Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
- Date
- 1907
Meaning of “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell…”
Adams emphasizes that teaching can shape later judgments and lives in ways the teacher cannot fully trace or control once students carry ideas beyond the classroom.
Where does it come from?
The Education of Henry Adams, chapter on teaching at Harvard, Project Gutenberg #2044. Adams follows the sentence by stressing the moral and philosophical difficulty of teaching history; it is a reflective claim about educational influence, not a measurable promise of permanent impact.