Quote #33

Vereker's secret, my dear man - the general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.

More from Henry James

  1. The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
  2. He is outside of everything, and an alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the…
  3. The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, and what was tale…
  4. 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 cons…
  5. She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.
  6. 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. If you haven'…
  7. 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 madne…
  8. She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.

All Henry James quotes