year, by telling her she was selfish. She was always planning out her own development, desiring her own perfection, observing her own progress. Her nature had for her own imagination a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring bows, of shady bowers and of lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the recesses of one’s mind was harmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“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

“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.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“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 are in a conspiracy to under-value them.”
― Henry James

“Deep experience is never peaceful.”
― Henry James

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don't leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.”
― Osho

“Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots.”
― Slavoj Žižek