283 Quotes by Henry Adams

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.

Henry James chews more than he bites off.

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.

If one shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow.

Society is immoral and immortal; it can afford to commit any kind of folly, and indulge in any sort of vice; it cannot be killed, and the fragments that survive can always laugh at the dead.

Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one – except curates and bishops; it was the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity.

One could not stay a month without loving the shabby town.

Laplace would have found it child’s-play to fix a ratio of progression in mathematical science between Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton and himself.

A senator is like a begonia – showy but useless.