The English mind was like the London drawing room, a comfortable and easy spot, filled with bits and fragments of incoherent furnitures, which were n… - Henry Brooks Adams

The form of logic most fascinating to youthful minds, as well as to some minds that are only too acute, is the reductio ad absurdum; the forcing an opponent into an absurd alternative or admission; and the syllogism lent itself happily to this use. Socrates abused the weapon and Abelard was the first French master of the art;

Boys never see a conclusion; only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything; but the first impulse given to the boy is apt to lead or drive him for the rest of his life into conclusion after conclusion that he never dreamed of reaching.

The trait that astounded and confounded cynicism was his apparent unselfishness. Never, in any man who wielded such power, did Henry Adams meet anything like it. The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies; a diseased appetite, like a passion for drink or perverted tastes; one can scarcely use expressions too strong to describe the violence of egotism it stimulates; and Turlow Weeds was one of the exceptions; a rare imune. He thought apparently not of himself, but of the person he was talking with. He held himself naturally in the background. He was not jealous. He grasped power, but not office. He distributed offices by handfuls without caring to take them. He had the instinct of empire: he gave, but he did not receive.