Henry Adams

Man had always flattered himself that he knew — or was about to know — something [...] but he invariably found [...] that the more he knew the less he understood. [...] He knew nothing at all ! No one knew anything

Ice, water, and vapor were phases sharply distinct. So the imperceptible portion of solar energy which fell on the earth, reappeared by some mysterious process, to an infinitely minute measure, in the singular form of intensity known as …

The sun, according to Tyndall, wasted into space practically all its energy except an imperceptible portion that happened to fall on the earth; but even this portion was not utilizable for human purposes [...] without assistance.

Energy had a way of coming and going in phases of intensity much more mysterious than the energy itself.

Esther looked at him with an expression that would have been a smile if it had not been infinitely dreary and absent; then she said, simply and finally: "But George, I don't love you, I love him."

"Do you really believe in the resurrection of the body?" she asked "Of course I do!" replied Hazard stiffly. "To me it seems a shocking idea. I despise and loathe myself, and yet you thrust self at me from every corner of the church as …

Some people are made with faith. I am made without it.

As for broken hearts, no self-respecting young woman shows such an ornament at any well regulated breakfast-table; they are kept in dark drawers and closets like other broken furniture.

...the huge church [...] was thundering its gospel under her eyes.To have Niagara for a rival is no joke. Hazard spoke with no such authority; and Esther's next idea was one of wonder how, after listening here, any preacher could have the …

She fell in love with the cataract and turned to it as a confidant, not because of its beauty or power, but because it seemed to tell her a story which she longed to understand.

I am never afraid of pure atheism; it is the flabby kind of sentimental deism that annoys me, because it is as slippery as air.

Like most vigorous-minded men, seeing that there was no stopping-place between dogma and negation, he preferred to accept dogma. Of all weaknesses he most disliked timid and half-hearted faith. He would rather have jumped at once to …

Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.

Mystery for mystery science beats religion hollow. I can't open my mouth in my lecture-room without repeating ten times as many unintelligible formulas as ever Hazard is forced to do in his church.

This view of the case amused Esther for a time, but not for long — the matter was too serious for any treatment but a joke, and joking made it more serious still.

One is a saint or one is not; every man can choose the career that suits him; but to be saint and sinner at the same time requires singular ingenuity.

I know of nothing useful in life except what is beautiful or creates beauty.

An artist must be man, woman and demi-god.

Wharton was captivated by her sweet face, and tried to make her understand his theory that the merit of a painting was not so much in what it explained as in what it suggested.

In this atmosphere of charity, where all faiths were alike and all professions joined hands, the church and the world became one.

...any woman will, under the right conditions, marry any man at any time, provided her "higher nature" is properly appealed to.

She regarded men as creatures made for women to dispose of.

I have got so far as to lose the distinction between right and wrong. Isn't that the first step in politics?

I have faith; not perhaps in the old dogmas, but in the new ones; faith in human nature; faith in science; faith in the survival of the fittest. Let us be true to our time, Mrs. Lee!