Expressions of Life in Words and Pictures

ARDENTIA-VERBA.COM

Art Work

Book Reviews

Alone

Crossing the Rapido

The Last Battle

Dark City

Big Data

Operation Mincemeat

Pathfinder Pioneer

Bitter Taste of Victory

All In

National Service

Operation Sea Lion

Lawrence In Arabia

An Atheist in the Foxhole

The Generals

Life

The Pointblank Directive

Eiffell's Tower

Tears In The Darkness

Mrs Astor Regrets

Blackwater

Winston Churchill

The Irregulars

The Last Days of the Roma

Resistance

The Age of Turbulence

Dali & I

The Terminal Spy

Sea of Thunder

The Man Who Made Lists

Vienna 1814

The Immortal Game

The Prosecution of Geo.W.

Churchill, Hitler ...

Stonewall Jackson

Talking Back ...

Troublesome Young Men

Richard and Adolf

The Writer Within You

This Time This Place

Home

Video

Blogs

McCarran-Walter Act 1952

It's Just Not Fair

An Army Experience -Medic

Poor Bloody Infantry

Never Go Sick In The Army

New iPhone

Churchill Speeches

Munich

The New Administration

The Impending Ordeal

Dunkirk

Disconnected Jottings

London

Biographical Quotations

Louisa May Alcot 1832-88

John Abernethy FRS

Joseph Addison 1672-1719

John Adams

John Quincy Adams

WWII Diary

Introduction

September 1939

October 1939

November - December 1939

January 1940

February - March 1940

April 1940

May 1940

June 1940

July - August 1940

September - October 1940

November-December 1940

January -February 1941

History Nuggets

Page One

Introductions

Trollope and Women

A Passionate Sisterhood

Read on ...

Mencken

On A Grander Scale

The River of Doubt

Arbella

Samuel Pepys

Londonistan

In The Hands of Providenc

Reflected Glory

Shadowplay

Ungentle Shakespeare

Pictures

MiscPics

Misc

Waterside

Naples Florida

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 1767-1848

Sixth United States President

 

I am a man of reserved, cold, austere, and forbidding manners: my political adversaries say, a gloomy misanthropist, and my personal enemies, an unsocial savage. On himself, Diary, 4 June 1819.

P

Well has he been called 'The Massachusettes Madman.' He boasts that he places all his glory in independence. If independence is synonympus with obstinacy, he is the most independent statesman living. L. Falkner, The President Who Wouldn't Retire.

P

John Quincy Adams was the second Adams to become president. He is not to be confused with his father, John Adams, who was the first Adams but the second president, or with his Uncle Sam Adams (who was not the real Uncle Sam, except to his nieces and nephews). It was fortunate for us, if not for the second John Adams, that he had the Quincy, which the first John did not. Richard Armour, It All Started With Columbus.

P

In many respects the most wonderful man of the age, certainly the greatest in the United States —perfect in knowledge but deficient in practical results. As a statesman he was pure and incorruptible, but too irascible to lead men's judgment. Philip Hone on the death of John Quincy Adams, 24 February 1848, in S. F. Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union.

P

Of all the men, whom it was ever my lot to accost and to waste civilities upon, [he] was the most doggedly and systematically repulsive. With a vinegar aspect, cotton in his leathern ears, and hatred of England in his heart, he sat in the frivolous assemblies of Petersburg like a bull-dog among spaniels; and many were the times that I drew monosyllables and grim smiles from him and tried in vain to mitigate his venom. Hon. W. H. Lyttleton, Letter to Charles Bagot, 22 January 1827.

P

When they talk about his old age and venerableness and nearness to the grave, he knows better. He is like one of those old cardinals, who as quick as he is chosen Pope, throws away his crutches and his crookedness, and is as straight as a boy. He is an old roue, who cannot live on slops, but must have sulphuric acid in his tea.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals.

P

John Quincy Adams was a short, stout, bald, brilliant and puritanical twig off a short, stout, bald, brilliant, and puritanical tree. Little wonder, then, that he took the same view of the office of President as had his father. Alfred Steinberg, in ibid.

P

Sedate, circumspect and cautious; reserved, but not distant; grave but not repulsive. He receives but seldom communicates, and discerns with great quickness motives, however latent, and intentions, however concealed . . . Mr. Adams has more capacity than genius; he can comprehend better than he can invent; and execute nearly as rapidly as he can design. George Waterton, in Marie B. Hecht, John Quincy Adams, A Personal History of an Independent Man.

P