The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

Years ago we discovered the exact point, the dead centre of middle age. It occurs when you are
too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net.
‘Nods and Becks’ (1944) p. 53
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody
rather than for somebody.
‘Nods and Becks’ (1944) p. 206.
1.12 Henry Brooks Adams 1838-1918
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of
hatreds.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 1
Accident counts for much in companionship as in marriage.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 4.
Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right; that which
they reject, is wrong; and their will, in most cases, ends by settling the moral.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 6
All experience is an arch to build upon.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 6
A friend in power is a friend lost.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 7
The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumour that
ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 10
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.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 12
[Charles] Sumner’s mind had reached the calm of water which receives and reflects images
without absorbing them; it contained nothing but itself.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 13
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 16
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 20
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.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 20
What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ (1907) ch. 21
Morality is a private and costly luxury.