"Biography" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to approach my subject conscientiously and with all due respect. I shall study biography where it is indispensable for the complete understanding of works. I shall give a sketch of the original individuals I meet on my path, portraying these only at their point of contact with the life of our authoress, and it seems to me ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... National American Woman Suffrage Association, she immediately commenced preparations for another volume of the History. She called to her assistance Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, who had recently finished her Biography, and in her home in Rochester, N. Y., they spent the next two years on the book, Mrs. Stanton, who was 85 years old, taking the keenest interest in the work.[1] When the manuscript was completed hundreds of pages had to be eliminated ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... liked to have him with her, and it was the only day in the week when he could indulge her in that way. You would have liked to see Adam reading his Bible. He never opened it on a weekday, and so he came to it as a holiday book, serving him for history, biography, and poetry. He held one hand thrust between his waistcoat buttons, and the other ready to turn the pages, and in the course of the morning you would have seen many changes in his face. Sometimes his lips moved ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... was half dead with hunger! In short, I was more than a father to him, and now—now he jeers at me! Even if I did cross myself, and pray for the repose of the soul of the Comtesse du Barry, what does it matter? Three days ago, for the first time in my life, I read her biography in an historical dictionary. Do you know who she was? You there!" addressing his nephew. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lessening upwards and tuned to each other with the axe, like Pandean pipes. Probably the musical forest-gods had not yet cast them aside; they never do till they are split or the bark is gone. It was a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus; none of your frilled or fluted columns, which have cut such a false swell, and support nothing but a gable end and their builder's pretensions,—that is, with the multitude; and as for "ornamentation," one of those words with a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... beyond measure. He had written his first Life of Michelangelo in 1550. Condivi published his own modest biography in 1553, with the expressed intention of correcting errors and supplying deficiencies made by "others," under which vague word he pointed probably at Vasari. Michelangelo, who furnished Condivi with materials, died in 1564; and Vasari, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... lot apportioned him,—one mulcted in a folio, the other in a paragraph. If we examine somewhat closely the features of this peculiar institution, we shall learn that a distinguishing characteristic of the new school of biography is the astonishing familiarity shown by the narrator with the circumstances, the conversations, and the very thoughts of remarkable boys in their early life. The incidents of childhood are usually forgotten before the man's renown has given them any importance; the few anecdotes which tradition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... has edited and published, at Darmstadt, "The Reformatory Writings of Martin Luther, in chronological order, with a Biography ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... clear from his letters to Bedell that the convert was a very weak man. I owe to him, however, a complete confirmation of my old persuasion concerning Bishop Hall, whom from my first perusal of his works I have always considered as one of the blots (alas! there are too many) of the biography of the Church of England; a self-conceited, coarse-minded, persecuting, vulgar priest, and (by way of 'anti-climax') one of the first corrupters of and epigrammatizers of our English prose style. It is not true, that Sir Thomas Brown was the prototype of Dr. Johnson, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and Papers of the Presidents (1900), vol. II, gives Jackson's official statements. Bassett's and Parton's biographies, already mentioned, are still very serviceable. There is no full biography of Clay, but C. Colton's The Private Life of Henry Clay contains some of Clay's letters. Carl Schurz's Henry Clay and T. H. Clay's Henry Clay, already noted, offer some good information. The ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... growing old, and was the observed of all observers. Thousands of visitors, from all sections of the country, paid their respects to the grand old bird, who, apparently conscious of the honors conferred upon him, overlooked the sale of his biography and photographs going on beneath his ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... of Judaism, and it may be that in this regard I have not always looked on him as the calm, dispassionate student should; for I experience towards him that warmth of feeling which his name, [Greek: philon], "the beloved one," suggests. But I have tried so to write this biography as neither to show partiality on the one side nor impartiality on the other. If nevertheless I have exaggerated the Jewishness of my worthy's thought, my excuse must be that my predecessors have so often exaggerated other aspects of his teaching ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... This biography, though historically based, should not be considered factual. It is not that there was no such man — indeed there was, and other accounts indicate that Francis Marion is as deserving of praise as this account would indicate — or moreso. It is not that ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... that this document contained a great deal of Pen's personal experiences, and that "Leaves from the Life-book of Walter Lorraine" would never have been written but for Arthur Pendennis's own private griefs, passions, and follies. As we have become acquainted with these in the first volume of his biography, it will not be necessary to make large extracts from the novel of "Walter Lorraine," in which the young gentleman had depicted such of them as he thought were likely to interest the reader, or were suitable for the purposes ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... did not ask you for her biography, I asked only for her bill. Pray let me see the total, and tell me if you have any objections ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... thus examine the scope of this first of the arts, it will be necessary that we learn also the scope of mind of the early practicers of it, and accordingly acquaint ourselves with the main events in the biography of the schools of Florence. To understand the temper and meaning of one great master is to lay the best, if not the only, foundation for the understanding of all; and I shall therefore make it the leading aim of this course of lectures to remind you of what is known, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... who was present at the time of the murder of Jane McCrea, and afterwards gave the account to Jared Sparks, who records it in his "Life of Arnold." See "Library of American Biography," Vol. III, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... desecrate the birthplace of Nell. Then he would pause a little, become conscious of our sense of his absurdity, and break into a thundering peal of laughter." Dickens had himself proposed to tell this story as a contribution to my biography of our common friend, but his departure for America prevented him. "I see," he wrote to me, as soon as the published book reached him, "you have told, with what our friend would have called won-derful accuracy, the little St. James's Square story, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... end? A tragedy ends at the death of any or all; a comedy ends with one of the revived jokes of former years; a biography should terminate at the grave, and a romance finishes as the groom carries his hard-won prize across the threshold of the cottage or palace. ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... and what sense and scholarship, are?" I don't quarrel with you—I take for granted your wit and learning, your modesty and benevolence—but why scavenger—Jupiter Jeames—why scavenger? A gentleman, whose biography the Examiner was fond of quoting before it took its present serious and orthodox turn, was pursued by an outraged wife to the very last stage of his existence with an appeal almost as pathetic—Ah, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Boker, see Allibone, Lamb's Biographical Dictionary, Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Warner's Library ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: - Introduction and Bibliography • Montrose J. Moses
... reproach myself if I did not mention, as a curiosity, the biography of M. and Mme. de Combray, united in one person in the "Dictionaire Historique" (!!!) of Larousse. It is unique of its kind. Names, places and facts are all wrong. And the crowning absurdity is that, borne out by these fancies, fragments are given of the supposed ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... connections, the suggested lines of thought are taken up and followed out in their wider applications. Take for example the "Burial of Moses," and in the proper analysis and study of the poem, such a process of absorption and reflection is observable. In tracing the biography of John Quincy Adams or of Alexander Hamilton, the facts of personal experience and action first absorb the attention from step to step in the study of his life. But reflection on the bearings of these personal events, upon contemporaries, and upon public affairs is noticed ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... Continental Courts in integrity, truthfulness, and public spirit, until the mass of diplomatic correspondence preserved at London has been studied; nor, until this has been done, can anything like an adequate biography of Pitt ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... toward which he was heading, Blair detected a brown dot against the white. Steadily, as he advanced, it resolved itself into the thing he had expected, and stood revealed before him, the centre of a horribly legible page, the last page in the biography of a noble horse. Let us pass it by: Ben did, looking the other way. But a new and terrible vitality possessed him. His weariness left him, as pain passes under an opiate. He did not pause to eat, to drink. Tireless as a ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... marble statuette of Cupid in the parlor of his country-house,—bow, arrows, wings, and all complete. A visitor, indigenous to the region, looking pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the house "if that was a statoo of her deceased infant?" What a delicious, though somewhat voluminous biography, social, educational, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... of some who have wrought mightily for God, it is clear that they had learned a secret which eludes many of us. Take this, for instance, from the biography of Dr. Burns Thomson. "When much together as students," writes his friend, "we agreed on special petitions, and the Lord encouraged us by giving answers, so early and so definite, as could only have come from Himself, so that no room was left ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... 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 ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... cut after the same pattern as the first. Their stern, harsh faces, red beards, and broad, square military shoulders told that by swordthrusts and broken lances they had founded the nobility of their race. An heroic preface to this family biography! A rough and warlike page of the Middle Ages! After these proud men-of-arms came several figures of a less ferocious aspect, but not so imposing. In these portraits of the fifteenth century beards had disappeared with the sword. In those wearing caps and velvet toques, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... me a box of books, which embraced a variety of literature. Although there were some light and amusing sketches among them, novels of sentiment and poetry had been excluded. On the other hand he had picked out the latest and most authoritative publications relating to history, science, biography, and travel, by which I soon found myself engrossed and diverted. I read voluminously, and when this supply was exhausted I wrote ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... 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 ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... this claim. You must know, they are a family of singular characteristics, humorists, sometimes developing their queer traits into something like insanity; though oftener, I must say, spending stupid hereditary lives here on their estates, rusting out and dying without leaving any biography whatever about them. And yet there has always been one very queer thing about this generally very commonplace family. It is that each father, on his death-bed, has had an interview with his son, at which he has imparted some secret that has evidently had an influence on the character and ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Croire, this 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, their pathos ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... before all bureaucrats, and with commendable promptness he seized the opportunity to resign a post which he thoroughly detested. What he thought on the subject of Yakoob Khan is fully set forth in the following memorandum drawn up as a note to my biography of that interesting and ill-starred prince in "Central Asian Portraits." Whether Gordon was right or wrong in his views about Yakoob Khan is a matter of no very great importance. The incident is only noteworthy as marking the conclusion of his brief secretarial experience, and as showing ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... house that he had his first pipe. Hone, in the first volume of the "Every Day Book" tells how he and some friends visited this Pied Bull, then in a very decayed condition, and smoked their pipes in the dining-room in memory of Sir Walter. From the recently published biography of William Hone by Mr. F.W. Hackwood, we learn that the jovial party consisted of William Hone, George Cruikshank, Joseph Goodyear, and David Sage, who jointly signed a humorous memorandum of their proceedings on the occasion, from which ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... 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
... is well known in the musical world as a violin expert with a special knowledge of the instruments made by the Cremonese master, whose biography he has here given us. He tells us how the master worked, what his pupils did, and where their work differs from that of their preceptor. In fact, the volume is as much a dissertation on the violins ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... and have called him neither Whig nor Tory. Nevertheless I will not deny that had he grown to maturity he would inevitably have been a politician. As you will be delighted to find at the end of his short biography, he did not reach that goal. He never sat upon either of the front benches. He never went through the bitter business of choosing his party and then ratting when he found he had made a mistake. ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... social behaviour is usually a rapid one. The Rococo age reached many subtleties, which we do not dream of as yet, but to which the conspiracy against silence may boldly push us. Read the memoirs of Casanova, the Italian of the eighteenth century, whose biography gives a vivid picture of a time in which certainly no one was silent on sexual affairs and in which life was essentially a chain of gallant adventures; even the sexual diseases figured as gallant diseases. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... unprincipled adventurers and renegades who are determined to rule or ruin. But a brighter day will come. Calumny and injustice cannot triumph forever. That distinguished officer Colonel C. C. Chesney of the British army in a volume of "Military Biography" lately published by him, in allusion to General Lee, writes thus: "But though America has learned to pardon, she has yet to attain the full reconciliation for which the dead hero would have sacrificed a hundred lives. Time can only bring this to a land, which in her agony, bled at every pore. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... deformities his notes were deservedly ridiculed by Warburton. But, amongst hundreds of illustrations more respectable than Dr. Grey's I will refer the reader to a work of our own days, the Ecclesiastical Biography [in part a republication of Walton's Lives] edited by the present master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who is held in the highest esteem wherever he is known, and is I am persuaded perfectly conscientious and as impartial as in such a case it ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... was obliged to 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," he said, by way of ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... that every man's biography is at his own expense. He furnishes not only the facts, but the report. I mean that all biography is autobiography. It is only what he tells of himself that comes to ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... wherever the text required explanation, or where we wished to compare the assertions of the Princess with other testimonies. The Princess, in the salons of the Palais Royal, wrote in a style not very unlike that which might be expected in the present day from the tenants of its garrets. A more complete biography than any which has hitherto been drawn up is likewise added to the present edition. In other respects we have faithfully followed the original Strasburg edition. The style of the Duchess will be sometimes found a little singular, and her chit-chat ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... that there is in the whole history of the human intellect so strange a phenomenon as this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his own account or to the united testimony of all who knew him, a man of ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... for that complaisance. Good God! Sir, what am I that I should be offended at or above criticism or correction? I do not know who ought to be; I am sure, no author. I am a private man, of no consequence, and at best an author of very moderate abilities. In a work that comprehends so much biography as my Anecdotes of Painting, it would have been impossible, even with much more diligence than I employed, not to make numberless mistakes. It is kind to me to point out those errors; to the world it is justice. Nor have i a reason to be displeased even with the manner. I do remember ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... dwelling and simplicity, rather than the variety, of flowers grown. Maeterlinck brings this before us with forcible charm in his essay on Old-Fashioned Flowers, and even now Martin Cortright is making a little biography of the flowers of our forefathers, as a birthday surprise for Lavinia. These flowers depended more upon individuality and association than upon ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... first volume, pages 446-455, the life of Garcilasso de la Vega is almost entirely rewritten from materials found in a recent biography by Don Eustaquio Navarrete, which Mr. Ticknor pronounces "an important contribution to Spanish literary history." The writer is the son of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... indeed rich in purely literary material; in the illustration of the temper of historic periods; in the exhibition of changes in language and in literary forms. The lover of sheer beauty in words, the analyzer of literary types, the student of biography, find here ample material for their special investigations. But the stress is laid, not so much upon the quality of individual genius, as upon the political and moral instincts of the English-speaking races, their long ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... candor, sound sense and lively fancy, gave the needed counterpoise to his moral qualities, keeping his enterprises within the domain of the useful and the practical, and thus saving him from the disappointments that too often checker the career of the philanthropist. This biography, written from long and intimate knowledge and admirable alike in spirit and execution, will find, we may trust, a multitude of readers among members of all sects and those who belong to none. Its interest is of a far more absorbing kind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... is the Law of Influence that WE BECOME LIKE THOSE WHOM WE HABITUALLY ADMIRE. Through all the range of literature, of history, and biography this law presides. Men are all mosaics of other men. There was a savour of David about Jonathan and a savour of Jonathan about David. Jean Valjean, in the masterpiece of Victor Hugo, is Bishop Bienvenu risen from the dead. Metempsychosis ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... this question, lay before us the sayings and doings of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris, calling these sayings and doings "the Revolution"; then they give a detailed biography of Napoleon and of certain people favorable or hostile to him; tell of the influence some of these people had on others, and say: that is why this movement took place and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... "Mr. Hood's biography is a positive boon to the mass of readers, because it presents a more correct view of the great soldier than any of the shorter lives published, whether we compare it with Southey's, Guizot's, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... for Saxon England against the Normans. His story is a fabric in which threads of fact and fancy seem equally interwoven; of much of his life, indeed, we are ignorant, and tradition has surrounded this part of his biography with tales of largely imaginary deeds; but he is a character of history as well as of folk lore, and his true story is full of the richest elements of romance. It is this noteworthy hero of old England with whom ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... thrilling as 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, or of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the letters of Murray remind one strongly of Thomas Davidson's, as published in that admirable and touching biography, A Scottish Probationer. It was my own chance to be almost in touch with both these gentle, tuneful, and kindly humorists. Davidson was a Borderer, born on the skirts of 'stormy Ruberslaw,' in the country of James Thomson, of Leyden, of the old Ballad minstrels. The son of a Scottish ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... of those half-hearted visitors who knocked the door of Bodhidharma only for the sake of curiosity. But the silent master was cautious enough to try the sincerity of a new visitor before admitting him to the Meditation Hall. According to a biography[FN30] of his, Shang Kwang was not allowed to enter the temple, and had to stand in the courtyard covered deep with snow. His firm resolution and earnest desire, however, kept him standing continually on one spot for seven days and nights with ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... notes, as 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 last note. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... John Hughes published his edition of Spenser's works in six volumes. This was the first attempt at a critical text of the poet, and was accompanied with a biography, a glossary, an essay on allegorical poetry, and some remarks on the "Faerie Queene." It is curious to find in the engravings, from designs by Du Guernier, which illustrate Hughes' volumes, that Spenser's knights wore the helmets and body armor of the Roman legionaries, over which is occasionally ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Lemon "always spoke of it to me as a project of himself and Henry Mayhew," wherein he is followed by the "Dictionary of National Biography;" and the Hon. T. T. a Beckett gives the exclusive honour to Henry Mayhew (wherein he is followed by the same authority in the notice of the latter writer), but admits the further ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... being too fitful, too prone to flit, bee-like, from flower to flower, now lighting momentarily upon an indecipherable tombstone, now perching upon a rusty morion, here dipping into crumbling palimpsests, there turning up a tattered reputation from heaps of musty biography, or discovering that the brightest names have had sad blots and blemishes scoured off by the attrition of Time's ceaseless current. We can expect little from investigators so volatile and capricious; else should we expect the topic we approach in this paper to have been long ago flooded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... which it is in one sense the merit, but in another the defect, that it sweeps over a far wider field than might be expected from its title. It is seldom, I think, a judicious thing to confuse the provinces of history and biography by turning the life of an individual into an elaborate history of his time; and in the few cases in which this method has been successfully pursued, the biographer has selected as his subject some man like Cromwell, or Frederick the Great, or Napoleon, who was indisputably the chief mover ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... "wonder-worker." His success gave rise to envy, and he was afraid of being poisoned by his less successful rivals. The reason why he left Rome is not certain, and the possible causes of his departure are discussed by Dr. Greenhill in the "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology." A pestilence raged in Rome at this time, but it is unlikely that Galen would have deserted his patients for that reason. Probably he disliked Rome, and longed for his native place. He had been in Pergamos only a very short time when he ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... for a brief time only, and then is gone. Of other people, we can know still less; we can observe something, we can get more from hearsay; but that is a chaos of impressions; the larger part is inference and construction, a work of the imagination, which may or may not be true. Even the biography, carefully made from all available data in the way of personal recollections, letters, and diaries, although it may approach to wholeness, remains, nevertheless, very largely a construction, a work of literary fiction. The ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... faults of construction and of language, and then minimized them in comparison with the noble motive and the unity and beauty of the whole. She told Philip that she was proud of him, and then insisted that, when his biography, life, and letters was published, it would appear, she hoped, that his dear friend had just a little to do with inspiring him. It was exactly the sort of letter an author likes to receive, critical, perfectly impartial, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... came later than the period now referred to. At this time his visions and revelations possessed him; he did not possess nor control them. In later years the spirit of the prophet was more subject to the prophet. But the Koran is an unintelligible book unless we can connect it with the biography of its writer. All the incidents of his life took shape in some revelation. A separate revelation was given to encourage or to rebuke him; and in his later years the too subservient inspiration came to appease the jealousy of his wives when ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... by the forelock and write your biography yourself! Then you will be sure to do no harm, inasmuch as no one is obliged to read your narrative; and you may do much good, because, if any one does read it and become interested in you, he will have the pleasant consciousness of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Frederic would not have said this of a work like that of M. de Schloezer; and as to Chasot, it is not too much to say that, after the days of Mollwitz and Hohenfriedberg, the day on which M. de Schloezer undertook to write his biography was perhaps the most ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... 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
... manifestations, however, were often a little eccentric, for its owner was as ignorant and unworldly as a child. For years he had fed his elderly imagination upon the most impassioned love scenes to be found in the pages of novel or biography. Unfortunately for him, there was nothing in the least modern about his literary taste; but he had confined his reading to the histories of the Evelinas and Cherubinas of yore, until his idea of the tender passion was as ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... contest for the Mississippi Valley. Louis Pelzer has written on the "Economic Factors in the Acquisition of Louisiana" in the "Proceedings" of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, vol. VI (1913). There is no adequate biography of either Monroe or Livingston. T. L. Stoddard has written on "The French Revolution in San ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... however, that, of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one—none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance—to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death. In most other cases and contingencies, the individual is ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bourgeois world, and to "bring it to reason." Of course, in vain. And so it came about that he, like all clear-sighted men, became a Socialist. He dared not, however, admit the fact in his life time, but ordered that, after his death, his auto-biography be published, containing his Socialist confession of faith. It happened to him as with Darwin, who cared not to be known in his life as an atheist. The bourgeoisie affects loyalty, religion and faith in authority because through the acceptance of these "virtues" ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... biographical sketches of all the old Loyalists, officers and soldiers. To do justice to their character and merits would require a massive volume. Besides, the data for such a volume are for the most part wanting. It is not the object of this history to give a biography of the Loyalists; that must be done by others, if attempted at all. The Loyalists were not writers, but workers. Almost the only history of them has been written by their enemies, whose object was to conceal the treatment they received, to depreciate their ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... travels, derives its principal value from enabling us to compare the countries visited, and their inhabitants, with their present state; and its principal interest from the personal adventures of the author. To such works, as well as to minute biography, time gives a value and utility, which they do not ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... complete life of Alexandre Dumas. The age has not produced the intellectual athlete who can gird himself up for that labour. One of the worst books that ever was written, if it can be said to be written, is, I think, the English attempt at a biography of Dumas. Style, grammar, taste, feeling, are all bad. The author does not so much write a life as draw up an indictment. The spirit of his work is grudging, sneering, contemptuous, and pitifully peddling. The great charge is that Dumas was a humbug, that he was not the author of his own ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... until now they have preserved the house where he spent his last days and have kept his grave sacred, a place of pilgrimages and miracles. The former dynasty of Romanoff was deeply interested in the biography of Feodor Kusmitch and this interest fixed the opinion that Kusmitch was really the Czar Alexander I, who had voluntarily taken upon ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... of the personal qualities of Gautama, afforded by the legendary anecdotes which rapidly grew into a biography of the Buddha; and by the birth stories, which coalesced with the current folk-lore, and were intelligible to all the world, doubtless played a great part. Further, although Gautama appears not to have meddled with the caste system, he refused to recognize any distinction, save that of perfection ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... earliest childhood he had possessed the quick perception, the instinct, which could read in people's characters their tendencies toward good and evil, and throughout his life he valued this ability above literary skill and finish. Mr. Forster makes a point of this in his biography, speaking of the noticeable traits in him: "What I had most, indeed, to notice in him at the very outset of his career, was his indifference to any praise of his performances on their merely literary merit, compared ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... certain persons, events, topics, beliefs, which stand in his own mind for universal knowledge, and he is naturally vexed to find how their importance dwindles when they appear in relation to the whole of nature and human life. In respect to Biography, especially in a Cyclopaedia which admits lives of the living as well as the dead, and to whose biographical department a great variety of authors contribute, there is an inherent difficulty of preserving the proper gradation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... physical effort as well as by mental—is the only one that is excusable for refreshing itself only with images from the ideal world. There are Sabbaths of rest to all sometimes, when opportunity may be found to gain something of a more nutritious quality; when, through biography we may learn to know some good and great character that will ever after stand in the mind an image of excellence to cheer us on our way, and make us feel with joy that there is power in us to do likewise; or perhaps some book of science ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... House, the most westerly of the three, Joanna Baillie, dramatic writer, and her sister Agnes lived. Mr. Shaw, writing in the "Dictionary of National Biography," says: "Geniality and hospitality were the characteristics of the two sisters during their residence at Hampstead, and even when one became an octogenarian and the other a nonagenarian they could enter keenly into the various literary and scientific ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the little Joker. Muensterberg has sufficiently revealed the variety-stage, "the Subconscious," and his biography of the various individual players and troupes is very elaborate. They are, one and all, Suggestions. And suggestion is the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... a vast bewildered chaos of Jewish history and biography; and most of the great events of the past, down to the period of the American Revolution, they instinctively attribute to Moses. There is a fine bold confidence in all their citations, however, and the record never ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... write, there were women whose employment writing seems to have been; but these were nuns safely shut up from the risk of billets-doux. In Dr. Maitland's Essays on the Dark Ages, he quotes from the biography of Diemudis, a devout nun of the eleventh century, a list of the volumes which she prepared with her own hand, written in beautiful and legible characters, to the praise of God, and of the holy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... with an amused smile, "don't you know the ridiculous story that Mr. Wemyss Reid, in his charming biography of my father, tells, and which, indeed, I believe was first told by Sir Henry Taylor, in his autobiography? I will tell it you. You know my father was acquainted with everybody, and his greatest pleasure in life was to introduce the notoriety of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... account, biography, muniment, record, annals, chronicle, narration, register, archives, memoir, narrative, story. autobiography, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... 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
... very great deal to learn, Nancy, dear. It is not the age that makes the aunt, Nancy, it is the nephew or the niece. And as for being old, Angelica and I aren't so very young. She was sixteen last winter and I am thirteen, and people have done a great deal at thirteen, as you'll learn when you read biography. And, even if we haven't been so very old before, we have to begin now and grow up at once, for we are going to live here and be independent ladies, with our cousin, Mr. Crayshaw, coming down now and then from London to see us, and—and ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... from a little book which is famous in India —the biography of a distinguished Hindoo judge, Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee; it was written by his nephew, and is unintentionally funny-in fact, exceedingly so. I offer here the closing scene. If you would like to sample the rest of the book, it can be had by applying to the publishers, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... into the true, the heavenly Mysteries, is told in its salient features in the Gospel biography. For this reason, S. Paul speaks as we have seen[211] of the birth of the Christ in the disciple, and of His evolution and His full stature therein. Every man is a potential Christ, and the unfolding ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... them, however widely they may differ in many respects, to place themselves at each other's point of view, and to be so far capable of that sympathetic appreciation which is essential to satisfactory biography. I believe that this is true of my brother and myself. Moreover, as we were brought up under the same roof, I have an intimate knowledge—now, alas! almost peculiar to myself—of the little home circle whose characteristics ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Biography Lines Suggested by the Singing of a Bird An Eastern Tale The Market-Man's License Lines on the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Scott My Schoolboy Days The Donation Visit Lines on the death of Miss Mary Hayes Lines on the death ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... life,—for thou veert a Great Man to thine order, and they have added thy biography to that of Abershaw and Sheppard,—thy life is before us. What a homily in its events! Gayly didst thou laugh into thy youth, and run through the courses of thy manhood. Wit sat at thy table, and Genius ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... farther from the end of his history. Now I maintain that, if he had lived for ever, and had not wearied of his task, then, even if his life had continued as event fully as it began, no part of his biography would have remained unwritten. For consider: the hundredth day will be described in the hundredth year, the thousandth in the thousandth year, and so on. Whatever day we may choose as so far on that he cannot hope to reach it, that day will be described in the corresponding year. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... his Life, by EDITH LYTTELTON (LONGMANS), is a most fascinating book. Mrs. ALFRED LYTTELTON might perhaps have contented herself with writing a formal biography of her husband. It would have been difficult for her, but she might, as I say, have done it. Instead of this she takes her readers by the hand in the friendliest manner and admits them with her into the heart and soul of the man with whom she was for twenty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... method adopted with regard to Dickens. Chesterton has written a commentary on the soul of Dickens, he has not in any strict sense written a biography; this was not necessary; the difficulty of Dickens lies in the interpretation of his work; his life, though having a great influence on his writings, has been written so often that Chesterton has refrained from building on 'another's ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... One Hundred Books of the Biography of the Great and Good King Grandissimo." "The Life of old Philo, the Philanthropist, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... monument by the Good Duke Alfred; too late—and this is doubtless a lucky circumstance—to become the victim of one of Father Capocchio's offensive sneers. Whoever is interested in her saintly career may purchase at Nepenthe, for the small sum of sixpence, an admirable biography by a young Canon of the Church, Don Giacinto Mellino. It gives a full account of her life and of those nine hundred and seventy-two miracles of hers which have been authenticated by eye-witnesses. No need, therefore, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... structure from all points of view. As President of the Elgin Chamber of Commerce, he was enabled once a year to produce no end of gratifying figures; he was fond of wearing on such occasions the national emblem in a little enamelled maple leaf; and his portrait and biography occupied a full page in a sumptuous work entitled Canadians of Today, sold by subscription, where he was described as the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... external spectator. Still in an age when critical utterance was more than 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 of securing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... not referred to in this list. The Lives of the Presidents, the Histories of the different States, and all works of local value are useful, and should be secured, if possible. The Magazine of American History will be found serviceable for reference on disputed points of American History and Biography. Holmes's American Annals is invaluable, and the early volumes of the North American Review contain a great deal of interesting historical matter. The American Cyclopaedia and Thomas's Dictionary of Biography are exceedingly serviceable in preparing essays and furnishing anecdotes. With ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... author of the first Oriental-Servian grammar and dictionary; and in the arrangement of the former has manifested the true spirit of a genuine grammarian. Besides these he has written several works of value, a biography of Prince Milosh, a series of annuals, a volume on the Proverbs, and idiomatic phrases of the Servians, etc.[11] But the best proof which he could give of the beauty, richness, and perfectibility of the vulgar Servian dialect, is his Collection of the Servian popular Songs, in four volumes, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... occurs: It is the mark of genuine conversation that the sayings can scarce be quoted with their full effect beyond the circle of common friends. To have their proper weight they should appear in a biography, and with the portrait of the speaker. Good talk is dramatic, it is like an impromptu piece of acting where each should represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you were to shift the speeches ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cochrane and Mr. Schofield two bottles of champagne, it being my last day in the States. We then proceeded to Perkins's Institution for the Blind, managed by my fellow-passenger, Dr. Howe. We saw the gifted Laura Bridgman, whose biography I give elsewhere.[A] She is an interesting-looking girl, fifteen years old, deaf, dumb, blind, and no smell: still Providence makes her contented and happy: she can read and write, and understand geography with her fingers, and is blessed with ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... says he frequently rose from his bed in the night and wrote for hours together. Then again he would not touch his pen for weeks. I believe his most rapidly written work was the one often pronounced his most spirited one, and a model as a biography, the "Life of Goldsmith." Sitting at my desk one day, he was looking at Forster's clever work, which I proposed to reprint. He remarked that it was a favorite theme of his, and he had half a mind to pursue it, and extend into a volume a sketch he had once ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the reading came to an end. Everybody said it had been unprecedentedly delightful, and they should never forget that dear Baroness so long as they lived, and they thought Mrs. Upjohn herself might have sat for the original of the biography, so identical were her virtues with those of the departed saint, and so exactly did she resemble her in every particular except just in the outward circumstances of her life. And Mrs. Upjohn modestly entreated them to desist drawing so unworthy a comparison, ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... most honourably declined all such help, and, like Sir W. Scott, resolved to clear off all claims against him by the aid of his pen alone. For the next twenty years of his life he laboured incessantly; and volumes of poetry, history, and biography came steadily from his pen. His best poems are his Irish Melodies, some fifteen or sixteen of which are perfect and imperishable; and it is as a writer of songs that Moore will live in the literature of this country. He boasted, and with truth, that it was he who awakened for ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... a 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
... like Sir Epicure Mammon, sought "for his meet flatterers the gravest of divines," but will not fail to find it in the pages of Roger North, who has depicted his character with a strength and accuracy of outline which no Vandyck or Lely of biography ever surpassed. Would that we could exchange some of those "faultless monsters" with which that fascinating department of literature too much abounds, for a few more such instantly recognised specimens of ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... had access to these letters for her biography of Robert Browning, and quotes several passages from them. With this exception, none of the letters have been published previously; and the published letters of Miss Barrett to Mr. R.H. Horne have not been drawn upon, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... reverted to the younger brother, who had received Elston. On his mother's death Robert gave up his profession and resided ever afterwards at Elston Hall. Of this Robert, Charles Darwin writes (What follows is quoted from Charles Darwin's biography of his grandfather, forming the preliminary notice to Ernst Krause's interesting essay, 'Erasmus Darwin,' ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... one occasion the late W. T. Stead, when he was helping me with the biography of my uncle, Mr. John Redmond, emphasizing upon me the tremendous importance of the study of Irish problems to an Empire like ours, where nearly every one of its component nations is a repetition ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... it has been written by an extraordinary man—a natural or wild man, a man of genius, who has never been operated on. The main distinction of the man of talent is that he has somehow managed to escape a complete operation. It is a matter of common observation in reading biography that in proportion as men have had lasting power in the world there has been something irregular in their education. These irregularities, whether they happen to be due to overwhelming circumstance or ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... do so. He was very voluble in a quiet way. Before long I was in possession of all the materials for an exhaustive biography of him. And the strange thing was that I could not, with the best will in the world, believe that he was lying to me. I had never heard a man telling so obviously the truth. And the truth about any one, however commonplace, must always ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... been mixed with William's biography, just as my life seems to mingle with the dust in his grave. But I came to an experience now of my own; unglorified by William, so strange that I cannot explain it unless there is what may be called a reversion to type in spirit, like this: ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... infanto-biography upon which we have been engaged, it is our design to cut off our heir, and bring our tale to a close. You may want to know why—or if you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... pass on: ne'er waste your time On bad biography or bitter rhyme: For what I am, this cumbrous clay insures, And what I was, is no affair ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... rank with the best of their class. He began his career with a mystification. His first work greatly puzzled the critics. It professed to be a translation of certain comedies, written by a Spanish actress, whose fictitious biography was prefixed and signed by Joseph L'Estrange, officer in the Swiss regiment of Watteville. This imaginary personage had made acquaintance with Clara Gazul in garrison at Gibraltar. Nothing was neglected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... on my consideration. I intend to state some of my conclusions, because the casual remarks of others, authors or critics, have been helpful to me. Why should not style as well as war have its history and biography, to which each man may contribute an unpretentious mite? Notably, I got much comfort from Darwin's complaint of frequent recurrences of inability to give adequate expression to thoughts, which he could then put down only in such crude, imperfect form as ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... has 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 the previous speculations, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... and Omar, and 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 was ablaze. "Drill your thoughts," he said; "shut out the gloomy and call in ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... according to his wont, of the nearest book (it lay on the table, with an old magazine and a little japanned tray containing Tarrant's professional cards—his denomination as a mesmeric healer), and spent ten minutes in turning it over. It was a biography of Mrs. Ada T. P. Foat, the celebrated trance-lecturer, and was embellished by a portrait representing the lady with a surprised expression and innumerable ringlets. Ransom said to himself, after reading a few ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... old notion, succeeds pity, and then comes the embrace. And that embrace is all the warmer because others have denounced the party to whom it is extended. It is fortunate that no man of talent has ever ventured to write the biography of Satan. Assuredly, had any such person done so, there would have been one sincere, enthusiastic, open, devout Devil-worshipper on earth, which would have been a novel, but not altogether a moral, spectacle for the eyes of men. A most clear, luminous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Morris's splendid gifts. The volume of 1891, entitled 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 was visited ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... statesmen. What you did reads and works like the puerile suggestion of a school-boy's theme. What you are further doing, to suppress, by force, the trade in slaves, would have been worthy my distinguished countryman whose biography has immortalised Cervantes. Humanity would smile at it, but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... of Inventions,' by the Marquis of Worcester, in which, as in the commonplace book of an author, one may find jotted down many an undeveloped idea of great promise. In this connection we may be allowed to borrow somewhat from a biography by Charles ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... one of the greatest musical celebrities of the time, was the first chapel master; but the Duke of Chandos, who loved ever to worship the Lord with the best of everything, made proposals to the illustrious Handel, and persuaded him to take the place of Pepusch. The Musical Biography tells us that "Dr. Pepusch fully acquiesced in the opinion of Handel's superior merit, and retired from his eminent and honourable situation without any expression whatever ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... had a 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, according to that ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... exchanging only the sense of each other's presence, a secure, profound satisfaction that belonged as much to their bodies as their minds; it rippled on their faces with their quiet smiling, it breathed with their breath. Sometimes she or her mother read aloud, Mrs. Browning or Charles Dickens; or the biography of some Great Man, sitting there in the velvet-curtained room or out on the lawn under the cedar tree. A motionless communion broken by walks in the sweet-smelling fields and deep, elm-screened lanes. And there were short ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... religious hatred and bigotry, bloodshed, suffering, and material stagnation throughout the so-called Christian era. He would approach the Gospels, not as books of almost undecipherable mystery, not as the biography of the blessed Virgin, but as containing the highest human interpretation of truth and its relation ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the surroundings among which Bunyan passed the earliest and most impressionable years of his life, we pass to the subject of our biography himself. The notion that Bunyan was of gipsy descent, which was not entirely rejected by Sir Walter Scott, and which has more recently received elaborate support from writers on the other side of the Atlantic, may be pronounced absolutely baseless. Even if ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... are, many of them, remarkable; and we believe they are known to have less of the mythical about them than those told in other departments. One who knows the game will feel that it is sufficiently absorbing to be woven in with the textures of government, of history, and of biography. It is of the nature of chess gradually to gather up all the senses and faculties of the player, so that for the time being he is an automaton chess-player, to whom life and death ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... recently given to the world without high expectation. It will be 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 of "Ecce Homo" comes forward to consider ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... artist, born in 1698, was employed to execute portraits for Birch's "Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain," published at London in 1743, and in these works may be seen the aesthetic taste inherited from his father, author of the biography of Dutch artists, and improved by study of the French masters. Although without great force or originality of manner, many of these have positive beauty. I would name especially the SIR WALTER RALEIGH ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... extended discussions might be demanded. If I had been governed by such notions as the Reviewer seems to entertain, my book, which he complains of as too long, would have been lengthened to the dimensions of a cyclopaedia of theology, biography, and philosophy. For keeping to my subject, and not diverting attention to writings of no inherent value, in any point of view, and which would contribute nothing to the elucidation of my topics, I am charged by this Reviewer, in the baldest terms, with ignorance, on almost every one of his sixty ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... writers to choose for biography men who have made no more noise in the world than Captain Winwood has; nor the act of gentlemen, in ordinary cases, to publish such private matters as this recital will present. But I consider, on the one hand, that Winwood's history contains as much of interest, and as good an example ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Mr Shushions from one year's end to the next: hence they could not have been intimate friends, or even friends: hence his father's emotion was throughout exaggerated and sentimental. His acquaintance with history and with biography told him that tyrants often carried sentimentality to the absurd, and he was rather pleased with himself for being able thus to correlate the general past and the particular present. What he did not suspect was the existence of circumstances which made the death of Mr Shushions in the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of our Country, and more particularly when our national History becomes the Biography of eminent Englishmen, English Heraldry has the strongest claims upon the attention not only of all Historians, but also of all who desire to become familiar with their writings. In like manner, Heraldry may be studied with no ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... the latest brief doings in current fiction; and usually in the background—and often long in abeyance—was something in the way of memoirs or biography, many-volumed, which could fill the empty hours either through ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... life he had strong religious convictions, and felt a loathing for the sins which he had committed. "On their account," says he in the concluding page of his biography, "there is a strong necessity for me to consider my ways and to inquire about a Saviour, since it is utterly impossible for me to save myself without obtaining knowledge of the merits of the Mediator, in which I hope I ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... perhaps claim indulgence for adding a little more of the biography of this particular bird, as a representative also of the instincts of her race. She completed the nest in about a weeks time, without any aid from her mate, who indeed appeared but seldom in her company and was now become nearly silent. For fibrous ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Company upon the Senegal Coast and in other parts of Africa—so ran his official title—although he may be little known, and the article which treats of him may be one of the most curtailed in the great collections of biography, deserves to occupy one of the most prominent positions among colonizers and explorers. Not content with extending the colony as far as its present limits, he explored countries which have been only lately revisited by Lieutenant Mage, or which have not been visited at all since ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... indulgence; and where there is one who has been able to struggle on under the habits of intemperance, there are thousands who have perished in the experiment, and some among the most powerful minds that the world ever produced. On the other hand, we shall find, by looking over the biography of the great men of every age, that those who have possessed the clearest and most powerful minds, neither drank spirits nor indulged in the pleasures of the table. Sir Isaac Newton, John Locke, Dr. Franklin, John Wesley, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... published have already appeared in Mr. S. Irenaeus Prime's biography of Morse, but others are now printed for the first time, and I have omitted many which Mr. Prime included. I must acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Prime for the possibility of filling in certain gaps in the correspondence; ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... to deliver an oral biography of Abraham Lincoln, and shall pass over the events which quickly led up to his nomination and election to ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Walraven obtained all the information he desired concerning Miss Mollie Dane. Some half dozen of the actors were stopping at the hotel, and proved very willing, under the influence of brandy and water, to give the free-handed stranger Miss Dane's biography as ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Administration-ward. The police accident report is detailed and in triplicate. There is sure to be in the "personal files" at Culebra a history of the deceased and the names of his nearest relative or friend both on the Isthmus and in the States; for every employee must make out his biography at the time of his engagement. There are men whose regular duty it is to list and take care of his possessions down to the last lead pencil, and to forward them to the legal heirs. A year's pay goes to his family—were ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... purpose to turn aside from the narrative in order to indulge in moral reflections, because such reflections will come with tenfold force if they are naturally suggested to the reader's mind by the circumstances of the biography. But from first to last it will be abundantly obvious to every thoughtful mind that alike the morality and the philosophy of Paganism, as contrasted with the splendour of revealed truth and the holiness of Christian life, are but as moonlight ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... your own tools and all, and don't stop where other folk leaves off: witness yon bluebells ye took to make skies with! But, bless the lad, he's not heeding me! Is it the bit of garden you're looking at? Come out then." And, putting the biography back in the book-shelf, the kindly old man led Jan out ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a Great Variety of Miscellaneous Literature, Books on America, Art, and Banking, Curious Memoirs, Facetiae, Wit and Humour, Useful Works on Geology, Mineralogy, and other popular Sciences, Books on Shakspeare and the Drama, Illustrated Publications, Biography, History, etc., with Selections in French, Italian, Spanish, and Cotinental Literature; also the following at the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... a father and to whom he dedicated a work on the education of youth. Little is known of her during her marriage with Zwingli. But a single short letter is extant, written by her husband from Bern, in which he asks her to send a cap-pattern to one of her relations there. Solomon Hess in his Biography thinks that Zwingli read his writings aloud to her. The author begs leave to doubt this, indeed rather to believe, that he would have heartily laughed, if the learned stuff was tedious to her. Mind and heart she certainly had, and he talked with her not merely about ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... p. 164.).—John Houghton, the editor of the periodical noticed by your correspondent, A Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, was one of those meritorious men who well deserve commemoration, though his name is not to be found in any biography that I am acquainted with. He was an apothecary, and became a dealer in tea, coffee, and chocolate. He was in politics a loyalist, or Tory, and was admitted a member of the Royal Society in 1679-80. He ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... disappointments which fell to Hoelderlin's lot would practically require the writing of his biography from the time of his graduation from Tuebingen to his return from Bordeaux, almost the entire period of his sane manhood. Unsuccessful in his first position as a tutor, and unable, after having abandoned ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... many fields of labor, to attain supreme success in any direction. The best result of his life is his own exuberant and unresting character, which harmonized all the diversities in his career; and adequately to behold this there is needed a fuller and more philosophical biography of him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Now, perhaps, she would understand what his reserve concealed. The satisfaction of declining further assistance was enormous. He read his letter several times aloud. This was the great style; he could imagine this incident forming a landmark in the biography of a notable man. Now for a fair copy, and in a hand, mind you, that gave no hint of his care ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... to those who have read the Biography of Lawrence Oliphant, and that of Dr. Anna Kingsford by Professor Maitland, that Lawrence Oliphant, who became a Shaker (a member of a sect who employ hypnotism, as Mr. H. Vincent describes, to bind their neophytes to them),[5] wrote commonplace vulgar verse on religious ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... reading of good books, so that she may store her mind with thoughts and information which will be helpful to her in dealing with her patients. No woman who is a nurse can be too well read, or too well informed in art, music, biography, history, and the public affairs of the day. If a girl, who feels that nursing is her real work, prefers to earn her living between the time when she leaves school and the day that she is accepted as a probationer, she may enter some other calling, ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... begun with no hope or intention of making a formal and finished biography, but only to place on record some of my brother's sayings and doings, to fix scenes and memories before they suffered from any dim obliteration of time, to catch, if I could, for my own comfort and ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the army and navy, the capitalists did the most ghastly business under the mask of the purest patriotism. Incredible as it may seem, this pretension was invoked and has been successfully maintained to this very day. You can scarcely pick up a volume on the Civil War, or a biography of the statesmen or rich men of the era, without wading in fulsome accounts of the untiring patriotism of ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... my purpose here to attempt a portrait of those noble friends whom I thus met for the first time. To an abler pen than mine should be assigned the honor of writing the biography of Robert Stuart. All who have enjoyed the happiness of his acquaintance, or, still more, a sojourn under his hospitable roof, will carry with them to their latest hour the impression of his noble bearing, his genial humor, his ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... which he put into even his 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 ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... show her right and wrong embodied in human lives. They made her feel that God wanted her to do right for the same reason that they did, because He loved her. First in Bible narrative told in bedtime stories, then in history and biography, and finally in the experience of those around them, she had been shown the happy contrast of good, God- pleasing life with that which is selfish and wicked. So thorough and practical had been the teaching in this respect, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... no such things as beginnings. Even a man's birth is a quite arbitrary point at which to launch his biography; for the determining factors in his career are to be found in persons, events, and conditions that existed before he was ever thought of. For the biographer, however, and for the novelist as a writer of fictitious biography, birth forms a good conventional starting-point. He can give a chapter or ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... manly, generous reference by Buller properly indicated that he not only recognized his own limitations, but was glad to pay tribute to the literary genius who wrote that Classic The Great Lone Land and the noble biography ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... owing to an error it had happened to the great so-and-so, he, in his quality of philosopher, had instantly decided what frame of mind the great so-and-so ought to have assumed for the perusal of his biography. He carefully and deliberately adopted that frame of mind now. He thought of Marcus Aurelius on the futility of fame; he remembered his life-long attitude of gentle, tired scorn for the press; he reflected with wise ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... authoritative Biography of the poet, published in 1886, was followed in 1890 by an edition of the Poems (Macmillans), is due the addition of several pieces belonging to the juvenile period, incorporated by him in the pages of the "Life of Shelley". Professor Dowden has also been enabled, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley |
