"Biography" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "There is no reason to suppose that he had seen Germany." wrote Mr. George Long in Sir William Smith's "Dictionary of Greek Biography and Mythology."] ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... among the boldest and bloodiest, as they were among the first and last of the revolution. Of the political steps by which she committed herself to that event, it does not need that we should enter into details. These belong rather to general history than to biography. It will be enough to exhibit those particulars only, of her progress, in which the subject of our memoir was more immediately interested. That he took an early and deep concern in the contest may be inferred from his ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... to the papal authorities, that it was made by the Church. Cardinal Querenghi, in his letters; the ambassador Guicciardini, in his dispatches; Polacco, in his refutation; the historian Viviani, in his biography of Galileo—all writing under Church inspection and approval at the time, took the view that the Pope and the Church condemned Galileo, and this was never denied at Rome. The Inquisition itself, backed by the greatest theologian ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life!) Why even I myself, I often think, know little or nothing of my real life. Only a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... endure another discussion of the deceased Farquharson, of which I was heartily tired after hearing little else for the last three days. I could not help wondering how the verbose and pompous major had paraphrased and condensed that inchoate mass of biography and reminiscence into an orderly account for his wife and niece. He had doubtless devoted the whole afternoon to it. Sitting under the cool green of the lemon-trees, beneath a sky powdered with stars, I reflected that I, at least, was done with Farquharson forever. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... acquire a thickness of several feet. In some instances several such floors are found one above the other, pointing to a prolonged period of usage, and then a quiet stage, in which the drip of falling water alone broke the silence, and nature sealed up another chapter of cave biography beneath ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... archives of the city of Caneville, I lately drew the materials of a Bear's Biography. From the same source I now derive my "Adventures of a Dog." My task has been less that of a composer than a translator, for a feline editoress, a Miss Minette Gattina, had already performed her part. This latter animal appears, however, to have been so learned a cat—one may ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... around him. But there were many strong, if not great qualities in his composition, and so much that was picturesque and strange in the incidents of his career and the state of society which formed his character, that we have found this biography one of the most instructive and entertaining we ever read. If Mr. Parton sometimes exaggerates his hero's merits, he is also outspoken in regard to his faults. If here and there a little Carlylish, his style has the merit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... appreciating these truths, have long recognized the value of biography as a preparation for the study of history and have given it an important place in ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... Puff for that little book on Cats. The idea was admirable; but, instead of one of the most delightful volumes that ever appeared, to take up a dull, tame compilation from Bingley's Animal Biography!" ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... as a fair enough summary of the biography of an average man, let us look at these three momentous occasions in the career of ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... alike by Romanists, Greeks, and Protestants, did, by his publication of the life of Antony, establish the hermit life as the ideal (in his opinion) of Christian excellence; and lastly, because that biography exercised a most potent influence on the conversion of St. Augustine, the greatest thinker (always excepting St. Paul) whom the world had seen since Plato, whom the world was to see again till Lord Bacon; the theologian and philosopher (for ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... complimentary opinion of Spinoza after the publication of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus! So prevalent were the groundless rumors that the Lutheran pastor, Colerus—the source of most of our information—felt obliged in his very quaint summary biography to defend the life and character of Spinoza. To his everlasting credit, Colerus did this although he himself heartily detested Spinoza's philosophy which he understood to be abhorrently blasphemous and atheistic. Colerus' sources of information were ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Guide of East Tennessee for a Period of nearly Four Years during the great Southern Rebellion. Written by Himself. Containing a Short Biography of the Author. With ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... character is more evident than ever since the repressed parts of his biography have appeared. It is comical. And this man, who has no more understanding of spirituality than a cow, to tell the story of the greatest movement of the ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... fashion of distinguished novelists to write their own lives—or, in other words, to blow their own trumpets,—the author of these pages is induced, at the solicitation of numerous friends, whose bumps of inquisitiveness are strongly developed, to present his auto-biography to the public—in so doing which, he but follows the example of Alexandre Dumas, the brilliant French novelist, and of the world-renowned Dickens, both of whom are understood to be preparing their personal histories for ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... Biography as a fine art can go no further than Walton's Life and Death of Dr. Donne. From the 'good and virtuous parents' of the first line to the 'small quantity of Christian dust' of the last, every word is the touch of a cunning brush painting ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... one little community where a community building would be erected which would be used as a school in daytime, a motion-picture house at night, and a church on Sunday. A community secretary would have his office here, and would have charge of a select little library of fiction, poetry, biography, and works of reference. The leading periodicals dealing with farm problems, sociology, and economics, as well as lighter subjects, would be on file. In connection with this building would be an assembly-room