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[P]hilosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

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
Insoluble
Chiefly
Suggesting
Consists
Problems
Answers
Philosophy
Problem
Unintelligible

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Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one -- except curates and bishops it was the very best substitute for religion a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity.
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As history stands, it is a sort of Chinese play, without end andl without lesson. With these impressions I wrote the last line of my History, asking for a round century before going further.
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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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Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
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Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
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Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.
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During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.
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We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.
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History will die if not irritated. The only service I can do to my profession is to serve as a flea.
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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 common view of marriage as a primitive institution implies in the man more than arbitrary superiority, such as he exercised over the child, which still remained free. The woman's slavery was assumed to be for life.
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Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.
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His brothers were the type he was the variation.
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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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No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.
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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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As for America, it is the ideal fruit of all your youthful hopes and reforms. Everybody is fairly decent, respectable, domestic, bourgeois, middle-class, and tiresome. There is absolutely nothing to revile except that it's a bore.
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A boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.
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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.
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Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
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