[Henry] James’s critical genius comes out most tellingly in his mastery over, his baffling escape from, Ideas; a mastery and an escape which are perhaps the last test of a superior intelligence. He had a...

But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent...

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger stripes and lepard spots.

We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.

It ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

The Nobel is a ticket to one’s own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.

The one thing you can do is to do nothing. Wait . . . You will find that you survive humiliation and hat’s an experience of incalculable value.

Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the descent,Falls the Shadow.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;They called me the hyacinth girl.’ —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and...

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,It isn’t just one of your holiday games;You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatterWhen I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.First...

At the first turning of the second stair / I turned and saw below / The same shape twisted on the banister.

Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.

One of the low on whom assurance sits / As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Truth on our level is a different thing from truth for the jellyfish.

Think neither fear nor courage saves us.Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

The journey not the arrival matters.

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree / In the cool of the day.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in.

We must believe that ”emotion recollected in tranquillity” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from...

A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse

To country people Cows are mild,And flee from any stick they throw;But I’m a timid town bred child,And all the cattle seem to know.

Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.

Webster was much possessed by death / And saw the skull beneath the skin.

Tenants of the house, / Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

I grow old … I grow old …I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

LightLightThe visible reminder of Invisible Light.

So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I should revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore.

Old Deuteronomy’s lived a long time; He’s a cat who has lived many lives in succession. He was famous in proverb and famous in rhyme a long while before Queen Victoria’s accession. Old Deuteronomy’s buried...

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of incandescent terror.

Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take stone from stone and wash them.

Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, whenWe whisper togetherAre quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats’ feet over broken glassIn our dry cellarShape without...

In this brief transit where the dreams crossThe dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these thingsFrom the wide window towards the granite shoreThe white sails still...

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.

There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachmentFrom self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them,...

All cases are unique and very similar to others.

It’s strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

It’s not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.