“Wherever you go, madam, it will matter little what you carry. You will always carry your goodness.”
― Henry James, quote from The Bostonians
“Miss Chancellor would have been much happier if the movements she was interested in could have been carried on only by people she liked,and if revolutions, somehow, didn't always have to begin with one's self--with internal convulsions,sacrifices,executions.”
― Henry James, quote from The Bostonians
“She had never yet encountered a personage so exotic, and she always felt more at ease in the presence of anything strange. It was the usual things of life that filled her with silent rage; which was natural enough inasmuch as, to her vision, almost everything that was usual was inqiuitous.”
― Henry James, quote from The Bostonians
“I was on the point of saying that a happy chance had favoured him, but it occurs to me that one is under no obligation to call chances by flattering epithets when they have been waited for so long.”
― Henry James, quote from The Bostonians
“The Bostonians is special because it never was ‘titivated’ for the New York edition, for its humour and its physicality, for its direct engagement with social and political issues and the way it dramatized them, and finally for the extent to which its setting and action involved the author and his sense of himself. But the passage above suggests one other source of its unique quality. It has been called a comedy and a satire – which it is. But it is also a tragedy, and a moving one at that. If its freshness, humour, physicality and political relevance all combine to make it a peculiarly accessible and enjoyable novel, it is also an upsetting and disturbing one, not simply in its treatment of Olive, but also of what she tries to stand for. (Miss Birdseye is an important figure in this respect: built up and knocked down as she is almost by fits and starts.) The book’s jaundiced view of what Verena calls ‘the Heart of humanity’ (chapter 28) – reform, progress and the liberal collectivism which seems so essential an ingredient in modern democracy – makes it contentious to this day. An aura of scepticism about the entire political process hangs about it: salutary some may say; destructive according to others. And so, more than any other novel of James’s, it reminds us of the literature of our own time. The Bostonians is one of the most brilliant novels in the English language, as F. R. Leavis remarked;27 but it is also one of the bleakest. In no other novel did James reveal more of himself, his society and his era, and of the human condition, caught as it is between the blind necessity of progress and the urge to retain the old. It is a remarkably experimental modern novel, written by a man of conservative values. It is judgemental about people with whom its author identified, and lenient towards attitudes hostile to large areas of James’s own intellectual and personal inheritance. The strength of the contradictions embodied in the novel are a guarantee of the pleasure it has to give.”
― Henry James, quote from The Bostonians
Henry James
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date April 15, 1843
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“Do you really want me to show you how you're pushing me, Tessnia? What you do to me?”
― Jalpa Williby, quote from Chaysing Dreams
“Figure 36. A "trick" can be played on Nature by slowing down the light that takes shorter paths: glass of just the right thickness is inserted so that all the paths will take exactly the same time. This causes all of the arrows to point in the same direction, and to produce a whopping final arrow-lots of light! Such a piece of glass made to greatly increase the probability of light getting from a source to a single point is called a focusing lens.”
― Richard Feynman, quote from QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
“There was no place more solitary than a dark room, with its murky light and fetid closeness.”
― Amitav Ghosh, quote from The Glass Palace
“It took me a long time to learn that I didn’t have to feel what someone wanted me to feel, but once I learned it, it became a habit. It’s a useful habit. Because I wasn’t angry, I was able to think clearly about what was the best thing to do.”
― Catherine M. Wilson, quote from The Warrior's Path
“Sprinkled across the black waters below were at least a hundred small boats set out to greet the Leviathan, their navigation lights like shifting stars. Among them loomed a glittering cruise liner, her fog horn bellowing in the night. The low groan grew into a chorus as the other great ships in the harbor joined in.
Perched on Volger's desk, Bovril attempted to imitate the horns, but wound up sounding like a badly blown tuba.
Alek smiled. "But they're already singing our praises!"
"They are Americans," Volger said. "They toot their horns for anything.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Goliath
The Red Pyramid
Slammed
The Horse and His Bo...
Angelfall
Sabriel
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