Biography Quotes

231 Biography quotes by 182 unique authors

Biography is the best form of history. — Josh Billings
There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography. — Henry David Thoreau
I can find my biography in every fable that I read. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no history; only biography. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps. — Eric Bentley
Eric Walrond, handsome, cosmopolitan, and beguilingly enigmatic, may have been the most promising literary talent of the Harlem Renaissance.... James Davis's finely written, beautifully paced… — David Levering Lewis
The last act in the biography of the hero is that of the death or departure. — Joseph Campbell
There will be some trouble about 'biography' because I have never troubled myself to supply particulars of my early life to any writer. — Arthur Wing Pinero
One puts off the biography like you put off death. To write an autobiography is to etch the words on your own gravestone. — Carlos Fuentes
It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all… — Guillermo Cabrera Infante
What use is there for a biography of myself? I'm just a movie actor. — Conrad Veidt
People think that because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since… — Anthony Powell
Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel. — James McBride
We have chosen to write the biography of our disease because we love it platonically - as Amy Lowell loved Keats - and have sought… — Hans Zinsser
Political science without biography is a form of taxidermy. — Harold Lasswell
My biography of Frank Sinatra is not paean to his music but rather an illumination of the man behind the music, who once described himself… — Kitty Kelley
I would love to do an unauthorized biography about Congress... It's like a secret society up there. — Kitty Kelley
I don't give you editorial control. I want to meet you. I want to interview everybody who's ever known you. I want to see your… — Kitty Kelley
Discretion is not the better part of biography. — Lytton Strachey
I had to do the book because there was an unauthorised biography which didn't tell it like it was. — Cilla Black
Sometimes I read a biography of some tempestuous artist and find myself longing for fireworks! booze! bloody fights!; I do think that life must be… — Lauren Groff
I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but… — Peter Ackroyd
When I was 8 years old, I made my own encyclopedia of American biography - Johnny Appleseed, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Charles Lindbergh,… — Douglas Brinkley
In a world of alternative lifestyle options, strategic life planning becomes of special importance. Like lifestyle patterns, life plans of one kind or another are… — Anthony Giddens
Eight years ago, I was drawn into Keats's world by Andrew Motion's biography. Soon I was reading back and forth between Keats's letters and his… — Jane Campion

Who Wrote These Biography Quotes

182 authors contributed a total of 231 Biography Quotes, led by these top contributors: