Quote

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.

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
Women
Effects
Unconscious
Intensified
Life
Worth
Perfectly
Evidently
Fine
Extremely
Superb
Week
Forms
Glowing
Seeing
Effect
Sensation
Beauty
Aware
Sensations
Siva
Experience
Dignity
Dozen
Seasickness
Form
Dance
Motion
Undress

More quotes by Henry Adams

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Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
Henry Adams
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Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.
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From earliest childhood the boy was accustomed to feel that, for him, life was double. Winter and summer, town and country, law and liberty, were hostile, and the man who pretended they were not, was in his eyes a schoolmaster -- that is, a man employed to tell lies to little boys.
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Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.
Henry Adams
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An artist's business is only to see.
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Even theologians, even the great theologians of the thirteenth century, even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself did not trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God.
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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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What a vast fraternity it is,--that of 'Hearts that Ache.' For the last three months it has seemed to me as though all society were coming to me, to drop its mask for a moment and initiate me into the mystery. How we do suffer! And we go on laughing for, as a practical joke at our expense, life is a success.
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Every man should have a fair-sized cemetary in which to bury the faults of his friends.
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Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
Henry Adams
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Teachers affect eternity. There is no telling where their influence stops.
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Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.
Henry Adams
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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.
Henry Adams
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Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
Henry Adams
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The outline of the city became frantic in its effort to explain something that defied meaning. Power seemed to have outgrown its servitude and to have asserted its freedom. The cylinder had exploded, and thrown great masses of stone and steam against the sky.
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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A friend in power is a friend lost.
Henry Adams
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The tourist was the great conservative who hated novelty and adored dirt.
Henry Adams
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The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.
Henry Adams
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Mathematicians practice absolute freedom.
Henry Adams