Henry Adams
Henry Adams
Henry Brooks Adamswas an American historian and member of the Adams political family, being descended from two U.S. Presidents...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 February 1838
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
love-is average perfect
Average human nature is very coarse, and its ideals must necessarily be average. The world never loved perfect poise. What the world does love is commonly absence of poise, for it has to be amused.
insane president firsts
Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards.
analogies weapons succeed
Analogies are figures intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent toys if they fail.
virginia people may
The People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every.
towns months shabby
One could not stay a month without loving the shabby town
delight photograph coarse
The photograph is a coarse fraud, and seems to delight only in taking the whole beauty out of the picture.
bites
Henry James chews more than he bites off.
useless showy senators
A senator is like a begonia - showy but useless.
venus dare command
An American Virgin would never dare command; an American Venus would never dare exist.
broken-heart pain night
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.
friendship men should-have
Every man should have a fair-sized cemetary in which to bury the faults of his friends.
musician mathematics mathematician
[Adams] supposed that, except musicians, everyone thought Beethoven a bore, as every one except mathematicians thought mathematics a bore.
organization hatred politics
Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
tears shed ifs
If one shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow.