Biographers Quotes

• Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

  Mark Twain

  Fashion, Inspiration, Men

  Autobiography vol. 1 (1924)

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• Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Genius, Biographies, Talent

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.635, Library of America

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• The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on.

  Christine Quinn

  Dog, Kings, School

  "Leave a Place Setting for Ann". Interview with Philip Galanes, www.nytimes.com. May 9, 2013.

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• To the biographer all lives bar none are dramatic constructions.

  Katharine Anthony

  Bars, Dramatic, Construction

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• The biographer's problem is that he never knows enough. The autobiographer's problem is that he knows too much.

  Russell Baker

  Too Much, Problem, Enough

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• In real life, the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like persons.

  James MacGregor Burns

  Relationship, Leadership, Attitude

  James MacGregor Burns (2012). “Leadership”, p.770, Open Road Media

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• Biography is the medium through which the remaining secrets of the famous dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world. The biographer at work, indeed, is like the professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away.

  Janet Malcolm

  Taken, Thinking, Views

  Janet Malcolm (2011). “Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath And Ted Hughes”, p.12, Granta Books

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• Every child has the capacity to be everything.

  Doris Lessing

  Inspirational, Being Yourself, Children

  Doris Lessing (1979). “Shikasta: Re, Colonised Planet 5 : Personal, Psychological, Historical Documents Relating to Visit by Johor (George Sherban) Emissary (grade 9) 87th of the Period of the Last Days”

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• 

  There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

  Washington Irving

  Strength, Sad, Sympathy

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• The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Running, Order

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

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• If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Lonely

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• Any biographer must of necessity become a pilgrim a peripatetic, obsessed literary pilgrim, a traveler with four eyes.

  Leon Edel

  Eye, Four, Obsession

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• The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.

  Amity Shlaes

  Lucky, Subjects

  Source: www.ruthfullyyours.com

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• There's no biography so interesting as the one in which the biographer is present.

  Orson Welles

  Interesting, Biographies

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• As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way, the biographer is of great utility, as, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern.

  Henry Fielding

  Men, Example, World

  Henry Fielding (1857). “Joseph Andrews. History of the life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the great”, p.7

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• Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.

  A. N. Wilson

  Liars, Believe, Angel

  A. N. Wilson (1990). “Incline Our Hearts”, Penguin Group USA

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• Facts are subversive. Subversive of the claims made by democratically elected leaders as well as dictators, by biographers and autobiographers, spies and heroes, torturers and post-modernists. Subversive of lies, half-truths, myths; of all those "easy speeches that comfort cruel men.

  Timothy Garton Ash

  Lying, Hero, Men

  Timothy Garton Ash (2012). “Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name”, p.10, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

  Doris Lessing

  Love, Inspirational, Needs

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

  Samuel Johnson

  Death, Time, Men

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 26 Oct. 1769)

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• To be a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact, patience, and thoroughness of a scholar but the stamina of a horse.

  Nancy Milford

  Horse, Peculiar, Endeavor

  Nancy Milford (2001). “Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay”, p.11, Random House

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• The biographer's real business - if it is not too arrogant to say so - is simply this: to bring the dead to life.

  Iris Origo

  Real, Arrogant, Ifs

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• All of us are many different people over time. We have our childhood selves, people that we remember, but they're very different to our adult selves and the way that we create our own naratives is not that dissimilar, I think, to how a biographer structures their narrative of a life.

  Rachel Holmes

  Thinking, Self, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If we believe that he [Jesus Christ]really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanisms, which his biographers [writers of the New Testament]father upon him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Father, Believe

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• On the trail of another man, the biographer must put up with finding himself at every turn; any biography uneasily shelters an autobiography within it.

  Paul Murray Kendall

  Men, Shelter, Biographies

  Paul Murray Kendall (1965). “The Art of Biography”, New York, Norton

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• If the biographer gives me credit for being a plodder, he will describe me justly. Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.

  William Carey

  Giving, Credit, Too Much

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