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Morality is a private and costly luxury.

Henry Adams

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Henry Adams
Age: 80 †
Born: 1838
Born: February 16
Died: 1918
Died: March 27
Historian
Historian Of The Modern Age
Journalist
Mathematician
Novelist
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Frances Snow Compton
Henry Adams
Costly
Privacy
Luxury
Ethics
Morality
Private

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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.
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Teachers affect eternity. There is no telling where their influence stops.
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If it were worth while to argue a paradox, one might maintain that nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the superfluity of her world. Perhaps the best starting-point for study of the Virgin would be a practical acquaintance with bees, and especially with queen bees.
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Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
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My favorite figure of the American author is that of a man who breeds a favorite dog, which he throws into the Mississippi River for the pleasure of making a splash. The river does not splash, but it drowns the dog.
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The best date movies give you something to talk about. A movie that's a downer is a great way to find out about someone.
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It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.
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Politics cannot stop to study psychology Its methods are rough its judgments rougher still.
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Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
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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.
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One friend in a life-time is much two are many three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
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To my fancy, one looks back on life, it has only two responsibilities, which include all the others: one is the bringing of new life into existence the other, educating it after it is brought in. All betrayals of trust result from these original sins.
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The less a tourist knows, the fewer mistakes he need make, for he will not expect himself to explain ignorance.
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A congressman is a pig. The only way to get his snout from the trough is to rap it sharply with a stick.
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The new American, like the new European, was the servant of the powerhouse, as the European of the twelfth century was the servant of the Church.
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Any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured by motion, from a fixed point.
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We shall some day catch an abstract truth by the tail, and then we shall have our religion and our immortality.
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Those who seek education in the paths of duty are always deceived by the illusion that power in the hands of friends is an advantage to them.
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His brothers were the type he was the variation.
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If one shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow.
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