Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise — absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness — the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone — a balance of mind and temper that...

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.

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

The proper study of mankind is woman.

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...

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they are apt to be fatal to politicians.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.

I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.

In Paris and London he had seen nothing to make a return to life worth while; in Washington he saw plenty of reasons for staying dead.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

These questions of taste, of feeling, of inheritance, need no settlement. Everyone carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

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

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

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

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.

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.

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

One had heard and read a great deal about death, and even seen a little of it, and knew by heart the thousand commonplaces of religion and poetry which seemed to deaden one’s senses and...

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

They know enough who know how to learn.

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

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

Politics… have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

I, too, like yourself was a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was ultramontane. Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church; your National Convention is our...

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

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.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

The first serious consciousness of Nature’s gesture – her attitude towards life-took form then as a phantasm, a nightmare, all insanity of force. For the first time, the stage-scenery of the senses collapsed; the human...

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...

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

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...

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

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

The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

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

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

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

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.

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

At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.

A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

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

Intimates are predestined.

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.