Quotes by Henry Adams

“Philosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.”

“A friend in power is a friend lost.”

“A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly pos...”

“He supposed that, except musicians, every one thought Beethoven a bore, as every one except mathematicians thought mathematics a bore.”

“A new friend is always a miracle...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.”

“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...”

“Washington was no politician as we understand the word," replied Ratcliffe abruptly. "He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn't be done today. The people don't like that sort of royal airs.”

“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 thou...”

“The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.”

“The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.”

“Good men do the most harm.”

“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 ...”

“The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.”

“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 ma...”

“Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. The imagination must be given not wings but weights.”

“The tourist was the great conservative who hated novelty and adored dirt.”

“No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.”

“I, too, like yourself was a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was ultramontane. Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church; your National Convention is our Ecunemic Co...”

“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 te...”

“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 e...”