Henry Adams
Henry Adams
Henry Brooks Adamswas an American historian and member of the Adams political family, being descended from two U.S. Presidents...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 February 1838
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
family brother variation
His brothers were the type; he was the variation.
class america boredom
As for America, it is the ideal fruit of all your youthful hopes and reforms. Everybody is fairly decent, respectable, domestic, bourgeois, middle-class, and tiresome. There is absolutely nothing to revile except that it's a bore.
psychology study judgment
Politics cannot stop to study psychology Its methods are rough; its judgments rougher still.
men political enemy
Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting.
race history statistics
No historian can take part with--or against--the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.
teacher influence eternity
Teachers affect eternity. There is no telling where their influence stops.
love-is average perfect
Average human nature is very coarse, and its ideals must necessarily be average. The world never loved perfect poise. What the world does love is commonly absence of poise, for it has to be amused.
serious problem jew
The Jewish question is really the most serious of our problems.
science technology shells
My belief is that science is to wreck us, and that we are like monkeys monkeying with a loaded shell; we don't in the least know or care where our practically infinite energies come from or will bring us to.
predestined
Intimates are predestined.
genius force highest
Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.
mind president poison
Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents has been always tragic, chiefly as an almost indecent excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bear the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carion.
bites
Henry James chews more than he bites off.
play answers examination
My rule in making up examination questions is to ask questions which I can't myself answer. It astounds me to see how some of my students answer questions which would play the deuce with me.