Henry Adams

Politics... have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

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.

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

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.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

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

Intimates are predestined.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.

Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

They know enough who know how to learn.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

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.

It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.