Henry James

“Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.”

“I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.”

“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance… and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

“Live all you can. It is a mistake not to. It doesn't matter so much what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”

“The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life in general so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it—this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.”

“To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one’s own.”