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

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The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.
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The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.
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One friend in a lifetime is much two are many three are hardly possible.
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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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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.
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The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.
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[P]hilosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
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All State education is a sort of dynamo machine for polarizing the popular mind for turning and holding its lines of force in the direction supposed to be most effective for State purposes.
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Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.
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There are two things that seem to be at the bottom of our constitutions one is a continual tendency towards politics the other is family pride and it is strange how these two feelings run through all of us.
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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!
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In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share.
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One sought not absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it.
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There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
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They know enough who know how to learn.
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The sensation of seeing extremely fine women, with superb forms, perfectly unconscious of undress, and yet evidently aware of their beauty and dignity, is worth a week's seasickness to experience... [to me] the effect [of a Siva dance] was that of a dozen Rembrandts intensified into the most glowing beauty of life and motion.
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Nothing is more tiresome than a superannuated pedagogue.
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During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.
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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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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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