Quotes from Henry Adams

I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously... It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Everyone carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.

Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.

Every man should have a fair-sized cemetary in which to bury the faults of his friends.

Every man who has at last succeeded, after long effort, in calling up the divinity which lies hidden in a woman's heart, is startled to find that he must obey the God he summoned.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

The capacity of women to make unsuitable marriages must be considered as the cornerstone of society.

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.

The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.

The work of internal government has become the task of controlling the thousands of fifth-rate men.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

Probably the institution of marriage had its origin in love of property. Both men and women were united in this--that whatever they loved best, they wished to possess. The usual theory holds that the communal system would not permit the gratification of this desire at the expense of communal rights, and that therefore men were driven to gratify their passion by purchasing or by capturing women from neighboring and hostile tribes.

The philosopher says--I am, and the church scouts his philosophy. She answers:--No! you are NOT, you have no existence of your own. You were and are and ever will be only a part of the supreme I AM, of which the church is the emblem.

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Wild as man was, and disgusting as the more degraded tribes and communities were, the best of them, and all those from which further advance came, were marked by good qualities, or they could never have risen to a higher stage.