Quotes Tagged "henry-james"

The charm turned on them a face that was cold in its beauty, that was full of a poetry never to be theirs, that spoke, with an ironic smile, of a possible but forbidden life. It all rolled afresh over Milly: 'Oh, the impossible romance—!' The romance for her, yet once more, would be to sit there for ever, through all her time, as in a fortress; and the idea became an image of never going down, of remaining aloft in the divine, dustless air, where she would hear but the plash of the water against stone. The great floor on which they moved was at an altitude, and this prompted the rueful fancy. 'Ah, not to go down—never, never to go down!' she strangely sighed to her friend.

It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask . . . advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever.

There's no romance here but what you may have brought with you.

But will they make themselves agreeable to me? That's what I like people to do. I don't hesitate to say so, because I always appreciate it.

Heaven deliver me from my friends!

The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.

It seemed to her at last that she would do well to take a book; formerly, when heavy-hearted, she had been able, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason.

Yes, one has read; but this is beyond any book.