283 Quotes by Henry Adams

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

He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.

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.

Few men have dared to legislate as though eternal peace were at hand, in a world torn by wars and convulsions and drowned in blood; but this was what Jefferson aspired to do. Even in such dangers, he believed that Americans might safely set an example which the Christian world should be led by interest to respect and at length to imitate.

Washington was no politician as we understand the word,” replied Ratcliffe abruptly. “He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn’t be done today. The people don’t like that sort of royal airs.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

She faced death, as women mostly do, bravely and even gaily, racked slowly to unconsciousness, but yielding only to violence, as a soldier sabred in battle. For many thousands of years, on these hills and plains, Nature had gone on sabring men and women with the same air of sensual pleasure.

Harvard College was probably less hurtful than any other university then in existence. It taught little, and that little ill, but it left the mind open, free from bias, ignorant of facts, but docile.

I am fairly tired – bored beyond endurance – by the world we live in, and its ideals, and am ready to say so, not violently, but kindly, as one rubs salt into the back of a flogged sailor as though one loved him.