"Biography" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I? You know, a gentleman, I served for two years in the cavalry, then I knocked about here in Petersburg, then I married Marfa Petrovna and lived in the country. There you have my biography!" ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... live much among them during the impressionable periods of his life, and so become saturated in their atmosphere and their environment;—then he may hope to make his most elaborate piece of animal biography not less true to nature than his transcript of an isolated fact. The present writer, having spent most of his boyhood on the fringes of the forest, with few interests save those which the forest afforded, may claim to have had the intimacies of the wilderness as it were thrust upon him. The earliest ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... such violent controversies, such puerile ideas of God and His thought toward man, and such 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
... with the intimacy of old friends. Several books, one of them still open at the page where Penelope had been reading, were on a table beside the window. Gordon took them up one by one and ran over their titles. "Ah, poetry—and fiction—and biography—how catholic your interests are, Penelope! But I knew that already. Sociology, too. Yes, I knew that is your favorite study. It is mine, too, but I haven't had as much time yet to read along that line as I would like. What have you lately read on ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... obituary; the adventure had happened to others; and he could recall how, on his having heard that 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 modesty that in art ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... one of the strangest friendships, out of which developed the most delightful biography in all literature. Boswell's taste for literary adventures, and Johnson's literary vagrancy met in a companionship that found much satisfaction in the bohemianism of the inns and coffee houses of old London. Boswell thus describes the eccentric doctor's outlook on ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... collection, the difficulty was to keep within bounds, and to select only such specimens as merited a place in a volume necessarily limited, by their celebrity, their wit, their beauty, their historical interest, or the light they might happen to throw on the obscure biography of the most remarkable actors in the scenes which they describe. It would be too much to claim for these ballads the exalted title of poetry. They are not poetical in the highest sense of the word, and possibly would not have been so effective for the ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... War many offers of places of honor and fame came to General Robert E. Lee. He refused them all, says Thomas Nelson Page, in his biography of the soldier. The only position which he finally did accept, was the presidency of Washington College,—now Washington and Lee University, at Lexington, Virginia, with a ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... Mohawk Trail, Percy Keese Fitzhugh Animal Heroes, Ernest Thompson Seton Baby Elton, Quarter-Back, Leslie W. Quirk Bartley, Freshman Pitcher, William Heyliger Billy Topsail with Doctor Luke of the Labrador, Norman Duncan The Biography of a Grizzly, Ernest Thompson Seton The Boy Scoots of Black Eagle Patrol, Leslie W. Quirk The Boy Scouts of Bob's Hill, Charles Pierce Burton Brown Wolf and Other Stories, Jack London Buccaneers and Pirates ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... than have thee govern it ill." To watch over the position and interests of all parties in his dominions, and to secure to all his subjects strict and prompt justice, this was what continually occupied the mind of Louis IX. There are to be found in his biography two very different but equally striking proofs of his solicitude in this respect. M. Felix Faure has drawn up a table of all the journeys made by Louis in France, from 1254 to 1270, for the better cognizance of matters requiring ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... other, vanity and policy had a word to say. After much indecision, Moronval decided to strike a great blow, thinking that, perhaps, as he had not profited much by the prince living, he might gain something from him dead. So a pompous funeral was arranged. All the daily papers published a biography of the little king of Dahomey. It was a short one, to be sure, but lengthened by a panegyric of the Moronval Institute, and of its principal. The discipline of the establishment was commended; its hygienic regulations, the peculiar skill of its medical adviser,—nothing ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... xii. No. 10) to more than seven of these hybrids shot in Switzerland and France. M. Deby asserts ('Zoologist,' vol. v., 1845-46, p. 1254) that several have been shot in various parts of Belgium and Northern France. Audubon ('Ornitholog. Biography,' vol. iii. p. 168), speaking of these hybrids, says that, in North America, they "now and then wander off and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... 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 talk over business, and ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... 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
... with good old Mrs. Pettifer, and fell into a stupor of utter misery and black despair. Nothing seemed to rouse her. It chanced, however, that Mrs. Pettifer was a subscriber of the Paddiford Lending Library. From that village treasure-trove she had borrowed the biography that was lying on the table when, like a hunted deer, poor Janet took shelter in her home. After a day or two, Janet picked up the book, dipped into it, and at length 'became so arrested by that pathetic missionary story that she could ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... 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 of Miss Eleanora Henderson Lines on the death of ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... which have been put to the test of public opinion and have not been found wanting,—books, in other words, which have come to be regarded as standards in the fields of knowledge—literature, religion, biography, history, politics, art, economics, sports, sociology, and belles lettres. Together they make the most complete and authoritative ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... "That's the Problem, no doubt. Viewed as a Problem, outside of oneself, it is a most interesting one. Viewed as a portion of one's own biography, it is, I must admit, very distressing!" He groaned, but instantly added, with a chuckle, "As to myself, I think ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... caused much discussion and is still widely read. His "Ascent of Man" is regarded by many as his greatest work. The address reprinted here has appeared in hundreds of editions, and has been an inspiration to thousands of peoples all over the world. There is an interesting biography of Drummond by Professor George Adam Smith, his close friend and ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... what the General himself thought. His Tennessee friends had conceived the idea that he could be elected, and already they were at work to realize this vision. One of the most active was John H. Eaton, who had lately written the hero's biography down to the return from New Orleans. Another of his friends was Governor Blount. John Rhea, Felix Grundy, and half a dozen more helped. But the man who really made Jackson President was his near neighbor and his inseparable companion of ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... many friends had passed, little was said about him. It was only when the superlative quality of his art was recognised beyond a small circle of admirers that people began to gather up such fragments of biography as they ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... correct than either the short form, Lot Cary, used by the Rev. D. Stratton, D.D. of St. Albans, West Virginia, in his "Life and Work of Lot Cary, Missionary in Africa," or the longer form, Lott Carey, used by the Rev. James B. Taylor in "The Biography of Elder Lott Carey" and by many other writers for the following consideration: There is no trace of Cary spelling his name Lot Cary. In the American Baptist Magazine and Gammell's "A History of American Baptist Missions" ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... biography, it is a sketch; possibly I might say it is an outline. At any rate the life of our subject can not be written till other chapters are added, and the end comes. May it be ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... with the same diligence as he laid it in." He was always hesitating and inquiring, raising objections and removing them, and waiting for clearer light and fuller discovery. Baker, after many years passed in biography, left his manuscripts to be buried in a library, because that was imperfect ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... serious. Crabbe, our chief realist poet, has an altogether astonishing likeness to the chief prose realist of France, Gustave Flaubert, so far as his manner of view goes, for in point of style the two have small resemblance. One of the most striking things in Crabbe's biography is his remembrance of the gradual disillusion of a day of pleasure which, as a child, he enjoyed in a new boat of his father's. We all of us, except those who are gifted or cursed with the proverbial duck's back, have these ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... direction are the prefaces which he contributed much later and gratuitously to John Ballantyne's Novelists' Library—things which hardly yield to Johnson's Lives as examples of the combined arts of criticism and biography. At the time of which we speak he was 'making himself' in this direction as in others. I hope that Jeffrey and not he was responsible for a fling at Mary Woollstonecraft in the Godwin article, which would have ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... production, the author affirms, was written with perfect impartiality. He sometimes censured the Fathers, praised heretics, when they deserved it, and occasionally even commended the Popes. It was extremely popular, though all were not pleased with its liberal spirit. A Comparative Biography of Asiatic and Indian Heroes, after Plutarch's style; A short Historical Account of his Native Town; The Narrative of Niels Klim; His Autobiography; and a History of the Jewish Nation, digested from the works of Josephus, ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... "The biography of this duck," says Mabel Osgood Wright, "belongs rather to the cook-book than to a bird list," even its most learned biographers referring mainly to its "eatable qualities," Dr. Coues even taking away its character in that respect when he says "there ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... first recoiled. In others, the break-up of the movement under such a chief led them on, more or less, and some very far, into a career of speculative Liberalism like that of Mr. Blanco White, the publication of whose biography coincided with Mr. Newman's change. In many others, especially in London and the towns, it led to new and increasing efforts to popularise in various ways—through preaching, organisation, greater attention to the meaning, the solemnities, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... 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
... led him to alter the natural relations of the facts and principles with which he deals; but still we feel bound to give him credit for an extensive study of his subject, and for bringing together numerous interesting details which can be found in no other single biography of Cromwell. Among his authorities and guides we are sorry to see that he has not included Hallam. The portion of the latter's Constitutional History of England devoted to the reign of Charles I., the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... were the words of impassioned praise that fell from the lips of a young, motherless, Roman Catholic girl, one of the many whom Mrs. Botta had taught and befriended. Once, when reading to Mrs. Botta in connection with her "History," a man called to see her about getting material for her biography. To my surprise, she waved her hand to me saying, "This young lady is to be my biographer." As I felt entirely unable to attempt such a work I told her it should be made up of letters from a host of friends who had known ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... this department of PUNCHINELLO as complete as possible, we have secured the services of the most competent authorities in literature, art, the sciences in general, history, biography, and the vast vague unknown. The answers furnished by us to our correspondents may therefore be relied upon as ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... our intention to pursue the biography of Andersen beyond what is necessary for understanding the singular circumstances in which his mind grew up; we shall not, therefore, detain our readers much longer on this part of our subject. His scholastic progress appears to have been at first slow and painful; the rector ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... since Confederation biographies again give the most accessible record. Sir John S. Willison's "Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party" (1903) is the best political biography yet written in Canada. Sir Richard Cartwright's Reminiscences (1912) reflects that statesman's individual and pungent views of affairs, while Sir Charles Tupper's "Recollections of Sixty Years" (1914) and John Castell Hopkins's "Life and Work ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... because the most genuine, biography of Burns is furnished by his own writings. His letters will, if carefully studied, disprove many of the positions taken up so confidently by would-be interpreters of his history. It is not the purpose of this discursive ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... work is to set forth with as much clearness as possible the more important facts in the history of England in the nineteenth century. We have chosen to do this through the medium of biography, in the belief that the lives of a few representative men would present better opportunities for interesting and effective treatment than an historical narrative, which must have been encumbered by a mass of detail not capable of effective ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... the forthcoming inevitable fiasco? How to explain such behavior on the part of one who was, from the crown of his head to his toes, thoroughly a musician, a lover of all things musical, even Kashkine, intimate and blind adorer of Gregoriev as his biography of Ivan shows him to be, never discovered. Whether his native shyness simply put off an evil hour as long as possible: whether, full of the excitement of giving the final touches to his new work—a business which ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Mr. Cobden, whom it mentioned, to the surprise of the House, by name, and it terminated with a panegyric of himself, elaborate, but rather clumsily expressed."—Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography, by Benjamin D'Israeli. ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... anticipation of his achievements, impressed Bjoernson so deeply with his genius, was, however, by others, who felt themselves to be no less entitled to an opinion, regarded as an "original," not to say a fool. That he was decidedly queer, his biography ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... might be betrayed, as did also the Lord' [220:2]. This account is thus the earliest instance of a favourite type of hagiology, which sees the sufferings of Christ visibly reflected and imaged in detail in the servants of Christ, and of which ancient and mediaeval biography furnishes numerous examples. This idea of literal conformity to the life and Passion of Christ runs through the document. Some of the coincidences are really striking; but in other cases the parallelism is highly ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... are new in the biography of the great architect. Mr. Planche's too brief Remarks on the Costume make us join with Mr. Collier in regretting that he did not extend to all the plates "the resources of his attainments and talents;" while the five masques and the general preface, contributed ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... is the biography begun by the late Dr Pohl, and completed after his death by E.V. Mandyczewski. To this work, as yet untranslated, every subsequent writer is necessarily indebted, and the present volume, which I may fairly claim to be the fullest life of Haydn that has so far appeared in English, is ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... works have been divided as I have stated them. Of these, two portions have been dealt with already—as far as I am able to deal with them. Of the Orations and Epistles I have spoken as I have gone on with my task, because the matter there treated has been available for the purposes of biography: the other two, the Rhetoric and the Philosophy, have been distinct from the author's life.[239] They might have been good or bad, and his life would have been still the same; therefore it is necessary ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... was proved guilty, the other committed suicide. It was subsequently shown that one of the men had been an agent of the Burkes in raising India stock. (Dilke's "Papers of a Critic," ii-, p. 333—"Dict. Nat Biography": art Burke.) Paine, in his letter to the Attorney-General (IV. of this volume), charged that Burke had been a "masked pensioner" ten years. The date corresponds with a secret arrangement made in 1782 with Burke for a virtual pension to his ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... with exemplary usefulness and fidelity. But, though he is often pressed, he never contests a constituency, feeling, perhaps, that it is impossible to serve both Society and the Caucus. In time his name becomes the common property of all Society journals—his biography is published in one, his discreet service is extolled in another, while a third goes so far as to hint that, if the truth were known, it would be found that the various departments of the State could not possibly carry on their affairs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... to its close a life which, brief as was its span, may be said, perhaps, to have comprised within itself a greater variety of those excitements and interest which spring out of the deep workings of passion and of intellect than any that the pen of biography has ever before commemorated. As there still remain among the papers of my friend some curious gleanings which, though in the abundance of our materials I have not hitherto found a place for them, are too valuable towards the illustration of his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... with the return of Ulysses from the Trojan War, and lasts ten years, as the account runs. But the poet is not writing a history, not even a biography, in the ordinary sense; he does not follow step by step the hero's wanderings, or state the events in chronological order; we shall see how the poem turns back upon itself and begins only some forty days before its close. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... council in anger. One is tempted to believe that some essential point is omitted from the accounts we have of this incident, or that some serious mistake has been made in them, either in the speech of Bishop Hugh given us in his biography or in the terms of Richard's demand recorded in two slightly different forms. Hubert must have believed that the baronage in general were going to follow the example given them by the two bishops and refuse the required service, or he would not have ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... leader, Martin Luther. He has had many critics and many champions, but neither his critics nor his champions feel that the last word concerning him has been spoken, for scarcely a year passes that does not witness the publication of a new biography. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... a more important personage than even Lady Hercules, which is my mother. They say "like master, like man," and I may add, "like lady, like maid." Lady Hercules was fine, but her maid was still finer. Most people when they write their biography, if their parents were poor, inform you that they left them a good name and nothing else. Some parents cannot even do that; but all parents can at all events leave their children a pretty name, by taking a little trouble at their baptism. My mother's name was Araminta, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... Hasebrock, author of a volume of essays called "Truth and Dream," has been likened to the English Charles Lamb. Vosmaer is another eminent figure in Dutch literature; he wrote a "Life of Rembrandt" which is a masterpiece of biography. Kuenen, who died but ten years ago, was a biblical critic of European celebrity. But the list of contemporary Dutch writers is long and brilliant, and the time to speak critically of ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... directed by Prince Bismarck to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 1st of January, relating to the biography of the late Mr. Motley. His Highness deeply regrets that the state of his health and pressure of business do not allow him to contribute personally, and as largely as he would be delighted to do, to your depicting of a friend whose memory will be ever dear to him. Since I had ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "Was there no man left worth writing about, that they should make a biography about this one? It is like a life of Napoleon with all the battles left out. They are conceited enough to put his age in the upper corner of each page too, as if anybody cared how old ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... serious problem, here in America, this fitting in music with other studies. Both public and private schools try to cover so much ground that there is very little time left for music or anything else. The music pupil also needs to know musical literature, history and biography, to be familiar with the lives and writings of the great composers. Take the letters and literary articles of Robert Schumann, for instance. How interesting and ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... to you on Gray's Life,(206) if you had not prevented me. I am charmed with it, and prefer it to all the biography I ever saw. The style is excellent, simple, unaffected; the method admirable, artful, and judicious. He has framed the fragments, as a person said, so well, that they are fine drawings, if not finished ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... constituted the early part of his book. And apart from the Jansenism which is the work of a not very eminent bishop who wrote a Latin treatise which is now unread, there is also, so to speak, a Jansenism of the individual biography. A moment of Jansenism may naturally take place, and take place rightly, in the individual; particularly in the life of a man of great and intense intellectual powers, who cannot avoid seeing through human beings and observing the vanity of their thoughts and of their avocations, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... therefore, who have been privileged to live amongst the ruder peoples, and to learn their language well, and really to be friends with some of them (which is hard, since friendship implies a certain sense of equality on both sides), should try their hands at anthropological biography. Anthropology, so far as it relates to savages, can never rise to the height of the most illuminating kind of ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... that a vast improvement has taken place in translations, whether prose or verse. From quarter to quarter the Dictionary of National Biography continues its stately progress. But the noblest monument of English scholarship is The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, founded mainly on the materials collected by the Philological Society, edited by Dr. James Murray, and published at the cost of the University of Oxford. The name ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the other hand, could be an expert on 'Greater Britain' at thirty and yet devote his old age to elaborating the details of Local Government and framing programmes of social reform for the working classes of our towns. Accidents these may be, but they lend to Victorian biography the charm of a fanciful arabesque or mosaic ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Biography is a telescope of life, through which we can see the extremes and excesses of the varied properties of the human heart. Wisdom and folly, refinement and vulgarity, love and hatred, tenderness and cruelty, happiness ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... devouter books—the Early Fathers in particular being up a winding stair where even the soberest reader might break his neck. Be these things as they may, leather bindings in sets of "grenadier uniformity" ornament the upper and lighter rooms. Biography straggles down a hallway, with a candle needed at the farther end. A room of dingy plays—Wycherley, Congreve and their crew—looks out through an area grating. It was through even so foul an eye, that when alive, they looked upon the world. As for theology, except for the ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... no Pullman cars; the words "boodle" and "wire," in the sense here used, had never been heard. In precisely the same way the trained philologist can often determine with great certainty the date of a writing. He knows the biography of words or word-forms; and he may know that some of the words or the word- forms contained in a certain writing were not yet in the language at the date when it is said to have been written. It is by evidence of this nature that the critics fix the date of the Book of Daniel at a period ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... it a Prussian military despotism. Next, it set up Democracy as the ideal for all peoples to live by. Finally, it revealed that the economic, industrial, social, and moral concerns of men are deeper than the political. When I came to review Roosevelt's career consecutively, for the purpose of this biography, I saw that many of his acts and policies, which had been misunderstood or misjudged at the time, were all the inevitable expressions of the principle which was the master-motive of his life. What we had imagined to be shrewd ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... The biography of Geoffrey Chaucer is no longer a mixture of unsifted facts, and of more or less hazardous conjectures. Many and wide as are the gaps in our knowledge concerning the course of his outer life, and doubtful ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... interested to inquire to whom refer passages in such poems as "Memories," "My Playmate," and "A Sea Dream," I now feel at liberty to give such information as could not properly be given at the time when I undertook the biography of the poet. ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... he cried. "If you cut out about a dozen pages of my biography, at least let me explain how I saved my father. You ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... Biography, where honest and true, is no doubt one of the most fascinating and instructive phases of literature; but it requires a higher Intelligence than any (however intimate) friend of a man to do it fairly ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... biography, travels, curious facts and strange happenings, and science. And I detest ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... magazines when he met with his regrettably early end. Apart from his poems he left no literary remains, except a few letters too hideously ungrammatical for publication. The sole materials for a biography lay in the memory of Toller, who by a stroke of luck happened to have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... In his youth, when his hair was as black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion mahogany, the report that he was a Creole found ready credence. And so did this gossip of mixed parentage follow him that Mrs. Sutherland Orr, in her biography, takes an entire chapter to prove that in Robert Browning's veins there flowed neither ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... is a biography that is not easy to deal with or that can be lightly handled," said Durtal to himself, as he arranged the notes he had collected by degrees as bearing on ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... have proved perfectly faithful soldiers of the Queen. The perversion of morals, however, which looks on such violations of military duty as praiseworthy, has not been confined to writers of the stamp of Mr. O'Brien. A striking instance of it is furnished by a recent American biography. Among the early Fenian conspirators was a young man named John Boyle O'Reilly. He was a genuine enthusiast, with a real vein of literary talent; in the closing years of his life he won the affection and admiration of very honourable men, and ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... admit. Here the intensity of her application to her studies caused a severe malady, which has frequently recurred in after-life. At the age of thirteen years she wrote a poem entitled La Palma, which the author of her biography declares to be worthy of Herrera, and which led Espronceda, a poet of Estremadura, a man of genius, and the author of several translations from Byron, whom he resembled both in mental and personal characteristics, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... up on her birthday, when she had just attained her eighteenth year. This was the only circumstance worth recording which the biographer can find noted in the family annals at this period. In this dearth of events, may we take the liberty of introducing, according to the fashion of modern biography, a few private letters? They are written by persons of whom the reader as yet knows nothing—Mr. Percy's second and third sons, Alfred and Erasmus. Alfred was a barrister; Erasmus a physician: they were both at this time in London, just commencing their professional career. Their ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... from Lindsay Swift's "Brook Farm"; G. P. Putnam's Sons for their kindness in allowing quotations from their work, "Historic Towns of New England"; Small, Maynard & Co., for the use of the anecdote credited to their Beacon Biography of Samuel F. B. Morse; Little, Brown & Co., for their marked courtesy in the extension of quotation privileges, and Mr. Samuel T. Pickard, Whittier's literary executor, for the new ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... cavaliers 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. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... reasons of mere mechanical symmetry, it will be well to divide this Chapter of Milton's Biography into Sections corresponding with those of Oliver's Continued Protectorate in the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... days the first edition was exhausted, and a second, with illustrations, was called for. In two more, it became necessary to issue a third, with a biography of the author, in which it was shown that Mien-yaun was the worst-abused individual in the world, and that Pekin had forever dishonored itself by ill-treating the greatest genius that city had ever produced. In the fourth edition, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... to the old mansion to seek the girl who had attracted his attention on that Sabbath Day in June, little dreaming that in those conversations which Dorothy had heard between her father and John Adams she had pieced together a complete biography of her Hero. She knew that in 1737, when the Reverend John Hancock was minister of the First Church in the North Precinct of Braintree (afterward Quincy), he had made the following entry in the ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Irving's boyhood and youth are alive with the freshness of an early memory, which conserves along with him the Crugers, Clintons, Livingstons, Ogdens, and other old and honored names of New-York. The biography which inspires this reminiscence gives a sketch of the early history of the family, and as its author has thus opened the subject, it will not, we presume, be considered an intrusion if I pursue the thread of domestic incident a little ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... us takes the reader not only through all the adventures and chances of the desperate life of the llaneros or herdsmen of South America, but also gives many startling scenes from the revolutions of Colombia, embracing an excellent biography of the truly great general Paez, the friend and colleague of Bolivar. But when we remember that it contains such a mass of valuable historical material, from the pen of a son of General Paez, aide-de-camp to his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... portrait painting, both in miniature and at large, in oil as well as in crayons. The genius of Cervantes was transfused into the novels of Fielding, who painted the characters, and ridiculed the follies of life, with equal strength, humour, and propriety. The field of history and biography was cultivated by many writers of ability: among whom we distinguish the copious Guthrie, the circumstantial Ralph, the laborious Carte, the learned and elegant Robertson, and above all, the ingenious, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... which Baron von Korf and everybody entertained of this new reign. All people now promised themselves better times, without reflecting [as they should have done!] that the better men necessary to produce these were nowhere forthcoming!" [Busching's Beitrage, vi. ("Author's own Biography") 462 et seq.] ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... does to-day. His influence for good remains, and with a better understanding of his plans and ideals, which is sure to come, his influence will widen and deepen among laymen and priests of the Church in America. The writing of his biography is a tribute to his memory which the love and esteem of his spiritual children could not refuse; it is, also, a most important service to generations present and unborn, in whose deeds will be seen the fruits of inspirations ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... has time to represent his subject. The side selected will either be the one most striking to himself, or the one most obscured by controversy; and in both cases that will be the one most liable to strained and sophisticated reading. In a biography, this and that is displayed; the hero is seen at home, playing the flute; the different tendencies of his work come, one after another, into notice; and thus something like a true, general impression of the subject may at last be struck. But in the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... General Scott to the command of the Eastern Department, for a period of nearly three years, his duties were those of an ordinary department commander, with no incidents necessary to be ingrafted into his biography. ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... during the hour and a half every day, Saturday's half-holiday not excepted, which was given to it by the whole school at once (odd half-hours were also put in), the best readers took turns about to read some book selected by Miss Phin. We were thus trained to pay attention. History, biography, adventures, descriptions, and story books were read. Any questions or criticisms about our sewing, knitting, netting, &c., were carried on in a low voice, and we learned to work well and quickly, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... classic has to be wooed and is worth the wooing. Further, we must disdain no assistance. I am not in favour of studying criticism of classics before the classics themselves. My notion is to study the work and the biography of a classical writer together, and then to read criticism afterwards. I think that in reprints of the classics the customary "critical introduction" ought to be put at the end, and not at the beginning, of the book. The classic ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... editorship of a periodical called "Select Reviews," afterwards changed to the "Analectic Magazine," for which he wrote sketches, some of which were afterwards put into the "Sketch-Book," and several reviews and naval biographies. A brief biography of Thomas Campbell was also written about this time, as introductory to an edition of "Gertrude of Wyoming." But the slight editorial care required by the magazine was irksome to a man who had an unconquerable repugnance ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... in the biography, he could not help listening, and learned some new and interesting facts about the life of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... ("The Dictionary of National Biography" amongst them), the first play handled by Purcell was Lee's Sophonisba; or, The Overthrow of Hannibal; according to others, the first was Theodosius; or, The Force of Love. Both, however, date not later than ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... this state of brain is fatal to sleep, and therefore to needful repose of brain, every sufferer has a remedy which he finds more or less available. This usually consists in some form of effort to throw the thoughts off the track upon which they are moving. Almost every literary biography has some instance of this difficulty, and some hint as to the sufferer's method of freeing his brain from the despotism of a ruling idea or a chain ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... 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 delight, the tone and sense of that ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... most brilliant biographies in English literature. It is the life of a wit written by a wit, and few of Tom Moore's most sparkling poems are more brilliant and fascinating than this biography."—Boston Transcript. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Institute," inclosing the perennial speller, was his first declaration; then he made ventures in different directions, but returned to studies in language, and finally embodied the results of his life-time in his great Dictionary. In reading biography, we wish to get at the ruling passion of the man; how often the man himself seems bewildered in his search for it, groping in this direction and in that, uncertain, to use Dr. Bushnell's vigorous phrase, if he has yet grasped the handle ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... somewhat gloomy prelude to a biography. Yet the student of Shelley's life, the sincere admirer of his genius, is almost forced to strike a solemn key-note at the outset. We are not concerned with one whose "little world of man" for good or ill was perfected, but with one whose ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... in their time, concerning Saint Patrick. Of the life by Saint Fiech I have made a rude translation corresponding with the original; of the Tripartite I have given Professor Hennessy's version; and of the extraordinary biography by Jocelin I reproduce, for the first time in this country, the rendering from Colgan by Mr. Swift, as published by the Hibernia Press Company, at Dublin, in 1809. Colgan's Latin version of the Life of Saint Patrick by Jocelin ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... Polybius. Let us add, that there is a certain instant when the battle degenerates into a combat, becomes specialized, and disperses into innumerable detailed feats, which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon himself, "belong rather to the biography of the regiments than to the history of the army." The historian has, in this case, the evident right to sum up the whole. He cannot do more than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be, to fix, absolutely, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... few steps, he paused idly a moment on the verge of this green 'God's-acre' to read a perpendicular slab on a wall, and his face broadened into a smile as he followed the absurdly elaborate biography of a rich, self-made merchant who had taught himself to read, 'Reader, go thou and do likewise,' was the delicious bull at the end. As he turned away, the smile still lingering about his lips, he saw a dainty figure tripping down the stony graveyard path, and though he ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... touched with the account of Carlyle's simple Obsequies among his own Kinsfolk, in the place of his Birth—it was fine of him to settle that so it should be. I am glad also that Mr. Froude is charged with his Biography: a Gentleman, as well as a Scholar and 'Writer of Books,' who will know what to leave unsaid as well as what ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... of Hume's life is the admirable biography, published in 1846, by Mr. John Hill Burton. The edition of Hume's works from which all citations are made is that published by Black and Tait in Edinburgh, in 1826. In this edition, the Essays are reprinted from the edition of 1777, corrected ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... his worship, "if in our clemency we should spare thy life, study this higher elegiacal strain which thou hast carried with thee from Oxford; it containeth, over and above an unusual store of biography, much sound moral doctrine, for those who are heedful in the weighing of it. And what can ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... desire admiration, you would avoid it, fearing it might lessen that sense which you only care to stimulate—wonderment. And persecuted by the desire to astonish, you are now exhibiting yourself in the most hideous light you can devise. The man whose biography you are writing is no ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... this pluralism that led to much abuse, much neglect, and much carelessness. However, enough has been said about the shepherd, and we must return to his helper, the clerk, with whose biography and history ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... which were current so early (as it seems to us) as the time of Fa-hien, and which startle us so frequently by similarities between them and narratives in our Gospels? Dr. Hermann Oldenberg, certainly a great authority on Buddhistic subjects, says that "a biography of Buddha has not come down to us from ancient times, from the age of the Pali texts; and, we can safely say, no such biography existed then" ("Buddha—His Life, His Doctrine, His Order," as translated ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... however, divined her desire to be off, and favored it by asking her to tell Cesarine to bring up his chocolate, which Madame Lardot made for him every morning. Suzanne then slipped away to her new victim, whose biography must ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... clerk, a store-keeper, a postmaster, and finally a surveyor. We have traced his efforts to rise above the intellectual apathy and the indifference to culture which characterized the people among whom he was reared, by studying with eagerness every subject on which he could find books,—biography, state history, mathematics, grammar, surveying, and finally law. We have followed his growth in ambition and in popularity from the day when, on a keg in an Indiana grocery, he debated the contents of the Louisville "Journal" with a company of admiring elders, to the time when, purely because ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... reached the goal which the boy of eight had dimly seen. And now, if you would learn how he worked and taught in a country school in order to earn the money to spend two years in college, and how the young man became one of the most eminent preachers in America, you must read a complete biography of Theodore Parker, the hero ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... [Footnote 44: The biography of this general of the Commune is very imperfect, down to the time when he was elected for the 1st Arrondissement of Paris, and was thereupon appointed Minister of War, or in Communal phraseology, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... improve the mind, enlarge the sympathies, and develop the judgment than any other form of literature—partly because it looks into the hidden springs of action, and makes all that is obscure in the way of impulse and motive clear to us. Biography, for instance, merely skims the surface of life, as a rule; and in history, where man is a puppet moved by events, there can be very ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... about Theodore Hook and the orange? Hook wrote a note to the hostess, saying, "Ask me at dinner if I will venture on an orange." The lady did so, and then the brilliant wit promptly made answer, "I'm afraid I should tumble off." A whole volume of biography is implied in that one gruesome and vulgar anecdote. In truth, the professional wit is no company at all; he has the effect of a performing monkey suddenly planted on the table, and his efforts are usually quite on ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... with the current. So with the family of Grant Harlson and so with him personally. A year made him collared and cravatted, short-cropped of hair, mighty in high-school frays, and with a new ambition stirring him, of a quality to compare with that of one Lucifer of unbounded reputation and doubtful biography. There was something beyond all shooting and riding and wrestling fame and the breath of growing things. There was another world with reachable prizes and much to feed upon. He must wear medals, metaphorically, and eat his ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... detail than those well-known and often-repeated tales of his sagacity in trading or his readiness in outwitting a political enemy. To one who makes a careful study of Scattergood's life with a view to writing a truthful biography, he inevitably becomes more interesting and more lovable when seen simply as a neighbor, a fellow townsman of other New Englanders, and as a country hardware merchant. There is a certain charm in the naivete with which he was wont ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... more than one picture in the Petworth gallery, has much to say in his Autobiographical Recollections of its noble founder the third Earl, his generosity, courtesy, kindly thoughtfulness, and extreme modesty of bearing. One story contains half his biography. I give it in Leslie's words. After referring to his Lordship's men-servants and their importance in the house, the painter continues: "His own dress, in the morning, being very plain, he was sometimes by strangers mistaken for one of them. This happened with a maid of one of his ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... reconciliation 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 embodies the ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... more self-reliant if they were in the habit of thinking that we are ever dependent on each other for solace and strengthening under the burden of life. The most elaborate of her stories, one wholly of her own invention, was called 'Blanche and Janey.' It was a double biography. Blanche and Janey were born on the same day, they lived ten years, and then died on the same day. But Blanche was, the child of wealthy parents; Janey was born, in a garret. Their lives were recounted in parallel, almost year by year, and, there was sadness in the contrast. Emma had chosen the ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... absolutely marvellous. As some mighty and mysterious necromancer quickens the morbid imagination to supernatural sight, and for a brief moment reveals through rolling mist and portentous cloud the perfect likeness of the one longed for by the rapt gazer, so Frederick is restored in this biography for the perpetual consolation and admiration of all coming heroes. In comprehension and judgment of the actions and hearts of men, and in vividness of writing, not that which shook the soul of Belshazzar in the midst of his revellers was more powerful, or more sure of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... his great love for her, and partly on account of her delicate and fragile body. Her health had always been poor: she was subject to fainting fits and burning fevers. Whether her father, at last, consented to her final retirement from the world I do not discover from her biography; but, with his consent or without it, she entered the convent and assumed the religious habit,—not without bitter pangs on leaving her home, for she did violence to her feelings, having no strong desire for monastic seclusion, and being warmly attached to her father. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... female. Now the young males at first entirely resemble the females, and have a greyish-white speculum, which becomes pure white at an earlier age than that at which the adult male acquires his other and more strongly-marked sexual differences: see Audubon, 'Ornithological Biography,' vol. iii. 1835, pp. 249-250.) Between such extreme cases of close sexual resemblance and wide dissimilarity, as those of the Crossoptilon and peacock, many intermediate ones could be given, in which the characters follow our two rules in ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... not expatiate further upon Stizus ruficornis, whose complete biography would be out of place in this chapter. I will limit myself to mentioning its method of constructing strong-boxes in order to compare it with that of the Bembex and above all with that of the Tachytes, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... fine specimen of the college-bred young American of good family and keen professional mind. He has no place in this biography save in so far as he jarred the inner forces of Alexina's being, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... his chair down on four legs and towered once more in the doorway. "There's the first chapter of my orter-biography, Miss Hands and boys," he said. "I must be off now, or I sha'n't get over ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any one's improvement in view in her choice! But so it was. Susan had read nothing, and Fanny longed to give her a share in her own first pleasures, and inspire a taste for the biography and poetry ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... remember ever to have read an autobiography, a biography, or a piece of fiction that told the TRUTH. Of course, I have read stuff such as Rousseau and Zola and George Moore and various memoirs that were supposed to be window panes in their respective breasts; but, mostly, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... in and beyond the scientific world, that the late James Ivory was subject to the {143} impression of which I am speaking; and the diaries and other sources of anecdote of our day will certainly, sooner or later, make it a part of his biography. The consequence will be that to his memory will be attached the unfavorable impression which the usual conduct of such persons creates; unless it should happen that some one who knows the real state of the case puts the two sides of it properly ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... in which a perfectly Good and True Being is unveiling His own purposes, and carrying on a conflict with evil, which must issue in complete victory, should make him eager to discover in every portion of history, in every biography, a divine 'Morality' and 'Mystery'—a morality, though it deals with no abstract personages—a mystery, though the subject of it be the doings of the most ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... the subject of this biography, was born on the 2d of November, 1755. Few of the inhabitants of this world have commenced life under circumstances of greater splendor, or with more brilliant prospects of a life replete with happiness. She was a child of great vivacity and ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Wynkyn de Worde printed The Lyf of saint Katherin of Senis the blessid virgin, edited by Caxton; which is a free translation, by an anonymous Dominican, with many omissions and the addition of certain reflections, of the Legenda, the great Latin biography of St. Catherine by her third confessor, Friar Raymond of Capua, the famous master-general and reformer of the order of St. Dominic (d. 1399). He followed this up, in 1519, by an English rendering by Brother Dane James of the Saint's ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... reprints of Cook's Voyages, and many translations. The best Biography of Cook is that of Kitson, 1907. Besant's brief ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... temperament, intellectual and moral, which enable 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 ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... doubtless many at the present time wish the same; but Fox endeavoured to grapple with it manfully and honestly, and it was not his fault that he did not settle it. The vices of Fox were those of the age in which he lived; had he been reserved for the present epoch, what a different biography should we have to write of him! What a helmsman he might be at the present time, when the ship of Old England is ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... "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 true but erring and unequal humanity, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... CLASSICS with the works of one whose writings have so enlarged and embellished the science of moral evidence, which has long constituted a characteristic feature in the literary discipline of this university. The science of mind and its progress, as recorded by history, or unfolded by biography, was Johnson's favourite study, and is still the main object of pursuit in the place whose system and institutions he so warmly praised, and to which he ever professed himself so deeply indebted. If the terseness of attic ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Church, with whom he became a successful co-operator, not only as an eloquent preacher, but especially as the most celebrated Hymnist of Wales. This eminent man died in 1791, and his hymns were published by his son in 1811, and Mr. Mackenzie, of Glasgow, issued a superb edition of his works with biography in 1868.] ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... gave my name and biography. I had lately arrived at Tours, where my parents had recalled me when the armies threatened Paris. A son of Touraine to whom Touraine was as yet unknown, she would find me a young man weakened by excessive study and sent to Frapesle ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... directed criticism towards history. He perceived the correspondence between literary products and the other phenomena of the age; he observed the movement in the spirit of a period; he passed from country to country; he made use of biography as an aid in the study of letters. His learning was at times defective; his views often superficial; he suffered from his desire to entertain his audience or to capture them by rhetoric. Yet Villemain served letters well, and, accepted as a master by the young critics ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 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
