Henry James Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself. The Portrait of a Lady

2. I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours. The Portrait of a Lady

3. It has made me better loving you... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story. The Portrait of a Lady

4. Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take you eyes off your goal.

5. She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth. What Maisie Knew

6. 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. Roderick Hudson

7. [Y]ou are passing through a darkness in which I myself in my ignorance see nothing but that you have been made wretchedly ill by it; but it is only a darkness, it is not an end, or the end. Don’t think, don’t feel, any more than you can help, don’t conclude or decide—don’t do anything but wait. The Letters of Volume I

8. Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic. The Portrait of a Lady

9. She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth. What Maisie Knew

10. Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.

11. The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.

12. 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. Roderick Hudson