Quote#Work
The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business…
Quote byHenry James · 1843–1916
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Prefaces (1907-1909), What Maisie Knew.
English (original)
The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.
— Henry James
More from Henry James
I haven't a creature to talk to...How in Boston, when the evening arrives, and I am tired of reading, and know it would be better to do something else, can I go to the theater? I have tried it, ad nauseam. Likewise calling. Upon whom?"
Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason.
[of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones] [it is] like a vast episode in a sermon preached by a grandly humorous divine; and however we may be entertained by the way, we must not forget that our ultimate duty is to be instructed.
The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination... To write well and worthily of American things one need …