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Authors:

Henry B. Adams quotes

American Historian February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918

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Quotes

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. Henry B. Adams
You say that love is nonsense.... I tell you it is no such thing. For weeks and months it is a steady physical pain, an ache about the heart, never leaving one, by night or by day; a long strain on one's nerves like toothache or rheumatism, not intolerable at any one instant, but exhausting by its steady drain on the strength. Henry B. Adams
For the first time in his life, Mont Blanc for a moment looked to him what it was - a chaos of anarchic and purposeless forces - and he needed days of repose to see it clothe itself again with the illusions of his senses, the white purity of its snows, the splendor of its light, and the infinity of its heavenly peace. Nature was kind; Lake Geneva was beautiful beyond itself, and the Alps put on charms real as terrors. Henry B. Adams
the problem of life was as simple as it was classic. Politics offered no difficulties, for there the moral law was a sure guide. Social perfection was also sure, because human nature worked for Good, and three instruments were all she asked? Suffrage, Common Schools, and Press. On these points doubt was forbidden. Education was divine, and man needed only a correct knowledge of facts to reach perfection: "Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on... Henry B. Adams
From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame... Henry B. Adams
The habit of looking at life as a social relation? an affair of society? did no good. It cultivated a weakness which needed no cultivation. If it had helped to make men of the world, or give the manners and instincts of any profession? such as temper, patience, courtesy, or a faculty of profiting by the social defects of opponents? it would have been education better worth having than mathematics or languages; but so far as it helped to make anything, it helped only to make the college... Henry B. Adams
A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. Henry B. Adams
He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence? of talking without meaning? is never effaced. Henry B. Adams
Henry B. Adams quote: "Life is a narrow valley, and the roads run close together"
Life is a narrow valley, and the roads run close together Henry B. Adams
In Paris and London he had seen nothing to make a return to life worth while; in Washington he saw plenty of reasons for staying dead. Henry B. Adams
Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise? absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness? the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone? a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferiority, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even under great pressure. Henry B. Adams
Henry B. Adams quote: "Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they..."
Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they are apt to be fatal to politicians. Henry B. Adams
Henry B. Adams quote: "We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the..."
We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable. Henry B. Adams
The first serious consciousness of Nature's gesture - her attitude towards life-took form then as a phantasm, a nightmare, all insanity of force. For the first time, the stage-scenery of the senses collapsed; the human mind felt itself stripped naked, vibrating in a void of shapeless energies, with resistless mass, colliding, crushing, wasting, and destroying what these same energies had created and labored from eternity to perfect. Henry B. Adams
Henry B. Adams quote: "A friend in power is a friend lost."
A friend in power is a friend lost. Henry B. Adams

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