The Ambassadors
Henry James
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”
“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? … I haven’t done so enough before—and now I'm too old; too old at any rate for what I see. … What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. … Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be, like me, without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don’t quite know which. Of course at present I'm a case of reaction against the mistake. … Do what you like so long as you don't make my mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!”
“Live all you can; it's a mistake not to.”
“When it's for each other that people give things up they don't miss them”
“I'm a perfectly equipped failure. (...) 'Thank goodness you're a failure- it's why I so distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too hideous. Look about you- look at the successes. Would you be one, on your honour?”
“Oh we're not loved. We're not even hated. We're only just sweetly ignored.”
“He has depths of silence—which he breaks only at the longest intervals by a remark. And when the remark comes it’s always something he has seen or felt for himself—never a bit banal. That would be what one might have feared and what would kill me. But never.”
“And she really had tones to make justice weep.”
“The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes—in a soft breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged soldier. He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with art, something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef. The”
“So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. "It isn't so much your BEING 'right'--it's your horrible sharp eye for what makes you so." Oh but you're just as bad yourself. You can't resist me when I point that out." She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. "I can't indeed resist you." Then there we are!" said Strether.”
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Book Keywords:
life, carpe-diem, inspirational
