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History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.

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
Literary
Pursuit
Educated
Rich
History
Obliges
Wells
Aristocratic
Well
Pursuits
Historian

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Mathematicians practice absolute freedom.
Henry Adams
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The idea that any personal deity could find pleasure or profit in torturing a poor woman, by accident, with a fiendish cruelty known to man only in perverted and insane temperaments, could not be held for a moment. For pure blasphemy, it made pure atheism a comfort.
Henry Adams
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I firmly believe, that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday, science shall have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.
Henry Adams
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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.
Henry Adams
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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.
Henry Adams
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For after all man knows mighty little, and may some day learn enough of his own ignorance to fall down again and pray. Not that Icare. Only, if such is God's will, and Fate and Evolution--let there be God!
Henry Adams
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Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.
Henry Adams
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The proper study of mankind is woman.
Henry Adams
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No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
Henry Adams
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For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington.
Henry Adams
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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.
Henry Adams
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If one shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow.
Henry Adams
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As for piracy, I love to be pirated. It is the greatest compliment an author can have. The wholesale piracy of Democracy was the single real triumph of my life. Anyone may steal what he likes from me.
Henry Adams
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The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.
Henry Adams
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American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses.
Henry Adams
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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.
Henry Adams
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Politics cannot stop to study psychology Its methods are rough its judgments rougher still.
Henry Adams
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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.
Henry Adams
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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.
Henry Adams
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By nature, man is lazy, working only under compulsion and when he is strong we will always live, as far as he can, upon the labor or the property of the weak.
Henry Adams