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
beauty women glowing
The sensation of seeing extremely fine women, with superb forms, perfectly unconscious of undress, and yet evidently aware of their beauty and dignity, is worth a week's seasickness to experience.... To me the effect [of a Siva dance] was that of a dozen Rembrandts intensified into the most glowing beauty of life and motion.
sex women humorous
The Woman had once been supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment but as a force; why was she unknownin America? for evidently America was ashamed of her, and she was ashamed of herself, otherwise they would not have strewn fig-leaves so profusely all over her. When she was a true force, she was ignorant of fig-leaves, but the monthly-magazine-made American female had not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam. The trait was notorious, and often humorous, but anyone brought up among Puritans knew that sex was sin. In any previous age, sex was strength.
queens women males
If it were worth while to argue a paradox, one might maintain that nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the superfluity of her world. Perhaps the best starting-point for study of the Virgin would be a practical acquaintance with bees, and especially with queen bees.
women science isis
The scientific mind is atrophied, and suffers under inherited cerebral weakness, when it comes in contact with the eternal woman--Astarte, Isis, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the last and greatest deity of all, the Virgin.
women moral settling
Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right; that which they reject, is wrong; and their will, in most cases, ends by settling the moral.
teacher giving parent
A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
philosophy order medicine
Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.
few means slippery
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
man
A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.
politics systematic
Politics... have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
education mind purpose
All State education is a sort of dynamo machine for polarizing the popular mind; for turning and holding its lines of force in the direction supposed to be most effective for State purposes.
struggle men modern
Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.
saint assuming century
Even theologians, even the great theologians of the thirteenth century, even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself did not trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God.
teacher doubt mind
Throughout human history the waste of mind has been appalling, and, as this story is meant to show, society has conspired to promote it. No doubt the teacher is the worst criminal, but the world stands behind him and drags the student from his course.