Henry Adams Quotes

Quote

Friends are born, not made.
Henry Adams

Friendship, Made, Friends

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 Adams

Life, Friendship, Friend

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
Henry Adams

Teacher, Tell, Influence

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.
Henry Adams

Life, Sad, Wealth

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
Henry Adams

History, Life, Often

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.
Henry Adams

Power, Science, Human

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.
Henry Adams

Nature, Law, Dream

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.
Henry Adams

Politics, Art, Mean

All experience is an arch, to build upon.
Henry Adams

Experience, Build, Arch

At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.
Henry Adams

Best, Broken, Matter

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.
Henry Adams

Liberty, Free, Himself

The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.
Henry Adams

Trust, Nothing, Tell

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Henry Adams

Mean, Words, Thought

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
Henry Adams

A friend in power is a friend lost.
Henry Adams

Power, Friend, Lost

A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.
Henry Adams

Belief, Swallow, Digest

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.
Henry Adams

Marriage, Accident, Counts

American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.
Henry Adams

Society, American, Reaction

Every man who has at last succeeded, after long effort, in calling up the divinity which lies hidden in a woman's heart, is startled to find that he must obey the God he summoned.
Henry Adams

God, Heart, Long

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.
Henry Adams

Travel, Everyone, Himself

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.
Henry Adams

Politics, Purpose, Stands

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.
Henry Adams

Faith, History, Him

I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.
Henry Adams

Truth, Working, Difficult

Intimates are predestined.
Henry Adams

It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.
Henry Adams

Good, Men, Harm

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Historian

Born: February 16, 1838

Died: March 27, 1918

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Cite this Page: Citation

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