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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.

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
Best
Communities
Good
Qualities
Never
Wild
Degraded
Men
Higher
Marked
Stage
Risen
Came
Tribes
Quality
Disgusting
Community
Advance

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That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true work and whiskey were his stimulants work was a form of vice but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them.
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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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Throughout human history the waste of mind has been appalling, and, as this story is meant to show, society has conspired to promote it. No doubt the teacher is the worst criminal, but the world stands behind him and drags the student from his course.
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There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
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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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The less a tourist knows, the fewer mistakes he need make, for he will not expect himself to explain ignorance.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.
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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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It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.
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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The proper study of mankind is woman.
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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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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.
Henry Adams
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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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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.
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No man can instruct more than half-a-dozen students at once. The whole problem of education is one of its cost in money.
Henry Adams