Book haul, vol 1
Stoped by Riverby Books in Fredericksburg today. Adding to my collections of #ModernLibrary and #nyrb books.
pickThe bookmark reminded me I got this nearly a decade ago. Glad I waited to read it. NOT a light read but full of great quotes. His scathing criticism of Grant and dismay at the US for electing a dangerous idiot are especially resonant. "One dragged oneself down the long vista of Pennsylvania Avenue, by leaning heavily on one's friends, and avoiding to look at anything else" feels as apt a description of life in DC now as it was then.#LitsyAtoZ
"The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women; and the mass of this ignorance crushes one who is familiar enough with what are called historical sources to realize how few women have ever been known. The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong...and all this is pure loss to history, for the American woman of the 19th century was much better company than the American man."
This quote on DC and women makes me suspect Henry Adams was a prototypical DC Bro. Just remove "London" and replace with "NYC":
"After watching the abject unimportance of a young diplomat in London society, Adams found himself a young duke in Washington...One could not stay there a month without loving the shabby town. Even the Washington girl, who was neither rich nor well-dressed nor well-educated nor clever, had singular charm, and used it."
Fitting quote from Henry Adams on his eldest sister Louisa as I return from a visit with my brother (who, to be fair, is quite brilliant), but for all the know it all big sisters and their little brothers: "Luckily for him he had a sister much brighter than he ever was - though he thought himself a rather superior person...In after life he made a general law of experience - no woman had ever driven him wrong; no man had ever driven him right."
Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they are apt to be fatal to politicians.
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
Philosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Education of Henry Adams | 
