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 AdamsOne sought not absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it.
Henry AdamsOne does every day and without a second thought, what at another time would be the event of a year, perhaps of a life.
Henry Adams[P]hilosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
Henry AdamsThe gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away.
Henry Adams