Autobiography Quotes

• Autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people.

  Philip Guedalla

  Book, People, Telling The Truth

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• Hiring someone to write your autobiography is like hiring someone to take a bath for you

  Mae West

  Inspiration, Writing, Baths

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• Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Journey, May, Journey Through Life

  Eleanor Roosevelt (2014). “The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• The course of life is unpredictable no one can write his autobiography in advance.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Future, Writing, Life Is

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• An autobiography is the story of how a man thinks he lived.

  Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel

  Funny, Sarcastic, Sarcasm

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• There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.

  Raymond Chandler

  Honesty, Writing, Men

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.93, Univ of California Press

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• A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can only be a footnote.

  Yevgeny Yevtushenko

  History, Poetry, Poetic

  "A Precocious Autobiography". Translated from the Russian by Andrew R. MacAndrew,

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• There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.

  Thomas Szasz

  Psychology, Biographies

  The Second Sin

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• But, Tarantino has seen all of my movies. He's seen my good stuff, he's seen my bad stuff, he's seen the ones I directed, he's read my autobiography. There's an awful lot of things he knows about me, all of which I think had something to do with his casting.

  David Carradine

  Thinking, Stuff, Awful

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• I haven't read any of the autobiographies about me.

  Elizabeth Taylor

  Havens

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• A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Men, Giving

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.210, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Self, Poetry, Understanding

  1985 In the New York Times, 12 May.

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• A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, Witty

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde”, p.13, Courier Corporation

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• Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night... shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dream, Night, Hands

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.214, Virginia Woolf

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• I have always hated biography, and more especially, autobiography. If biography, the writer invariably finds it necessary to plaster the subject with praises, flattery and adulation and to invest him with all the Christian graces. If autobiography, the same plan is followed, but the writer apologizes for it.

  Carolyn Wells

  Christian, Grace, Biographies

  Carolyn Wells (1937). “The Rest of My Life”

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• I believe there's only one autobiography you can do.

  John McEnroe

  Believe, I Believe, Can Do

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• I have a children's book already out and my autobiography.

  Della Reese

  Children, Book, Children's Books

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• The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Biographies, Incompleteness

  V. S. Naipaul (2012). “Literary Occasions: Essays”, p.189, Pan Macmillan

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• I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

  Nikola Tesla

  Inspirational, Idlers, May

  "My Inventions" by Nikola Tesla, (Ch. 1), 1919.

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• Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Book, Writing, Curiosity

  "A Little Learning: The First Volume of an Autobiography". Book by Evelyn Waugh, 1964.

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• My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labour and sacrifices made.

  Nikola Tesla

  Sacrifice, Law, Rewards

  Nikola Tesla (2007). “My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla”, p.69, Cosimo, Inc.

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• A new idea must not be judged by its immediate results.

  Nikola Tesla

  Ideas, Results, Judged

  Nikola Tesla (2016). “My Inventions: [Illustrated & Biography Added]”, p.68, eKitap Projesi

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• Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of energy. I never paid such a price.

  Nikola Tesla

  Sacrifice, Effort, Energy

  Nikola Tesla (2014). “My Inventions Nikola Tesla's Autobiography”, p.2, Lulu.com

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• Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.

  Marilyn Ferguson

  Stress, Health, Years

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• I don't want to know about my biggest idols. I don't want to read their autobiographies, I don't want to find out what they're really like.

  Megan Martha White

  Idols, Want, Knows

  "The sweetheart deal". Interview with Keith Cameron, www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2003.

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