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As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.

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
History
Ends
Without
Play
Lesson
Stands
Chinese
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More quotes by Henry Adams

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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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The best date movies give you something to talk about. A movie that's a downer is a great way to find out about someone.
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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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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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Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
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The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.
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My rule in making up examination questions is to ask questions which I can't myself answer. It astounds me to see how some of my students answer questions which would play the deuce with me.
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His brothers were the type he was the variation.
Henry Adams
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Morality is a private and costly luxury.
Henry Adams
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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
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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.
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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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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History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.
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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.
Henry Adams
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All taxation is an evil, but heavy taxes, indiscriminately levied on every everything are one of the greatest curses that can afflict a people
Henry Adams
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For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington.
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Boys naturally look on all force as an enemy.
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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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A friend in power is a friend lost.
Henry Adams