Quote

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!

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
Learn
Fall
Mighty
Littles
Pray
May
God
Little
Praying
Enough
Evolution
Men
Fate
Ignorance

More quotes by Henry Adams

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Silence alone is respectable and respected. I believe God to be silence.
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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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I hate photographs abstractly, because they have given me more ideas perversely and immovably wrong, than I ever should get by imagination.
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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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Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one -- except curates and bishops it was the very best substitute for religion a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity.
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The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.
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History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.
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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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It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.
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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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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.
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There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
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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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The world is coming to an end in 1950.
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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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Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.
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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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Teachers affect eternity. There is no telling where their influence stops.
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Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
Henry Adams
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The idea that any personal deity could find pleasure or profit in torturing a poor woman, by accident, with a fiendish cruelty known to man only in perverted and insane temperaments, could not be held for a moment. For pure blasphemy, it made pure atheism a comfort.
Henry Adams