Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Men
Rivers
Splash
Figure
Authorship
Dog
Breeds
Figures
Throws
Pleasure
Mississippi
American
Author
Making
River
Doe
Favorite
Drowns

More quotes by Henry Adams

Image
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.
Henry Adams
Image
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
Image
The work of internal government has become the task of controlling the thousands of fifth-rate men.
Henry Adams
Image
That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true work and whiskey were his stimulants work was a form of vice but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them.
Henry Adams
Image
Society is immoral and immortal it can afford to commit any kind of folly, and indulge in any sort of vice it cannot be killed, and the fragments that survive can always laugh at the dead.
Henry Adams
Image
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint responsibility is restraint therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.
Henry Adams
Image
[P]hilosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
Henry Adams
Image
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.
Henry Adams
Image
I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.
Henry Adams
Image
History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.
Henry Adams
Image
Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.
Henry Adams
Image
The world is coming to an end in 1950.
Henry Adams
Image
It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end... I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him.
Henry Adams
Image
No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
Henry Adams
Image
Mathematicians practice absolute freedom.
Henry Adams
Image
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
Henry Adams
Image
One friend in a lifetime is much two are many three are hardly possible.
Henry Adams
Image
In the one branch he most needed
Henry Adams
Image
[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
Image
As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.
Henry Adams