American historian (1838-1918)
A friend in power is a friend lost.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one -- except curates and bishops; it was the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
Work, whiskey, and cards were life.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
That the most powerful emotion of man, next to the sexual, should disappear, might be a personal defect of his own; but that the most intelligent society, led by the most intelligent clergy, in the most moral conditions he ever knew, should have solved all the problems of the universe so thoroughly as to have quite ceased making itself anxious about past or future, and should have persuaded itself that all the problems which had convulsed human thought from earliest recorded time, were not worth discussing, seemed to him the most curious social phenomenon he had to account for in a long life.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams