Biographies Quotes · Page 10

Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.

— Horace

When I was younger, when I was at school, I did read a lot of fiction. I think as you get older…

— Ronald Frame

The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and…

— Henry David Thoreau

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What's bad about my biography? My father was a worker, my brothers, too, and I have always honestly served my country.

— Ivan Bagramyan

This needs to work on that level, but it has the additional strain of it's going to be profoundly scrutinized by political…

— James Ponsoldt

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

— Jim C. Hines

biographies are a little like marriages: You only have room in your life for one or two.

— Phyllis Rose

The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly…

— Samuel Smiles

I know a bit about his [Sirk] life, but it's more about his style than biography. He was European and came out…

— Todd Haynes

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common…

— Henry David Thoreau

At the Sex Institute in Bloomington, Indiana, they were a phenomenal help, too. We went out there for a few days, and…

— Liam Neeson

The rumors of Frank Sinatras violence and his ties to organized crime were such that journalists joked in print about me ending…

— Kitty Kelley

I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

Rich as we are in biography, a well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many…

— Thomas Carlyle

I am finishing a biography of [Gustave] Flaubert. Because he is the opposite of what I am. One needs to rub up…

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies.

— Claire Tomalin

In the late 1990s, I left the teaching field to write biographies and histories for young adults.

— Charles J. Shields

“Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.”

— Deana J. Driver

During my second year at Edinburgh [1826-27] I attended Jameson's lectures on Geology and Zoology, but they were incredible dull. The sole…

— Charles Darwin

For no sooner had I begun to read this great work [Frasier, The Golden Bough ], than I became immersed in it…

— Bronislaw Malinowski

Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to make it. I have lived my life, well and…

— Clara Barton

My father was a fun-loving person, not the evil, sadistic, macho, woman-hating guy that comes through in some of the biographies.

— Jack Hemingway

I had to do the book because there was an unauthorised biography which didn't tell it like it was.

— Cilla Black

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

— Thomas Carlyle