6 Quotes by Henry Brooks Adams

It's a queer sensation, this secret belief that one stands on the brink of the world's greatest catastrophe. For it means the fall of Western Europe, as it fell in the fourth century. It recurs to me every November, and culminates every December. I have to get over it as I can, and hide, for fear of being sent to an asylum.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation

Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense. . . .

Even in America, the Indian summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone - but never hustled

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.