“As he lay on Wenlock Edge, with the sheep nibbling the grass close about him as they or their betters had nibbled the grass — or whatever there was to nibble — in the Silurian kingdom of Pteraspis, he seemed to have fallen on an evolution far more wonderful than that of fishes. He did not like it; he could not account for it; and he determined to stop it. Never since the days of his Limulus ancestry had any of his ascendants thought thus. Their modes of thought might be many, but their thought was one. Out of his millions of millions of ancestors, back to the Cambrian mollusks, every one had probably lived and died in the illusion of Truths which did not amuse him, and which had never changed. Henry Adams was the first in an infinite series to discover and admit to himself that he really did not care whether truth was, or was not, true. He did not even care that it should be proved true, unless the process were new and amusing. He was a Darwinian for fun.
From the beginning of history, this attitude had been branded as criminal — worse than crime — sacrilege! Society punished it ferociously and justly, in self-defence.”
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
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Henry Adams 311
journalist, historian, academic, novelist 1838–1918Related quotes
“He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.”
"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg", ch. I, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)
Source: Child of God (1973), p.162
“He was, she thought, as beautiful as a young god, lying on his side among the grass and flowers”
The Raven Warrior
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