Henry James Sr. Quote
Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce that it is not genteel comedy even that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
Henry James Sr.
Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce that it is not genteel comedy even that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
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About Henry James Sr.
Following a dramatic moment of spiritual enlightenment, he became deeply absorbed in Swedenborgianism, repudiating materialism and following the utopian path to grace. In this way, he was generally out of sympathy with contemporary American leaders of philosophical thought. His influence was felt more in frequent lively debates within his own circle of friends than in public life. He said “I love the fireside rather than the forum."