Henry Adams Quotes

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Henry Adams

Profession : Historian

Birth : February 16, 1838

Intimates are predestined.

Henry Adams

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

Henry Adams

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

Henry Adams

The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.

Henry Adams

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

Henry Adams

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.

Henry Adams

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

Henry Adams

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

Every man who has at last succeeded, after long effort, in calling up the divinity which lies hidden in a woman's heart, is startled to find that he must obey the God he summoned.

Henry Adams

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

Henry Adams

A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.

Henry Adams