Jean d'Ormesson

a book that isn't shown on tv is a lost book...  a book that is shown on tv is a difigured book. It transforms a book into a spectacle and a book is not necessarily made for that.

Henry James

Men, among the mortally afflicted, suffer on the whole more overtly and more grossly than women, and resist with a ruder, an inferior strategy.

Marguerite Yourcenar

Le reste de la beauté humaine passait au rang de spectacle, cessait d’être ce gibier dont j’avais été le chasseur.

Henry James

I don’t pretend in the least to understand our national destinies – or those of any portion of the world. My philosophy is no match for them, and I regard the march of history very much as a man placed astride of a locomotive, without knowledge or help, would regard the progress of that vehicle.  To stick on, somehow, and even enjoy the scenery as we pass, is the sum of my aspiration.

Henry James

the preference of contemplative and slow-moving minds for the visible, the palpable, measurable present--touched here and there with the warm lights and shadows of the past

William James to his brother

The writing into which you distill your essence

E.B. White

He had a fine capacity for melancholy and the gift of sadness. I never knew anybody on whose spirit the weather had such a devastating effect. A shift of wind, or of mood, could wither him. There would be times when a dismal sky conspired with a forlorn side street to create a moment of such profound bitterness that the world’s accumulated sorrow seemed to gather in a solid lump in his heart.