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
play history chinese
As history stands, it is a sort of Chinese play, without end andl without lesson. With these impressions I wrote the last line of my History, asking for a round century before going further.
broken-heart pain night
You say that love is nonsense. I tell you it is no such thing. For weeks and months it is a steady physical pain, an ache about the heart, never leaving one, by night or by day; a long strain on one's nerves like toothache or rheumatism, not intolerable at any one instant, but exhausting by its steady drain on the strength.
talking tongue language
He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.
men good-man harm
Good men do the most harm.
mind tragedy study
Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.
running art philosophy
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 education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame...
wings imagination weight
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. The imagination must be given not wings but weights.
philosophy answers problem
[P]hilosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
years two bird
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
history forgotten catalogues
History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.
history historical use
Nothing is easier to teach than historical method, but, when learned, it has little use.
philosophy knowledge past
After Gibbs, one the most distinguished [American scientists] was Langley, of the Smithsonian. ... He had the physicist's heinous fault of professing to know nothing between flashes of intense perception. ... Rigidly denying himself the amusement of philosophy, which consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems, and liked to wander past them in a courteous temper, even bowing to them distantly as though recognizing their existence, while doubting their respectibility.
men practice principles
In practice, such trifles as contradictions in principle are easily set aside; the faculty of ignoring them makes the practical man.
bullying facts serious
Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.