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"The young girl inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; and Winterbourne presently risked an observation upon the beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had begun to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself."
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"Good God. Men everywhere."
"She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Sparsit was, that she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace."
"Right now, it's hard to imagine that it is raining anywhere in the world."
"The surveillance, he thought, essentially should be maintained. And, if possible, by me. I should always be watching, watching and figuring out, even if I never do anything about what I see; even if I just sit there and observe silently, not seen: that is important, that I as a watcher of all that happens should be at my place."
"Men, she thought, were odd about their clothes: they liked to wear the same things until they became defeated and threadbare."
"I'm almost afraid to tell you. Let's put it this way: clean toilets are the least of your problems in this country."
"You can't go by what a girl says, when she's giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It's like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn't mean anything."
"One must always proceed with method. I made an error of judgment asking you that question. Toeach man his own knowledge. You could tell me the details of the patient's physical appearance- nothing there would escape you. If I wanted information about the papers on the desk, Mr. Raymond would have noticed anything there was to see. To find out about the fire, I must ask the man whose business is to observe such things. - Detective Hercule Poirot to Doctor Sheppard."
"He is not a man wedded to action, Boleyn, but rather a man who stands by, smirking and stroking his beard; he thinks he looks enigmatic, but instead he looks as if he's pleasuring himself."
Explore more quotes by Henry James
"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."
"One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left."
"I might show it to you, but you'd never see it. The privilege isn't given to every one; it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it."
"She couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep into her soul."
"Her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it."
"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?"
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