"Any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured by motion, from a fixed point. Psychology helped here by suggesting a unit — the point of history when man held the highest idea of himself as a unit in a unified universe. Eight or ten years of study had led Adams to think he might use the century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he might measure motion down to his own time, without assuming anything as true or untrue, except relation. The movement might be studied at once in philosophy and mechanics. Setting himself to the task, he began a volume which he mentally knew as "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity." From that point he proposed to fix a position for himself, which he could label: "The Education of Henry Adams: a Study of Twentieth-Century Multiplicity." With the help of these two points of relation, he hoped to project his lines forward and backward indefinitely, subject to correction from any one who should know better. Thereupon, he sailed for home."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesEducators from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesAutobiographers from the United StatesJournalists from Boston
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
On the genesis of two of his historical and autobiographical works.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Adams
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Henry Adams
1838 – 1918
US-amerikanischer Historiker
310 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Henry Adams →
Related Quotes
"It was surely no fault of his that the universe seemed to him real; perhaps — as Mr. Emerson justly said — it was so."
"Adams was content to read Darwin, especially his "Origin of Species" and his "Voyage of the Beagle." He was a Darwini…"
"One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of …"
"A period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years…"
"I disagree with my brother Charles and Theodore Roosevelt. I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the w…"
"Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be …"
"I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines ... We must slaughter…"
"We never despised the world or its opinions, we only failed to find out its existence. The world, if it exists, feels…"
"For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington. She w…"
"Who, then, is right? How can we all be right? Half of our wise men declare that the world is going straight to perdit…"