The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of
character?
‘Partial Portraits’ (1888) ‘The Art of Fiction’
I don’t care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.
‘The Portrait of a Lady’ (1881) vol. 2, ch. 5.
The note I wanted; that of the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal
and easy.
‘Prefaces’ (1909) ‘The Altar of the Dead’
Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally
but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so.
‘Roderick Hudson’ (1877) preface
I didn’t, of course, stay her hand—there never is in such cases ‘time’; and I had once more the
full demonstration of the fatal futility of Fact.
‘The Spoils of Poynton’ (1909 ed.) preface
We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.
‘The Turn of the Screw’ (1898) p. 169
Summer afternoon—summer afternoon...the two most beautiful words in the English language.
In Edith Wharton ‘A Backward Glance’ (1934) ch. 10
So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!
On experiencing his first stroke, in Edith Wharton ‘A Backward Glance’ (1934) ch. 14
Of course, of course!
On hearing that Rupert Brooke had died on a Greek island (attributed)
10.10 William James 1842-1910
Man, biologically considered, and whatever else he may be into the bargain, is simply the most
formidable of all the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own
species.
‘Atlantic Monthly’ December 1904, p. 845
The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess success. That—with
the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success—is our national disease.
Letter to H. G. Wells, 11 September 1906, in ‘Letters’ (1920) vol. 2, p. 260
Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains—under all
misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
‘McClure’s Magazine’ February 1908, p. 422
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
‘The Principles of Psychology’ (1890) vol. 1, ch. 4
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
‘The Principles of Psychology’ (1890) vol. 2, ch. 22
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.
‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’ (1902) lectures 14 and 15, p. 355