Adams, Henry Brooks

1838 - Born in Boston

          - An American historian, was the son of Charles Francis Adams and the descendant of two presidents

1850-1860 - Gradually abandoned his family’s involvement in politics to pursue the study of history

                      - Traveled abroad as the secretary of his father after completing his studies at Harvard

1870 - Taught history at Harvard

         - Became the editor of the North American Review, a reform journal that focused attention on corruption

and advocated civil service reforms

1877-1879 - Edited the papers and wrote a biography of Albert Gallatin

1880 - Anonymously published a satirical novel, Democracy

1889-1891 - His research in this period of American history culminated in his 9-volume History of the United States

1885 - His wife’s suicide lead him to searching for new meaning in life and history

1913 - In Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, a spiritual odyssey; expressed his admiration for the medieval church

1918 - The Education of Henry Adams, an autobiography

1918 - Died on March 27

• "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."
• "One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible."
• "Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of facts."
• "You say that love is nonsense....I tell you it is no such thing. For weeks and months it is a steady physical pain, an ache about the heart, never leaving one, by night or by day; a long strain on one's nerves like toothache or rheumatism, not intolerable at any one instant, but exhausting by its steady drain on the strength."
• "A teacher affects eternity he can never tell, where his influence stops."