Alice James
Alice James
Alice Jameswas an American diarist. The only daughter of Henry James, Sr. and sister of psychologist and philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, she is known mainly for the posthumously published diary that she kept in her final years...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth7 August 1848
CountryUnited States of America
certain quantity indestructible
Though I have no productive worth, I have a certain value as an indestructible quantity.
doctor greater human interview suppose
I suppose one has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.
feet soul littles
Notwithstanding the poverty of my outside experience, I have always had a significance for myself, and every chance to stumle along my straight and narrow little path, and to worship at the feet of my Deity, and what more can a human soul ask for?
lying failure luck
The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape
loss vulgarity-is trials
It is an immense loss to have all robust and sustaining expletives refined away from one! At. moments of trial refinement is a feeble reed to lean upon.
unexpected expected
Truly nothing is to be expected except for the unexpected.
reading book giving
What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading.
book shapes four
If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich...
dream giving-up reality
Who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge?
sick selfishness four
How sick one gets of being "good," how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours; embody selfishness.
age comic ninety
It is so comic to hear oneself called old, even at ninety I suppose!
educational should-have intelligence
I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool that I am.
believe twenties compliment
I make it a rule always to believe compliments implicitly for five minutes, and to simmer gently for twenty more.
men needs emotion
You must remember that a woman, by nature, needs much less to feed upon than a man, a few emotions and she is satisfied.