Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels. – 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
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. – Henry Adams
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. – 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
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself. – Henry Adams
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
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. – Henry Adams