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 More Quotes by Henry Adams More Quotes From Henry Adams Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less. Henry Adams marriage blind 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 excess whiskey vices Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. Henry Adams modern struggle men Throughout human history the waste of mind has been appalling, and, as this story is meant to show, society has conspired to promote it. No doubt the teacher is the worst criminal, but the world stands behind him and drags the student from his course. Henry Adams doubt mind teacher 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. Henry Adams downers giving way Just as the French of the nineteenth century invested their surplus capital in a railway-system in the belief that they would makemoney by it in this life, in the thirteenth they trusted their money to the Queen of Heaven because of their belief in her power to repay it with interest in the life to come. Henry Adams queens faith heaven In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side. Henry Adams united-states cutting history Even theologians, even the great theologians of the thirteenth century, even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself did not trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God. Henry Adams assuming saint century 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 cities power sky The gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away. Henry Adams style greek home The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence. Henry Adams direct-action space men 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 pain mother children An American Virgin would never dare command; an American Venus would never dare exist. Henry Adams command dare venus Any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured by motion, from a fixed point. Henry Adams fixed force men Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. Henry Adams Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of facts. Henry Adams Accident counts for much in companionship, as in marriage. Henry Adams Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuse himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels. Henry Adams Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect. Henry Adams No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. Henry Adams
