Henry Adams

The tourist was the great conservative who hated novelty and adored dirt.

Washington was no politician as we understand the word," replied Ratcliffe abruptly. "He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn't be done today. The people don't like that sort of royal airs.

He supposed that, except musicians, every one thought Beethoven a bore, as every one except mathematicians thought mathematics a bore.

Philosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

For the first time in his life, Mont Blanc for a moment looked to him what it was - a chaos of anarchic and purposeless forces - and he needed days of repose to see it clothe itself again with the illusions of his senses, the white purity of its snows, the splendor of its light, and the infinity of its heavenly peace. Nature was kind; Lake Geneva was beautiful beyond itself, and the Alps put on charms real as terrors.

The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.

A new friend is always a miracle...One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

A friend in power is a friend lost.

A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. The imagination must be given not wings but weights.

The habit of looking at life as a social relation _ an affair of society _ did no good. It cultivated a weakness which needed no cultivation. If it had helped to make men of the world, or give the manners and instincts of any profession _ such as temper, patience, courtesy, or a faculty of profiting by the social defects of opponents _ it would have been education better worth having than mathematics or languages; but so far as it helped to make anything, it helped only to make the college standard permanent through life.

The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.

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.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

Friends are born, not made.

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.

Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.