Quotes by Alice James

“One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.”

“The fact is, I have been dead so long and it has been simply such a grim shoving of the hours behind mesince the hideous summer of 78, when I went down to the deep sea, its dark waters closed over ...”

“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 s...”

“In looking back now, I see how it began in my childhood, altho I was not conscious of the necessity until 67 or 68 when I broke down first, acutely, and had violent turns of hysteria. As I lay pros...”

“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.”

“One has a greater sense of degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.”

“It is so comical to hear oneself called old even at ninety I suppose!”

“Truly nothing is to be expected but the unexpected.”

“Though I have no productive worth I have a certain value as an indestructible quantity.”

“Who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge?”

“In looking back now, I see how it began in my childhood, altho’ I was not conscious of the necessity until ’67 or ’68 when I broke down first, acutely, and had violent turns of hysteria. As I lay p...”

“It is so comical to hear oneself called old even at ninety I suppose!”

“Though I have no productive worth I have a certain value as an indestructible quantity.”

“What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading.”