The Ambassadors

Henry James's 1903 novel following Lambert Strether — sent to Paris to bring back his patron's son — whose experience of Paris transforms his understanding of what it means to live fully, concluding with his famous injunction: 'Live all you can; it's a mistake not to.'

Demonstrates James's central thesis that perception is the deepest form of experience — Strether's education in Paris is entirely perceptual and aesthetic, not eventful — and that the difference between a full life and a wasted one is the quality of attention one brings to experience.