“How many years had he taken to admit a notion of what Michael Angelo and Rubens were driving at? He could not say; but he knew that only since 1895 had he begun to feel the Virgin or Venus as force, and not everywhere even so. At Chartres — perhaps at Lourdes — possibly at Cnidos if one could still find there the divinely naked Aphrodite of Praxiteles — but otherwise one must look for force to the goddesses of Indian mythology.”

—  Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "How many years had he taken to admit a notion of what Michael Angelo and Rubens were driving at? He could not say; but …" by Henry Adams?
Henry Adams photo
Henry Adams311
journalist, historian, academic, novelist 1838–1918

Related quotes

Henry Adams photo

“The force of the Virgin was still felt at Lourdes, and seemed to be as potent as X-rays, but in America neither Venus nor Virgin ever had value as force — at most as sentiment.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Rashi photo

“Even a blind man realises when he is naked. So why does it say "And they realised that they were naked"? They had one commandment and were now naked of it.”

Rashi (1040–1105) French rabbi and commentator

Commenting on Gen. 3:7
Commentary on Genesis

A.A. Milne photo

“Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928), Chapter Seven.

Henry Adams photo

“No one cared enough to criticise, except himself who soon began to suffer from reaching his own limits. He found that he could not be this — or that — or the other; always precisely the things he wanted to be. He had not wit or scope or force. Judges always ranked him beneath a rival, if he had any; and he believed the judges were right. His work seemed to him thin, commonplace, feeble. At times he felt his own weakness so fatally that he could not go on; when he had nothing to say, he could not say it, and he found that he had very little to say at best.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“He fought despairingly to go deeper into the blackness of a sleep, any sleep, even the sleep of death or some form of non-existence, but even with the loss of consciousness he dreamt he was awake, lying on the bed trying desperately to sleep. If he could find some way to prove that time had passed, no matter how short that time, he could tell himself that he had slept and perhaps then, just perhaps, he would feel rested.”

Hubert Selby Jr. book The Room

The Room (1971)

Clive Barker photo

“Shadwell threw down his gun, and—though he had no taste for abattoirs—forced himself to survey the carnage before him. It was, he knew, the responsibility of one aspiring to godhood never to look away. Willful ignorance was the last refuge of humanity, and that was a condition he would soon have transcended.
And, when he studied the scene, it wasn’t so unbearable. He could look at the tumble of corpses and see them for the empty sacks they were.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Part Eight “The Return”, Chapter iii “The Horse Unharnessed”, Section 2 (p. 344)
(1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE

Henry Adams photo

“He had hugged his antiquated dislike of bankers and capitalistic society until he had become little better than a crank. He had known for years that he must accept the regime, but he had known a great many other disagreeable certainties -- like age, senility, and death — against which one made what little resistance one could.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Adi Da Samraj photo

“He has grasped it, but no one is interested. He is of interest to no one. He is fascinating. He is unnoticed. Since no one understands, how could they notice him? Because there is only understanding, he is beloved, and no one comes to see him. Because there is only truth, he is likely to become famous. Since there is only joy, he will not be remembered. Because you have already understood, you find it necessary to touch his hand. Since you love so much and are not understood, you find it possible to touch his ears. He smiles at you. You notice a sudden spiritual "Brightness."”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

Aham Da Asmi. I Am He. Everything has already died. This is the other world.
Page 423, 2004 Standard Edition.
The Knee of Listening

Clifford D. Simak photo

“Could it be possible, Hezekiah asked himself, that there was no room for both the faith and truth, that they were mutually exclusive qualities that could not coexist? He shuddered as he thought of it, for if this should be the case, they had spent their centuries of devotion to but little purpose, pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp. Must faith be exactly that, the willingness and ability to believe in the face of a lack of evidence? If one could find the evidence, would then the faith be dead? If that were the situation, then which one did they want? Had it been, he wondered, that men had tried what they even now were trying and had realized that there was no such thing as truth, but only faith, and being unable to accept the faith without its evidence, had dropped the faith as well?”

Clifford D. Simak book A Choice of Gods

Ch 7
A Choice of Gods (1972)

“Then he heard a voice say: “It was amazing to them to discover they had always been in the garden without understanding it,” and knew for certain that the inside and the outside of everything are always a single, continuous medium. In that moment he believed he could go anywhere. With a shout of elation he attempted to fall forward in all possible directions at once; only to find to his dismay that in the very exercise of this privilege he had selected one of them.”

M. John Harrison book Light

Source: Light (2002), Chapter 31 “I’ve Been Here” (pp. 383-384)

Related topics