Henry Adams Quotations
Henry Brooks Adams (1838-02-16 – 1918-03-27) was a U.S. historian, journalist, novelist and educator. He was the great-grandson of John Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams and son of Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
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- For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington.
- Democracy (1880), ch. I
- A period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could calculate the result of a few more such returns.
- A History of the United States of America During the First Administration of James Madison (1890), vol. II, ch. VI: Meeting of the Twelfth Congress (New York, Scribner's, 1921), p. 123
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
- Accident counts for much in companionship as in marriage.
- Ch. 4
- Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right; that which they reject, is wrong; and their will, in most cases, ends by settling the moral.
- Ch. 6
- All experience is an arch, to build upon.
- Ch. 6
- Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.
- Ch. 6
- No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else. All the dogmatic stations in life have the effect of fixing a certain stiffness of attitude forever, as though they mesmerised the subject.
- Ch. 7
- Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still more seldom likes to be told of it.
- Ch. 7
- Friends are born, not made.
- Ch. 7
- A friend in power is a friend lost.
- Ch. 7
- The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.
- Ch. 10
- Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.
- Ch. 11
- Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
- Ch. 12
- These questions of taste, of feeling, of inheritance, need no settlement. Every one carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.
- Ch. 12
- Intimates are predestined.
- Ch. 13
- Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
- Ch. 13
- At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.
- Ch. 13
- Sumner's mind had reached the calm of water which receives and reflects images without absorbing them; it contained nothing but itself.
- Ch. 13
- The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.
- Ch. 17
- A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
- Ch. 20
- One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
- Ch. 20
- What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
- Ch. 21
- He had often noticed that six months' oblivion amounts to newspaper-death, and that resurrection is rare. Nothing is easier, if a man wants it, than rest, profound as the grave.
- Ch. 22
- Morality is a private and costly luxury.
- Ch. 22
- Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
- Ch. 22
- Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
- Ch. 25
- Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.
- Ch. 28
- Those who seek education in the paths of duty are always deceived by the illusion that power in the hands of friends is an advantage to them.
- Ch. 28
- Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.
- Ch. 28
- We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and, when got, the repose is insupportable.
- Ch. 29
- Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.
- Ch. 30
- No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
- Ch. 31
- Even in America, the Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone— but never hustled.
- Ch. 35
Misattributed
- Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, iii. 7
External links
Wikipedia has an article about: Henry Adams Wikisource has original works written by or about: Henry Adams
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