Quotes by Biographers

He was able to sit in silence for long stretches without feeling a need to make small talk.
Charles R. Cross
A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living': so too with the biography of that self. And just as lives don't stay still, so life-writing can't be fixed and finalised. Our ideas are shifting about what can be said, our knowledge of human character is changing. The biographer has to pioneer, going 'ahead of the rest of us, like the miner's canary, testing the atmosphere, detecting falsity, unreality, and the presence of obsolete conventions'. So, 'There are some stories which have to be retold by each generation'. She is talking about the story of Shelley, but she could be talking about her own life-story. (Virginia Woolf, p. 11)
Hermione Lee
In many ways. . .the completeness of biography, the achievement of its professionalization, is an ironic fiction, since no life can ever be known completely, nor would we want to know every fact about an individual. Similarly, no life is ever lived according to aesthetic proportions. The "plot" of a biography is superficially based on the birth, life and death of the subject; "character," in the vision of the author. Both are as much creations of the biographer, as they are of a novelist. We content ourselves with "authorized fictions.
Ira Bruce Nadel
As Margaret would later write, Europe had come to seem "my America," an unsettled territory where liberty was at hand, while the New World she had left behind had grown "stupid with the lust of gain, soiled by crime in its willing perpetuation of slavery, shamed by an unjust war," the imperialist conflict with Mexico over the annexation of Texas.
Megan Marshall
Insecurity of the spirit demands completeness elsewhere.
Peter Ackroyd
There's no right way of writing. There's only your way.
Milton Lomask
And I was a Child again, watching the bright World. But the Spell broke when at this Juncture some Gallants jumped from the Pitt onto the Stage and behaved as so many Merry-Andrews among the Actors, which reduced all to Confusion. I laugh'd with them also, for I like to make Merry among the Fallen and there is pleasure to be had in the Observation of the Deformity of Things. Thus when the Play resumed after the Disturbance, it was only to excite my Ridicule with its painted Fictions, wicked Hypocrisies and villainous Customs, all depicted with a little pert Jingle of Words and a rambling kind of Mirth to make the Insipidnesse and Sterility pass. There was no pleasure in seeing it, and nothing to burden the Memory after: like a voluntarie before a Lesson it was absolutely forgotten, nothing to be remembered or repeated.
Peter Ackroyd
So now I lye by Day and toss or rave by Night, since the ratling and perpetual Hum of the Town deny me rest: just as Madness and Phrensy are the vapours which rise from the lower Faculties, so the Chaos of the Streets reaches up even to the very Closet here and I am whirl'd about by cries of Knives to Grind and Here are your Mouse-Traps. I was last night about to enter the Shaddowe of Rest when a Watch-man, half-drunken, thumps at the Door with his Past Three-a-clock and his Rainy Wet Morning. And when at length I slipp'd into Sleep I had no sooner forgot my present Distemper than I was plunged into a worse: I dreamd my self to be lying in a small place under ground, like unto a Grave, and my Body was all broken while others sung. And there was a Face that did so terrifie me that I had like to have expired in my Dream. Well, I will say no more.
Peter Ackroyd
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
The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James 1st James 2nd and the Old Pretender.
Philip Guedalla
Rest is the sweet sauce of labour.
Plutarch
Words will build no walls.
Plutarch
It is a difficult task Oh citizens to make speeches to the belly which has no ears.
Plutarch
In great matters men show themselves as they wish to be seen in small matters as they are.
Gamaliel Bradford
Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when taken little by little.
Plutarch
Time goes you say? Ah no! Alas Time stays we go.
Henry Austin Dobson
The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses.
Plutarch
Be glad today. Tomorrow may bring tears. Be brave today. The darkest night will pass. And golden rays will usher in the dawn.
Sarah Knowles Bolton
The past is a funeral gone by.
Edmund Gosse
Forget the past and live the present hour.
Sarah Knowles Bolton
We might define an eccentric as a man who is law unto himself and a crank as one who having determined what the law is insists on laying it down to others.
Louis Kronenberger
As to Caesar when he was called upon he gave no testimony against Clodius nor did he affirm that he was certain of any injury done to his bed. He only said "He had divorced Pompeia because the wife of Caesar ought not only to be clear of such a crime but of the very suspicion of it."
Plutarch
We may fail of our happiness strive we ever so bravely but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.
Agnes Repplier
The victory of success is half done when one gains the habit of work.
Sarah Knowles Bolton
Unhurt people are not much good in the world.
Enid Starkie
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
Agnes Repplier
Many people today don't want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.
Louis Kronenberger
A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.
Ida Tarbell
Individualism is rather like innocence there must be something unconscious about it.
Louis Kronenberger
Blessed are they who heal us of self-despisings. Of all services which can be done to man I know of none more precious.
William Hale White
To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood.
Plutarch
We may fail of our happiness strive we ever so bravely but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgment our chances and our capabilities.
Agnes Repplier
It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.
Scott Elledge
Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.
Plutarch
I had always assumed that cliche was a suburb of Paris until I discovered it to be a street in Oxford.
Philip Guedalla
Wit is the salt of conversation not the food and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.
Agnes Repplier
Time is the soul of this world.
Plutarch
Character is simply habit long enough continued.
Plutarch
I like the man who faces what he must With steps triumphant and a heart of cheer Who fights the daily battle without fear.
Sarah Knowles Bolton
Chamber music - a conversation between friends.
Catherine Drinker Bowen
There's no right way of writing. There's only your way.
Milton Lomask
It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.
Scott Elledge
Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.
Plutarch
I had always assumed that cliche was a suburb of Paris until I discovered it to be a street in Oxford.
Philip Guedalla
Wit is the salt of conversation not the food and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.
Agnes Repplier
Time is the soul of this world.
Plutarch
Character is simply habit long enough continued.
Plutarch
I like the man who faces what he must With steps triumphant and a heart of cheer Who fights the daily battle without fear.
Sarah Knowles Bolton
Chamber music - a conversation between friends.
Catherine Drinker Bowen
One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.
Louis Kronenberger
Forgetfulness transforms every occurrence into a non-occurrence.
Plutarch
No man ever wetted clay and then left it as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.
Plutarch
He who for love hath undergone The worst that can befall Is happier thousandfold than one Who never loved at all.
Richard Monckton Milnes
It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.
Agnes Repplier
When I married Mr. Right I didn't know his first name was Always.
Anne Gilchrist
Agesilaus the Spartan king was once invited to hear a mimic imitate the nightingale but declined with the comment that he had heard the nightingale itself.
Plutarch
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
Plutarch
Happiness ... is achieved only by making others happy.
Stuart Cloete
We may fail of our happiness strive we ever so bravely but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.
Agnes Repplier
Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man.
Sir Theodore Martin