Biographies Quotes - Page 7

• I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

  David Bowie

  Writing, Play, Numbers

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• You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy.

  Robert Caro

  Guy, Political, Use

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• Biography is history seen through the prism of a person.

  Louis Fischer

  Definitions, Prisms, Persons

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• The facts of a person's life will, like murder, come out.

  Norman Sherry

  Facts, Murder, Persons

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• My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain that alone on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine would not, I suppose, have thus suffered, and if I had to live my life over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Men, Should Have

  Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Darwin (1898). “The life and letters of Charles Darwin...ed. by his son, Francis Darwin. 2 v”

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• But the involuntary tricks of memory and the voluntary ones of imagination make always such terrible havoc of facts that truth, be it ever so much sought and cared for, appears in history and biography only in a more or less disfigured condition.

  Frederick Niecks

  Truth, Memories, Imagination

  Frederick Niecks (2016). “Frederick Chopin”, p.709, Frederick Niecks

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• Nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in a distant country.

  Charles Darwin

  Country, Science, Journey

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.862, Delphi Classics

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• I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior FBI-men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep-hole and missing laundry list school. ... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Dirty, School, Writing

  Ernest Hemingway (2008). “The Good Life According to Hemingway”, Ecco

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• Let me tell you how at one time the famous mathematician Euclid became a physician. It was during a vacation, which I spent in Prague as I most always did, when I was attacked by an illness never before experienced, which manifested itself in chilliness and painful weariness of the whole body. In order to ease my condition I took up Euclid's Elements and read for the first time his doctrine of ratio, which I found treated there in a manner entirely new to me. The ingenuity displayed in Euclid's presentation filled me with such vivid pleasure, that forthwith I felt as well as ever.

  Bernard Bolzano

  Pain, Recovery, Science

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• Since my mother is the type that's called schizophrenogenic in the literature-she's the one who makes crazy people, crazy children-I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.

  Abraham Maslow

  Mother, Children, Crazy

  Attributed to Abraham Maslow in "New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution" by Colin Wilson, 1972.

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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, Trails

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

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• Good people are seldom fully recognised during their lifetimes, and here, there are serious problems of corruption. One day it will be realised that my findings should have been acknowledged. It was difficult, but she always smiled when asked why she went on when recognition eluded her in her own country.

  Alice Stewart

  Country, Science, Should Have

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• Perhaps the deepest reason we are afraid of death is that we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity; but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our "biography", our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit card ... It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Spiritual, Jobs, Believe

  Sogyal Rinpoche (2009). “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: The Spiritual Classic & International Bestseller: Revised and Updated Edition”, p.25, Harper Collins

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• I admit that Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev.

  Alexander III of Russia

  Science, Two, Wife

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• I learnt, for the first time, the joys of substituting hard, disciplined study for the indulgence of day-dreaming.

  James Black

  Dream, Science, Discipline

  "Sir James Black obituary" by Pearce Wright, www.theguardian.com. March 23, 2010.

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• The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Mind, Kindred

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.382

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• There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Poetry, World

  Critical and Miscellaneous Essays "Sir Walter Scott" (1838)

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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, Apologizing

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

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• I have been devoured all my life by an incurable and burning impatience: and to this day find all oratory, biography, operas, films, plays, books, and persons, too long.

  Margot Asquith

  Book, Play, Long

  Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”

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• History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  History, Scales, Large Scale

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• biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.

  Erica Jong

  Art, Biographers, Collaborating

  Erica Jong (2013). “The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller”, p.65, Open Road Media

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• Biographies of great, but especially of good men are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels,--teaching high living ,high thinking, and energetic action, for their own and, the world's good.

  Samuel Smiles

  Teaching, Men, Thinking

  Samuel Smiles (1866). “Self-help: With Illustrations of Charakter, Conduct and Perseverance”, p.6

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• The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.

  Samuel Smiles

  Inspiration, Men, Noble

  Samuel Smiles (1872). “Character”, p.269

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• There is no real escape from autobiography into biography. The self has to be faced, or we die.

  Fay Weldon

  Real, Self, Autobiography

  Fay Weldon (2014). “Fay Weldon Omnibus: Collected Works of Fay Weldon”, p.1365, Head of Zeus

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• I read more books for research purposes, whether its a fictionalized biography of Johannes Gutenberg or a stack of urban fantasies.

  Jim C. Hines

  Book, Gutenberg, Purpose

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