Mixed Moss

Delivering your dose of culture for the day. This is from a book by Henry James. You know, the guy they talk about in the movie Notting Hill, when Julia Roberts asks Hugh Grant what he thinks of her movie and he says, well, it’s not Jane Austen or Henry James, and then later on she does a film that’s an adaptation of a Henry James book? Coincidentally, this goes well with my March 9th post titled “success.” As usual, someone else says it better than I could.

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“I’m a perfectly equipped failure.”

“Thank goodness you’re a failure–it’s why I so distinguish you! Anything else today is too hideous. Look about you–look at the successes. Would you be one, on your honour? Look moreover,” she continued, “at me.”
For a little, accordingly their eyes met. “I see,” Strether returned. “You too are out of it.”

“The superiority you discern in me,” she concurred, “announces my futility. If you knew,” she sighed, “the dreams of youth! But our realities are what has brought us together. We’re beaten brothers in arms.”

-Henry James, The Ambassadors

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