Henry B. Adams was the first in an infinite series to discover and admit to himself that he really did not care whether truth was,... or was not, true. He did not even care that it should be proved true, unless the process were new and amusing. He was a Darwinian for fun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Chief Defect of Henry King Was chewing little bits of String.... At last he swallowed some which tied Itself in ugly Knots inside.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The fox, he felt, had never seen his past disposed of like a fall of water. He had never measured off his day in moments: another-...-another--another. But now, thrown down so deeply in himself, into the darkness of the well, surprised by pain and hunger, might he not revert to an earlier condition, regain capacities which formerly were useless to him, pass from animal to Henry, become human in his prison, X his days, count, wait, listen for another--another--another--another?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...expatriated Americans, even Henry James himself, have always seemed to me somewhat anchorless, rudderless, drifting before the ...wind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yes, dance. Dance and dream. Dream that you're Mrs. Henry Jekyll of Harley Street, dancing with your own butler and six footmen. D...ream that they've all turned into white mice and crawled into an eternal pumpkin.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poor Henry, he's spending eternity wandering round and round a stately park and the fence is just too high for him to peep over an...d they're having tea just too far away for him to hear what the countess is saying.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Henry Adams and Henry James invite obvious comparisons. Exact contemporaries on the American literary scene, both were beguiled by... European culture, both were distressed by American ills. Philosophically and aesthetically they also had much in common. But these two writers arrived at logically opposite extremes in struggling with the historical, political, economic, and social problems of their age. Adams came to view the basic impulse toward unity as the force that could give coherence to the multiplicity of experience; he viewed philosophies of history as aesthetic systems that made it possible to organize the incoherence of historical and natural events. James, on the other hand, felt that art and history were inextricably related, and that history could be viewed in terms of the differing interpretations man designs to relate himself to the social or natural world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »