Abigail Adams Quotes

79 Sourced Quotes

Business once lost, does not easily return to the old hands.

Abigail Adams
Knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.

Abigail Adams
May we... be as ready to do justice as to receive it.

Abigail Adams
William must continue to write. Tell him it is a habit the pleasure of which increases with practice, but becomes more irksome with neglect.

Abigail Adams
When a spirit of private animosity is permitted to influence the mind, it always produces an illiberal conduct.

Abigail Adams
You know what is before you. The whips and scorpions, the thorns without roses, the dangers, anxieties, and weight of Empire.

Abigail Adams
I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives.

Abigail Adams
I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and, like the grave, cries, Give, give! The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.

Abigail Adams
I will never consent to have our sex considered an inferior point of light. Let each planet shine in their own orbit. God and nature designed it so—if man is Lord, woman is Lordess—that is what I contend for.

Abigail Adams
If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?

Abigail Adams
But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.

Abigail Adams
Any pilot may Navigate in smooth water. He who can conduct a Ship in a Storm, tho he has harder labour, will feel more Satisfaction when he reflects, that his Labours have largely contributed to her Safety.

Abigail Adams
I have seen and known that much of the conduct of a public ruler, is liable to be misunderstood and misrepresented.

Abigail Adams
All that is well intended is not well received.

Abigail Adams
My pen is always freer than my tongue. I have written many things to you that I suppose I never could have talked.

Abigail Adams
Every benevolent mind revolts at the Idea of Foreign powers forcing a Ruler upon a Nation, the majority of which reject him.

Abigail Adams
May you never want either pleasure or amusement. We were made for active Life, and idleness and happiness are incompatible.

Abigail Adams
How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking! How often are the laurels worn by those who have had no share in earning them! But there is a future recompense of reward, to which the upright man looks, and which he will most assuredly obtain, provided he perseveres unto the end.

Abigail Adams
It is a maxim here, that he who dies with studying dies in a good cause, and may go to another world much better calculated to improve his talents, than if he had died a blockhead.

Abigail Adams