Henry Adams (1838–1918,) fully Henry Brooks Adams, was an American historian, journalist, novelist, and educator. He was the author of one of the most distinguished autobiographies of Western literature, The Education of Henry Adams.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Adams was the son of the politician and diplomat Charles Francis Adams, who was the grandson of President John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of President John Adams. Educated at Harvard, Henry Adams acted as his father’s secretary in Washington (1860–61) and England (1861–68) and then worked as a journalist in Washington (1868–70) before teaching medieval and American history at Harvard (1870–77.)
Adams edited the North American Review (1870–76) and wrote two novels, Democracy (1880) and Esther (1884.) He also wrote historical works, including the monumental History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols., 1870–77,) and Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904,) a study of the unity of art and religion in the Middle Ages.
Adams’s posthumously published memoir, The Education of Henry Adams (1907,) won the Pulitzer. The Modern Library named it the best English-language non-fiction book in the 20th century.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Henry Adams
It is impossible to underrate human intelligence—beginning with one’s own.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Intelligence, Potential, Possibilities
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.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Friends and Friendship, Friendship
History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.
—Henry Adams
Topics: History
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Writing, Words
A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.
—Henry Adams
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Order, Living, Habit
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Politics, Politicians
The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Education
He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Enthusiasm
No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Doubt, Intelligence, Inferiority
The proper study of mankind is woman.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Humanity
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
—Henry Adams
Topics: Politics, Politicians
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