Chaos was the law of nature Order was the dream of man.

— Henry Adams

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 neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferiority, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even under great pressure.

— Henry Adams

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

— Henry Adams

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

— Henry Adams

Evolution of mind was altogether another matter and belonged to another science, but whether one traced descent from the shark or the wolf was immaterial even in morals. This matter had been discussed for ages without scientific result. La Fontaine and other fabulists maintained that the wolf, even in morals, stood higher than man; and in view of the late civil war, Adams had doubts of his own on the facts of moral evolution:

— Henry Adams

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 it clothe itself again with the illusions of his senses, the white purity of its snows, the splendor of its light, and the infinity of its heavenly peace. Nature was kind; Lake Geneva was beautiful beyond itself, and the Alps put on charms real as terrors.

— Henry Adams

Friends are born, not made.

— Henry Adams

Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life a community of thought a rivalry of aim.

— Henry Adams

From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame...

— Henry Adams

Good men do the most harm.

— Henry Adams