American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses.
Henry AdamsRead
Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.
Interpretation
Simplicity can often appear alluring, yet it can also lead to misunderstandings and complexities beneath the surface.
Henry Adams warns that simplicity may seem appealing and straightforward, but it can be misleading and deceptive. People often fall into the trap of underestimating the complexities that lie beneath seemingly simple things, leading to unforeseen consequences and betrayals.
In practice
In a discussion about design, one might reference this quote to highlight the pitfalls of oversimplifying a concept.
American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses.
Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.
Church and State, Soul and Body, God and Man, are all one at Mont Saint Michel, and the business of all is to fight, each in his own way, or to stand guard for each other.
The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.
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.
Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.
Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.
Make no mistake: peaceful madmen are ahead of the future.
A good cause need not be tarnished by its most fanatical expressions. But it is rarely helped by them.
Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.
He wondered how he could ever have thought of the planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets - as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven - excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
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