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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.

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
Without
Sought
Thread
Breaking
Absolutes
Absolute
Wind
History
Truth

More quotes by Henry Adams

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Man always made, and still makes, grotesque blunders in selecting and measuring forces, taken at random from the heap, but he never made a mistake in the value he set on the whole, which he symbolized as unity and worshipped as God. To this day, his attitude towards it has never changed, though science can no longer give to force a name.
Henry Adams
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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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Man loves most that which is his own.
Henry Adams
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If one shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow.
Henry Adams
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The common view of marriage as a primitive institution implies in the man more than arbitrary superiority, such as he exercised over the child, which still remained free. The woman's slavery was assumed to be for life.
Henry Adams
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Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.
Henry Adams
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My favorite figure of the American author is that of a man who breeds a favorite dog, which he throws into the Mississippi River for the pleasure of making a splash. The river does not splash, but it drowns the dog.
Henry Adams
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[regarding US conquest of the Philippines] I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines ... We must slaughter a million or two foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric railways.
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 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 woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.
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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It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.
Henry Adams
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Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.
Henry Adams
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Unity is vision it must have been part of the process of learning to see.
Henry Adams
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Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.
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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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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No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.
Henry Adams
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I want to be advertised and the easiest way is to do something obnoxious and do it well.
Henry Adams