suitable for dances, social events, and theatricals, and equipped ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... patriot queen who had to steer England through so many storms and tortuous channels, we could find no better short guide to her political career than Beesley's volume about her in 'Twelve English Statesmen.' But the best all-round biography is Queen Elizabeth by Mandell Creighton, who also wrote an excellent epitome, called The Age of Elizabeth, for the 'Epochs of Modern History.' Shakespeare's England, published in 1916 by the Oxford University Press, is ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... with Boccaccio. For two centuries, when but little was known of the Decameron north of the Alps, he was famous all over Europe simply on account of his Latin compilations on mythology, geography, and biography. One of these, de Genealogia Deorum, contains in the fourteenth and fifteenth books a remarkable appendix, in which he discusses the position of the then youthful humanism with regard to the age. We must not be misled by his exclusive references ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... great common sea, will rarely reappear before us individualized and distinct. The type of the provincial cadet of the day hastening courtwards to seek his fortune, he becomes lost amidst the gigantic characters and fervid passions that alone stand forth in history. And as, in reading biography, we first take interest in the individual who narrates, but if his career shall pass into that broader and more stirring life, in which he mingles with men who have left a more dazzling memory than his own, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of whether it is biography or pure fiction, there are to-day substantial reminders throughout London, not only of his life but of the very scenes associated with the characters of his novels. More particularly in the early novels, "Pickwick," "Nickleby," and "Copperfield," are their topographical features to be most ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... comments, and proffering commentaries of his own wherever there seemed a possibility of acceptance. He dwelt upon his aims and ambitions too, and gave to the ear that promised sympathy the rustic details of his biography. At first there was some tendency to quiz him, especially among the commercial travellers, who seemed to be, of all the patrons of the hotels, the most numerous and authoritative. But they soon came to a better understanding of him. Beneath all his talk about being ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... those which form the staple out of which novels are fabricated; love and adventure, hair-breadth escapes, heart-rending tragedies on the frontier, are thus woven into a narrative of absorbing and permanent interest, permanent because it is part of the history and biography of America. Some of the truest of these stories are those which are most deeply fraught with tenderness and romance. What is more calculated to move the mind and heart of man for example than a story of two lovers environed by some deadly danger, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... book is not a series of fictitious adventures of the great Captain Cook, the eighteenth century navigator and explorer, but a straightforward statement of his life and achievements. It is therefore more of a biography than an adventure book for boys. However, the man was so great that his biography can indeed be read as a well-written ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... C. "Papers and Biography of Lion Gardiner," in Lion Gardiner and his Descendants. A. ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... Containing also a Chapter on Mesmerism and Magnetism; directions for patients living some distance from a homoeopathic physician, to describe their symptoms; a Tabular Index of the medicines and the diseases in which they are used; and a Sketch of the Biography of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... be regretted that no competent person has as yet undertaken the task of compiling a full and authentic biography of Lord Viscount Dundee. His memory has consequently been left at the mercy of misrepresentation and malignity; and the pen of romance has been freely employed to portray, as a bloody assassin, one ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... regular biography of this remarkable man; neither the time for this has come, nor have the materials been, as yet, placed within reach of us, or of any one else. But we may sketch the outlines of what we know, which is indeed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Churchill. The adroitness, the courage, and the persistency with which between 1880 and 1885 he sapped Gladstone's authority, deposed Northcote, and made himself the most conspicuous man in the Tory Party, have been described in his Biography, and need not be recapitulated here. Mr. Chamberlain, who was exactly qualified to resist and abate him, had not yet acquired a commanding position in the House of Commons; and on the platform Churchill could not be beaten. In these two men each party possessed a ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... poet's writings from the first, boyhood verses of "Salt Water Ballads" to "Good Friday"; and therein lies the secret; and incidentally therein lies some of the most thrilling human touches, vivid illustrations for the preacher; some of the most intensely interesting religious experiences that any biography ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... antiquity. No book has been more generally sought after or read with greater avidity than "Plutarch's Lives." However ancient, either Greek or Latin, none has received such a universal popularity. But the character of Plutarch himself, not less than his method of writing biography, explains his universal popularity, and gives its special charm and value to his book. He was a man of large and generous nature, of strong feeling, of refined tastes, of quick perceptions. His mind had been cultivated in ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... fellow, Tallente," he sighed, "and I made a big mistake when I let you go. I did it to please the moderates and you know how they've turned out. There isn't one of them worth a row of pins. If any one ever writes my political biography, they will probably decide that the parting with you was ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... persona have been modes of feeling and forms of art. I have tried to explain the life and character, not of any man or woman, but of the moral scepticism of Italy, of the tragic spirit of our Elizabethan dramatists; I have tried to write the biography of the romance poetry of the Middle Ages, of the realism of the great portrait painters and sculptors of the Renaissance. But these, my dramatis persona, are, let me repeat it, abstractions: they exist only ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... on. Don't waste your time On bad biography and bitter rhyme. For what I am this crumbling clay assures, And what I was is no affair ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various
... and more unsettled population in the North led them to send to Congress an ever-changing succession of unmeritable and sometimes shady people. The eventual stirring of the mind of the North which so closely concerns this biography was a thing hard to bring about, and to the South it brought a great shock ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... of the age, and all the valour, all the chivalry of a golden day came pouring out of his impassioned reeds." Such is the magic of those large white plumes on Martin Culpepper's memory. Although John Barclay in that latter day bought a thousand copies of the Biography and sent them to public libraries all over the world, he smiled as he read that paragraph referring to Watts McHurdie's accordion as the "impassioned reeds." When he read it, John Barclay, grown to a man ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... his craft; and so well did he fulfil his promise, until the debility of his ship and a chain of misfortunes interposed to prevent him, that the Admiralty charts in current use are substantially those which Flinders made over a hundred years ago.* (* Sir J.K. Laughton in Dictionary of National Biography 19 328.) ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... autobiography of a French infantryman was published in Paris in 1917. It is a revelation of the French spirit. It is rather a biography of the spirit, than an account of the amazing experiences M. Fribourg encountered, from 1911 at Agadir, through the fighting on the Meuse, and part of the campaign in Flanders. The descriptions are memorable for their beautiful style, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... place as one of the great biographies in our language. The inexplicable fact that hitherto no full biography of the first man to circumnavigate Australia has appeared is also a fortunate fact. Flinders has waited a century for his biographer, and it was worth this silence of a hundred years to find Ernest Scott.... And to this fervor of research must be added Ernest Scott's lucid literary style and his ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... smile. Lincoln's early years had hardships and trials, over many of which he triumphed, and triumphed laughing; but there were others for which there was neither victory nor mirth. Some of his early letters of intimate friendship (as given in Hay and Nicolay's biography), show a singular capacity for romantic affection, and gleams of hope of supreme happiness. But death frustrated this hope, and the disappointment brought him to the verge of insanity. In his domestic life,—it was an open secret,—he had some of the experience which ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... no doubt that Strauss, who was at that time an earnest Christian, felt the relief from certain difficulties in the biography of Jesus which this theory affords. He put it forth in all sincerity as affording to others like relief. He said that while rationalists and supernaturalists alike, by their methods, sacrificed the divine ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... that my friend had concluded Schneider's biography, we had grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so remarkable in youth) my whole history—my course of studies, my pleasant country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and my occupations in the vestry before religion was ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... John, nodding his head thoughtfully, "I think I can understand it perfectly," and indeed it spoke pages of David's biography. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... friends and in later years of their lives brethren, a brief reminiscence of Dr. Driver will here be given: Jacob Driver was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, about the year 1801. His parents came from Pennsylvania, and their baptism into the church of the Brethren is noted in this biography. About the year 1838, Jacob, their eldest son, became very strongly impressed with the rational and logical arguments given by Dr. Samuel Thompson in a work written and published by him entitled: "GUIDE TO HEALTH." This guide indicated and represented the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Schumann's biography testifies no patriotic enthusiasm for his works during his lifetime. His position as musical conductor at Dusseldorf was by no ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... way for European teachers. A boarding-school was also established, where some forty boys have received instruction. At the college the students go through a course of theology, church history, Biblical exposition, biography, geography, grammar, and composition of essays and sermons. For three hours in the morning they are employed in the workshop, and in the afternoon in study, in ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... notion that some time or another it would fall to my lot to perform it. I approach it, therefore, without apprehension, entirely in consequence of having determined, to my own satisfaction, the manner in which the biography of so singular and so richly endowed a character as that of the late Lord Byron should be treated, but still with no small degree of diffidence; for there is a wide difference between determining a rule for one's self, and producing, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Dichtung.' Truth and poetry,—that is what it is bound to be. I don't know whether Goethe was as honest a man as Wordsworth and Stevenson, but I reckon he told about as much of the truth. Autobiography is usually a man's view of what his biography ought ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... But no, his little Wife snatched him up, easily getting his discharge; carried him over with her to England, where he again became a show-giant, and they were doing very well, when last heard of,"—in the Country-Wakes of George II.'s early time. And that is the real Biography of one Potsdam Giant, by a literary gentleman who had lodged with him on occasion. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... literature. There are countless books of poetry in which the gems of the great poets of the world have been preserved, but oratory has not been thus favored. We have many volumes which record the speeches of different orators, sometimes connected with a biography of their lives and sometimes as independent gatherings of speeches. We have also single books, like Goodrich's 'British Eloquence,' which give us partial selections of the great orations. But this ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... The biography of Captain Penn Sharp had been quite romantic within the preceding year. In company with his brother he had been a detective in New York during the greater portion of his lifetime. He had been an honest and upright man; but in spite of this fact ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... protagonist of militant Protestantism. / The chief protagonist on the company's side in the latest railway strike, Mr ——. / It was a happy thought that placed in the hands of the son of one of the great protagonists of Evolution the materials for the biography of another. / But most of the protagonists of this demand have shifted their ground. / As for what the medium himself or his protagonists may think of them—for etymological purposes that ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... in the persons of Erec and his charming sweetheart Enide. The psychological analysis of Erec's motives in the rude testing of Enide is worthy of attention, and is more subtle than anything previous in French literature with which we are acquainted. The poem is an episodical romance in the biography of an Arthurinn hero, with the usual amount of space given to his adventures. "Cliges" apparently connects a Byzantine tale of doubtful origin in an arbitrary fashion with the court of Arthur. It is thought that the story ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... you will grow to find the world as hollow as they find it. Read Green's history of England, and the world is peopled with heroes. I never knew why Green's history thrilled me with the vigor of romance until I read his biography. Then I learned how his quick imagination transfigured the hard, bare facts of life into new and living dreams. When he and his wife were too poor to have a fire, he would sit before the unlit hearth and pretend that it ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... criticised, and passed about quickly without much noise, are considered exceedingly interesting. When every one is supposed to be talking of politics it is very easy for every one to talk scandal, and to construct neighbourly biography of an imaginary character which shall presently become a part of contemporary history. On the whole, society would almost as gladly do this as dance. In those days of which I am speaking, therefore, there were many places where two or three, and sometimes as many as ten, were gathered together ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... silver and gold." Of the extraordinary talents of Mr. Southey, the indefatigable student in ancient lore, and especially in all that regards Spanish Literature and Old English Romances, this is not the place to make mention. His "Remains of Henry Kirk White," the sweetest specimen of modern biography, has sunk into every heart, and received an eulogy from every tongue. Yet ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... detached facts in political science, and that liberal view of institutions, habits, and manners, differing in some degree from his own, by which his philosophical writings are so eminently distinguished. Here, as in the biography of almost all other really great men, it is found, that some circumstances apparently trivial or accidental have given a permanent bent to their mind; have stored it with the appropriate knowledge, and turned it, as it were, into the allotted sphere, and contributed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Insufficient-delivery men both here. Chief of returned bureau here. All summoned to the foreign office as Harrington tells his story. Indexes produced, ledgers, journals, day-books, and private passbooks. John McLaughlin's biography followed out on 67 of the different avatars in which his personality has been manifested under that name. False trail here—clue breaks there—scent fails here, but at last—a joyful cry ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... that the newly landed one was named Smith, and that he had come in a yacht. A meagre biography, truly; for the yacht was most apparent; and the "Smith" not beyond a reasonable guess before the revelation. Yet to the eye of Goodwin, who had seen several things, there was a discrepancy between Smith ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... well as in the previous ones; and my only difficulty will be not to give too much and weary my readers. Your last note is especially valuable about birds displaying the beautiful parts of their plumage. Audubon (436/1. In his "Ornithological Biography," 5 volumes, Edinburgh, 1831-49.) gives a good many facts about the antics of birds during courtship, but nothing nearly so much to the purpose as yours. I shall never be able to resist giving the whole substance of your ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... exhaustive and accomplished biography of Sophie Dawes,[28] from which a part of the matter for this resume is drawn, Mme Violette Montagu, speaking of the period in which Sophie lived, says that "Paris, with its fabulous wealth and luxury, seems to have ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... either in this country or in England. A large number of books in Volapk, or about it, have appeared in Germany, including grammars in eighteen languages, a German-Volapk dictionary containing twelve thousand words, a biography of the inventor, Father ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... rivers, lakes, and seas; and proficients, no longer confining themselves to mere nomenclature, enrich their works with anecdotes and traits of character, which, without departure from truth, have imbued bird-biography with the double ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... ancient example of the use of a "curing-stone" in this country is detailed in what may be regarded as the first or oldest historical work which has been left us in reference to Scotland, namely, in Adamnan's Life of St. Columba. This biography of the founder of Iona was probably written in the last years of the seventh century, Adamnan having died in A.D. 705. He was elected to the Abbacy of Iona A.D. 679, and had there the most favourable opportunities of becoming acquainted with all the existing traditions and records regarding St. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... time may bring to light further and more complete materials for the biography of these Lambethan worthies, who have deserved to live in our memories as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... mouths and eyes goggling. I've been a hero, months on end, just for the things that my grandad did in the seventies. Of course," he pulled his lips into their whimsical smile, "I've touched up the family biography here and there and made heroes of us all. But the fact remains there are degrees and differences in badness. I've a notion that the Black Rim, taken by and large, is a damn sight worse than the Devil's Tooth outfit. I'd like to try the experiment of making the AJ and old Scotty ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... briefly what would, as it seems to me, be the text to be unfolded in his biography, he was a man of excellent common sense, with a genius so uncommon that he seemed like an exotic transplanted from some angelic nursery. His character was so blameless, so beautiful, that it was rather a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... I seemed to see A Thing that smirked and smiled: And found that he was giving me A lesson in Biography, As if ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... that for years past I have designed writing a new biography of the great German master, is generally known; there was no necessity for keeping it secret; it has been specially mentioned by the press since my appointment, and I need not hesitate to say that the favor of our government will give me ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... of character, and its want of tragedy, is a form of story midway between the closer knit texture of Gsla Saga and the laxity of construction in the stories without a hero, or with more than one, such as Ljsvetninga or Vatnsdla. It is a biography with no strong crisis in it; it might have been extended indefinitely. And, in fact, the existing form of the story looks as if it were rather carelessly put together, or perhaps abridged from a fuller version. The story ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... generation has long since passed away, Mr. Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown now permits that these letters should be read beyond the limits of the family circle. An editor has had little more to do than to make a selection, and to write such a thread of biography as might unite the links of ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... catastrophe accepted and submitted to. The vanquished became the proscribed. Each one of us had his own concluding adventures. Mine was what it should have been—exile; death having missed me. I am not going to relate it here, this book is not my biography, and I ought not to divert to myself any of the attention which it may excite. Besides, what concerns me personally is told in a narrative which is one of the testaments ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... a similar work in the realm of mechanics. Watt tells us that his engine worked in his mind years before it worked in his shop. In his biography, Milton recognizes the beauty of the trees and flowers he culled from earth's landscapes and gardens, but in his "Paradise Lost," his imagination beheld an Eden fairer than any scene ever found on earth. Napoleon believed that every battle was won by the imagination. While his soldiers slept, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the Chancellorship of the Order of the Garter, lost for a century and a half. He founded the College of Matrons, and at his death at Knightsbridge in 1688, was buried in the south choir aisle. Dr. Walter Pope's biography of this bishop is an interesting record of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... selfhood in all its insidious forms. "Take one step out of yourself," say the S[u]fis, "and you will arrive at God."[57] This one step is the most difficult act of life; yet urged by love, man has taken it again and again. This phase is so familiar to every reader of spiritual biography, that I need not insist upon it. "In the field of this body," says Kabir, "a great war goes forward, against passion, anger, pride and greed. It is in the Kingdom of Truth, Contentment and Purity that this battle is raging, and ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... read by every man and boy in America. Because it sets forth an ideal of American Citizenship. An Inspired Biography by one who knows him best. A large, handsomely illustrated cloth bound book. Price, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... given us a sketch of the biography and opinions of the most celebrated of those men who have undertaken to produce a new scheme of human life for us; he has introduced his description of them and their projects by some account of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... movement of reform, to become the most liberal and enlightened of all Churches, and left France to be long divided between Ultramontane dogma and a coarse kind of secularism. The life of Gregoire ought to be written in English. From the enormous number of improvements for which he laboured, his biography would give a characteristic picture of the finer side of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... new literature (which began with the Latin biography of Wilfrith by AEddi or Eddius, and the Latin verses of Ealdhelm) the great representative is, in fact, Baeda, whose life has already been sufficiently described in an earlier chapter. Living at Jarrow, a Benedictine monastery of the strictest type, in close connection ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... book is written in a free and easy style, partly natural, and partly formed by many years of journalistic work—a style new for the grave business of biographical writing, and which may be startling in a royal biography,—to my English readers, at least. I aimed to make a pleasant, simple fireside story of the life and reign of Queen Victoria—and I hope I have not altogether failed. Unluckily, I had no friend near the throne to furnish me with reliable, unpublished personal ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... score of such stories to-day," he said; "there seem to be enough of them; but I can't find anything adapted to a sermon, and yet they seem to expect a detailed biography." ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... ancient than their own. Bengal has given many illustrious sons to the empire. Among the dead I may mention Pandits Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Kissari Mohan Ganguli, whose vast learning was eclipsed by their zeal for social service; Dr. Sambhu Chandra Mukharji, whose biography I wrote in 1895; and Mr. Umesh Chandra Banarji, a lawyer who held his own with the flower of our English bar. A Bengali Brahmin is still with us who directs one of the greatest contracting firms in the ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... And, lastly, the whole is locked into validity of interest, even for the psychological philosopher, by complete authentication of its truth. In the case now brought before him, the reader must not doubt; for no memoir exists, or personal biography, that is so trebly authenticated by proofs and attestations direct and collateral. From the archives of the Royal Marine at Seville, from the autobiography or the heroine, from contemporary chronicles, and from several official sources scattered in and out of Spain, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... volumes, Speeches and Public Letters of Joseph Howe, edited by Joseph Andrew Chisholm, K. C. (Halifax, 1909), the reader should consult the biography of Howe by Mr Justice Longley in the 'Makers of Canada' series, and the account of Nova Scotian history by Professor Archibald MacMechan in Canada and its Provinces, vol. xiii. See also Recollections of Sixty Years in Canada by Sir Charles ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... ordinarily full-wigged and ponderous, it dared to be sprightly and epigrammatic. Some of its passages, besides, bear upon the writer's personal experiences, and serve to piece the imperfections of his biography. If it brought him no sudden wealth, it certainly raised his reputation with the book-selling world. A connexion already begun with Smollett's 'Critical Review' was drawn closer; and the shrewd Sosii of the Row began to see the importance ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and leveling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... to great Nature who, in Paris City, in the Era of Noble-Sentiment and Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Phlipon, and nourish her to clear perennial Womanhood, though but on Logics, Encyclopedies, and the Gospel according to Jean-Jacques! Biography will long remember that trait of asking for a pen "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." It is as a little light-beam, shedding softness, and a kind of sacredness, over all that preceded: so in her too there was an Unnameable; she too was a Daughter ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Luca Neroni, painter, sculptor, goldsmith, and engraver, about whom, owing either to the scarcity of his works or the scandal of his end, Vasari has but a few words in another man's biography, must have been born shortly before or shortly after the year 1450, a contemporary of Perugino, of Ghirlandaio, of Filippino Lippi, and of Signorelli, by all of whom he was influenced at various moments, and whom ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... it not so? Ask that boyish-hearted old scamp whom you have seen scuttling away from the circulating library with M. St. Pierre's memoirs of young Paul and his beloved Virginia under his arm; or stepping briskly out of the book store hugging to his left side a carefully wrapped biography of Lady Diana Vernon, Mlle. de la Valliere, or Madame Margaret Woffington; or in fact any of a thousand charming ladies whom it is certain he had met before. Ladies too, who, born whensoever, are not one day older since he last ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... 17th of September, wanting only eight days of four months. That body of men had a Doorkeeper and Sergeant-at-arms, both under oath, to keep their doors barred, and all their proceedings a secret. So says Mr. Jefferson's biography! And such men as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Harrison, Hancock, Hopkins, and others, composed that body! During the war of the Revolution, General Washington, Generals Lee, Wayne, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... of the rights and duties of superior talents as a Spanish inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties of his office. And yet in his fine devotion to his art, in his honest and serviceable friendship for Schiller, what lessons are contained! Biography, usually so false to its office, does here for once perform for us some of the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly mingled tissue of man's nature, and how huge faults and shining virtues cohabit and persevere in the same character. History serves us well ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intermingle thought and sympathy; and from this contact of select intelligences of diverse vocation has resulted the choicest wit and the most genial companionship. If from special we turn to general associations, from biography to history, the same prolific affinities are evident, whereby the artist becomes an interpreter of life, and casts the halo of romance over the stern features of reality. Hampton Court is the almost breathing society of Charles the Second's reign; the Bodleian Gallery is vivid with Britain's past ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... his biography has not been written. There are, it is true, outlines of his career in various works of reference, notably that contributed by Sir J.K. Laughton to the Dictionary of National Biography. But there is no book to which a reader can turn for ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... nostrils like a horse at the covert side, his face aglow, his eyes flashing as he told me of bygone battles, escapes from imprisonment and death, and deeds of wild adventure and romance. These inspiriting recollections he freely gave me for the "authentic biography" which he had given me permission to write. Up to that time he had refused that favor to every one; and in spite of his grateful recognition of the "honesty and veracity" of the volume I had written about his country five years ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... documents, and added numerous notes; General Grey obeyed, and the work was completed in 1866. But the principal part of the story was still untold, and Mr. Martin was forthwith instructed to write a complete biography of the Prince Consort. Mr. Martin laboured for fourteen years. The mass of material with which he had to deal was almost incredible, but he was extremely industrious, and he enjoyed throughout the gracious assistance of Her Majesty. The first bulky ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... authority on Synge, whose book is the best extant record of the man's career. A good many critical and controversial books and articles of varying power and bitterness have appeared about him. A short Life of him by myself, was published in a supplementary volume of the Dictionary of National Biography in 1912. The people who knew him in Ireland, and some who have followed in his tracks there have set down or collected facts about him. The student will no doubt meet with more of these as time goes by. For those which have already appeared, the student should refer ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, and honest father? Ought his life to be decent—his bills to be paid—his tastes to be high and elegant—his aims in life lofty and noble? In a word, ought not the Biography of a First Gentleman in Europe to be of such a nature that it might be read in Young Ladies' Schools with advantage, and studied with profit in the Seminaries of Young Gentlemen? I put this question to all instructors of youth—to Mrs. Ellis and the Women of England; to all schoolmasters, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A Biography; The Tour on the Prairies; Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey. By Washington Irving. A new edition, complete in one volume foolscap 8vo., with an ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... bring the biography of Donald to a close. Carmina's enjoyment of Zo was becoming too keen for her strength; her bursts of laughter grew louder and louder—the wholesome limit of excitement was being rapidly passed. "Tell us about your cousins," ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... this day, whenever I indulge in a prayer, you bet Vincent Bland has a paragraph all to himself in it! [Checking herself and coming to FARNCOMBE.] Oh, but— I needn't inflict quite so much of my biography on you, need I? [He rises.] Sorry. I merely wanted to tell you enough to show ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... far afield as a biography of Sergeant York. It is but a story of the strength and the simplicity of a man—a young man—whom the nation has honored for what he has done, with something in it of those who went before and left him as a legacy the qualities of mind and heart that enabled him to fight his ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... "Don't know Frank Lovell!" exclaimed John. "The greatest friend I have in the world." (Men's friends always are the greatest in the world.) "I'll introduce him to you; there he is—no he isn't. I saw him a moment ago." And forthwith John launched into a long biography of his friend Frank Lovell—how that gentleman was the nicest fellow and the finest rider and the best shot in the universe; how he knew more about racing than any man of his age, and had been in more difficulties, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... hastily penned notes—and, as in conversation with him, so in his letters there are repeated flashes of sage comment and of good native wit. Not too often can we make the plea for the gathering and preserving of such material. Autobiography, after all, is what biography ought to be—it is the live portrait by the side of which a mere appreciative sketch fades. I have looked through the "Memorial" volume to Bronson Howard, issued by the American Dramatists Club (1910), and read the well-tempered estimates, ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... has published John Drinkwater's Lincoln, the World Emancipator. This is not a biography of Lincoln but rather a type representing the ideals of the American nation and at the same time the bonds which have attached the people of the United States ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... indebted for them chiefly to the recollections of his two faithful friends, Horatio Bridge and Elizabeth Peabody. These were first systematised and published by George P. Lathrop in 1872, but a more complete and authoritative biography was issued by Julian Hawthorne twelve years later, in which, however, the writer has modestly refrained from expressing an opinion as to the quality of his father's genius, or from attempting any critical examination ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... opened the door of my shack and invited the children in. I organized a Sunday School and taught them ethics and religion. I got up little entertainments for them. I procured a stereopticon, gave them lectures on my experience in Egypt, and lectures on art, biography and history. I had a peculiar method of advertising these lectures. I informed the little cripple boy on the corner. He whispered the information to a section of the huts, at the farthest end of which a golden-haired ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... sixteenth century, at least, until very lately this work, the various versions of which differ greatly, has been supposed to be the single poem of a single author, repeatedly enlarged and revised by him; and ingenious inference has constructed for this supposed author a brief but picturesque biography under the name of William Langland. Recent investigation, however, has made it seem at least probable that the work grew, to its final form through additions by several successive writers who have not ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... during term-time. The will of the founder has not, however, been actually carried into execution. As we hate "solemn farce" and "ignorance in stilts," we hope "scrutiny will not be stone blind" in this matter. A more useful man than Sir Thomas Gresham is not to be found in British biography, and it is painful to see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... to the amusement of the father and mother. Fanny Burney now comes with a little flung-off nebula to the effect that "Herschel is quite the happiest man in the kingdom." There is a most charming little biography of Caroline Herschel, written by the good wife of Sir John Herschel, wherein some very gentle foibles are laid bare, and where at the same time tribute is paid to a great and beautiful spirit. The idea ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... there existed "a special sympathy,"[144] and she further refers to her father as "the warmest friend of that extraordinary man."[145] Her father had many of Banneker's manuscripts, from which he intended to compile a biography of his friend, but his unusually busy commercial life afforded him no leisure in which to carry out this much cherished plan. Mrs. Tyson's account, therefore, can be relied upon as coming directly from those who, personally knowing Banneker, and living in the same community in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... into a plausible whole; intellectually considered, her special pursuit was inasmuch the nobler as the faculties it brought into exercise were more delicate and various; and if her devotion to the minutia of biography had no high end in view, it never caused her to lose sight of what ends she had, by involving her in opinions, prejudices, or disputes: however she might break out at times, her general policy was to avoid quarrelling. There was a strong ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... ought of itself to ensure the publisher abundant support. Of the execution of that part it may be sufficient to state that it comes from the author of "The Life of Anacreon," and other compositions which have enriched the pages of the Port Folio: and who is he so dull, for whom biography has not charms?—On this last topic we beg leave to borrow, for this once, the expressions of a writer, whose delicacy we should offend, by speaking of him as we think, and to whom the taste and literature of this country ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... passed," says her traditionary biography, "wherein, she did not relate something remarkable, and that required the most serious consideration. People flocked to her from far and near, her fame was so great. They went to her of all sorts, both old and young, rich and poor, especially young ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... his cigarette, looking at the captain at times reflectively. Carg, feeling his biography had not been appreciated, had lapsed into silence. At length the wounded man began feeling in his breast pocket—an awkward operation because the least action disturbed the swathed limb—and presently drew out a leather card case. With ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... it is absurd to overlook either Johnson's melancholy piety or his abounding humour and love of fun and nonsense. His Prayers and Meditations are full of the one, Boswell and Mrs. Thrale and Madame D'Arblay are full of the other. Boswell's Johnson has superseded the 'authorized biography' by Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. Hill did well to include in these Miscellanies Hawkins' inimitable description of the memorable banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of 1751, to celebrate the publication ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... also form the habit of reading widely, not only along all musical lines (history, biography, theory, esthetics, et cetera), but upon a wide variety of topics, such as painting and the other arts, history, literature, sociology, pedagogy, et cetera. As the result of such study and such reading, a type of musical scholarship will be attained which ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... the first to examine the subject critically. They separated—so far as was then possible (1871)—the real from the traditional Giorgione, and their account of his life and works must still rank as the nearest equivalent to a modern biography. Morelli, who followed in 1877, was in singular sympathy with his task, and has written of his favourite master enthusiastically, yet with consummate judgment. Among living authorities, Dr. Gronau, Herr Wickhoff, Signor Venturi, and Mr. Bernhard Berenson have ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... remembered that in his preface to his former work, he tells us that he was dissatisfied with the current conceptions of Christ, and unable to rest content without a definite opinion regarding Him, and so was led to trace His biography from point to point, with a view of accepting those conclusions about Him which the facts themselves, weighed critically, appeared to warrant. And now, after the lapse of well-nigh two decades, the author ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Moses. Life of Harrison. Cincinnati, 1834. Esarey ranks this as the best biography of the General. It was prepared under the direction of Harrison himself. (Indiana ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... Personal Character; this class of literature has been largely enriched, not only with works calculated for the benefit of the student, but for that larger class of readers—the people, who in the byeways of History and Biography which these works present, gather much of the national life at many periods, and pictures of manners and customs, habits and amusements, such as are not so readily to be found in more ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... of this work is made up of the account given by Josephine herself of the events of her life; and that part contributed by M'lle. Le Normand, completes a biography of the gifted, the fortunate and unfortunate queen of Napoleon. The Memoirs of Josephine sparkle with French sprightliness, and abound with French sentiment. Her style is eminently graceful, and the turn of thought ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... him with hardly less bitterness, though with more decency, than the historian Dio Cassius, who lived so near his own times. Bishop Middleton, on the other hand, in those pleasant and comprehensive volumes which are still to this day the great storehouse of materials for Cicero's biography, is as blind to his faults as though he were himself delivering a panegyric in the Rostra at Rome. Perhaps it is the partiality of the learned bishop's view which has produced a reaction in the minds of sceptical ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... are very wild and strange," others are full of "useful information." In another place he called the pictures in it Rembrandts interspersed with Claudes. At first the book was to have been "My Life, a Drama, by George Borrow"; at the end of the year it was "Lavengro, a Biography," and also "My Life." He was writing slowly "to please himself." Later on he called it a biography "in the Robinson Crusoe style." Nearly three years passed since that meeting with Mr. Petulengro, and still the book was not ready. Ford had been pressing him to lift a corner of the curtain which ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... panegyric in their honour, and later still hymns and histories of martyrdom were added to the public recitation of the Office. Still later, there were added the feasts of the saints with an office resembling our simple office. Matins were entirely ferial, but had either a biography of the saint or a long extract from the Fathers added. The other hours were as in a Sunday office, save that these feasts ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... of the town where Lincoln spent the last three years of the period covered in this portion of his biography is now a desolate waste. A gentleman who visited the spot during the summer of 1885 thus describes the mournful scene: "From the hill where I sit, under the shade of three trees whose branches make ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... private lessons. In 1825 he went to Mexico, where he was well received and where he held several important posts, including those of member of Congress and judge of the superior court. In Heredia's biography two facts should be stressed: that he studied for five years in Caracas, the city that produced Bolivar and Bello, respectively the greatest general and the greatest scholar of Spanish America; and that he spent only twelve years, all told, in Cuba. As he lived for fourteen ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... Poems by the Way, contains several pieces that must be reckoned with. The vividest recollections of Icelandic materials here made use of are the poems "Iceland First Seen," and "To the Muses of the North." No reader of the poet's biography can forget the remarkable journey that Morris made through Iceland, nor how he prepared for that journey with all the care and love of a pilgrim bound for a shrine of his deepest devotion. Every foot of ground ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby |
