Henry Adams

“The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.”

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

“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 pess...”

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

“All experience is an arch, to build upon.”

“Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.”

“There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.”

“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.”

“Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.”

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

“Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.”

“He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.”

“Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.”

“Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.”

“Morality is a private and costly luxury.”

“The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.”

“A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.”

“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.”

“Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.”

“No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.”