More from Henry James
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Hawthorne (1879), Ch. I: The Early Years.- “Greville Fane”, from The Real Thing: and Other Tales (1893)
- The Tragic Muse (1890), ch. IX
People/Henry James/Quote

A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
“Robert Louis Stevenson,” Century Magazine (April 1888)
Quote and source from Wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.