Henry James quote about youth from The Portrait of a Lady - One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.
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One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.
 Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881). copy citation

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Author Henry James
Source The Portrait of a Lady
Topic youth ignorance judgement
Date 1881
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2833/2833-h/2833-h.htm

Context

“She proposed moreover, as well as expected, to cease feeling; she freely admitted that of old she had been a little mad, and now she pretended to be perfectly sane.
«I judge more than I used to,» she said to Isabel, «but it seems to me one has earned the right. One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant. I'm sorry for you; it will be a long time before you're forty. But every gain's a loss of some kind; I often think that after forty one can't really feel. The freshness, the quickness have certainly gone.” source

Meaning and analysis

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