# Quote — Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

> Here at present I felt afresh—for I had felt it again and again—how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on at all by taking "nature" into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, nonetheless, could well require more tact than just this attempt to supply, one's self, all the nature.

- Author: [Henry James](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james.md)
- Book: [The Turn of the Screw](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_James#The_Turn_of_the_Screw_(1898)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw/here-at-present

## More from this book

> I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on earth was I?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw/i-seemed-to-float.md)

> It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration—I can call it by no other name—was that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I might. It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human soul—held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length—had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw/it-came-to.md)

> I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the most bereaved and the most loveable, the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one's own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and I - well, I had them.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw/i-was-there.md)