Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doing, when it is a question of recollection. The mellow light which swims over the past, the beauty which suffuses even the commonest little figures of that

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

What is a woman? I assure you, I do not know ... I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.

There are moments when one can neither think nor feel, she thought, and if one can neithre feel nor think, where's one?

Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying – what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.