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 of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.
~ Henry James

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There’s no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding.
~ Henry James

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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’t had that, what have you had?
~ Henry James

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No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connection of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt, so dangling before us forever that bright hard medal, of so strange an alloy, one face of which is somebody’s right and ease and the other somebody’s pain and wrong.
~ Henry James

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It’s a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.
~ Henry James

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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

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Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
~ Henry James

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Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
~ Henry James

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