283 Quotes by Henry Adams

The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.

The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.

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.

Good men do the most harm.

Philosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

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.

Seward would inspire a cow with statesmanship if she understood our language.

He supposed that, except musicians, every one thought Beethoven a bore, as every one except mathematicians thought mathematics a bore.

In Paris and London he had seen nothing to make a return to life worth while; in Washington he saw plenty of reasons for staying dead.