... of information regarding the biography of Socrates and his philosophy comes from two authors, Xenophon and Plato. The former portrays him as a moral philosopher and in his book, Memorabilia, he seems to eulogize his master. The latter however presents him as a thinker, and it is maintained by many ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... sight to be a fascinating subject for biography; but if we examine a little more closely, we shall realise the web of difficulties in which the writer of a complete and exhaustive Life of Balzac would involve himself, and shall understand why the task has never been attempted. The great author's money ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... 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 ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... with God were yet better. No doubt the 'wisdom' of the Book of Proverbs is religion and morality as well as true thinking, but the 'understanding heart to judge Thy people' which Solomon asked and received is narrower and more secular in its meaning. There is no sign in his biography that he ever had the deep inward devotion of his father. After the poet-psalmist came the prosaic and keen-sighted shrewd man of affairs. The one breathed his ardent soul into psalms, which feed devotion ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 perch with ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... translated from the French several stories illustrative of various social reforms, and in 1867, being then seventy-five years old, she made a somewhat abridged translation of Lamartine's poetical biography of Joan of Arc. This was Sarah's most finished literary work, and aroused in her great enthusiasm. "Sometimes," she writes, "it seems to infuse into my soul a mite of that divinity which filled hers. Joan of Arc ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... exuberant; and, on the other hand, the "good things" and "beautiful pages" amount to a psychological study of Chopin, and an aesthetical study of his works, which it is impossible to over-estimate. Still, the book is no biography. It records few dates and events, and these few are for the most part incorrect. When, in 1878, the second edition of F. Chopin was passing through the press, Liszt ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... his politics or religion might be if anything so stupendous as a religious or political idea, or a general idea of any sort, were to occur to him. He is tolerable as a child; but he never becomes a man, and might be left out of his own biography altogether but for his usefulness as a stage confidant, a Horatio or "Charles his friend" what they call on the ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... poet, and he showed that it had been brought about by his making the acquaintance of a certain friend who had introduced him to a new range of subjects, and by his study of certain books. These facts are unrecorded in his published biography, but the analysis of the lecturer, done in a few pointed sentences, not only carried conviction to the mind, but just, so to speak, laid the truth bare. And yet it was all to me incredibly sterile and ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 events ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... yours; a man like me is not made to support repulses from door-keepers." Having got his quotation safely into print, Ibn Khallikan adds: "I since discovered that these verses are attributed to Ibn Musa 'l-Makfuf. God knows best!" It is a charming way of writing biography. The grass does not grow upon the weir more easily. With such a rectifying or excusatory phrase as "God knows best" one can hazard all. And how difficult it is to be ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... Introduction. Biography: Few Events. One predominant. His Devotion to it. Tendency to Literature. First Studies. Influence of Antique Dwellings. Early Friends. Humor. Qualities of Mind. Sympathy for neglected Objects. A Nonconformist. Predilections. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... the same Asiaticus, who, in the revolt of the provinces of Gaul, fought on the side of VINDEX. See Hist. b. ii. s. 94. Biography was, in that evil period, a tribute paid by the friends of departed merit, and the only kind of writing, in which men could dare faintly to utter a sentiment in favour of virtue ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... 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, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... exclaimed Mauville. "Life is wearisome enough, but a biography—" He shrugged his shoulders. "Come ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Bios means a life; And so Biography Means writing out the life of one, Which ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... had, but it never satisfied me, and I even then saw errors throughout the whole, and this strengthened my first impressions, and tended to mature the after-thought in me, that something wanted doing and must be done. It is not my intention in this introductory chapter to write an auto-biography; but my object is simply to show, how one impression followed another in my case, and what led to it; to point out briefly the various plans and inventions I had recourse to in carrying out my views and intentions; and, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... Dr. Ripley wrote him a cordial invitation to join the association, the only invitation of the kind he ever gave, I believe. The invitation was declined in a note quoted by Rev. O. B. Frothingham in his admirable biography of Dr. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... number of her supplications; but, for once, they were preces sine mente dictae. Her faith was cold, her belief in Divine justice was shaken for a time. She began to doubt and to despond. That bitter hour, which David has sung so well, and Bunyan, from experience, has described in his biography as well as in his novel, sat heavy upon her, as it had on many a true believer before her. So deep was the gloom, so paralyzing the languor, that at last she gave up all endeavor to utter words of prayer. She placed her crucifix at the foot of the wall, and laid herself down on the ground ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby. "In-deed! Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs. Jellyby's biography, "is a lady of very remarkable strength of character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times and is at present (until something ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... 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, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... will find listed in our catalogue books on every topic: Poetry, Fiction, Romance, Travel, Adventure, Humor, Science, History, Religion, Biography, Drama, etc., besides Dictionaries and Manuals, Bibles, Recitation and Hand Books, Sets, Octavos, Presentation Books and Juvenile and Nursery ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... interesting list of Indian flowers used in Hindu ceremonies. Many copies of the poems of Kasiprasad Ghosh, were sent to the English public critics, several of whom spoke of the author's talents with commendation. The late Miss Emma Roberts wrote a brief biography of him for one of the London annuals, so that there must be many of my readers at home who will not on this occasion hear of his name ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson |
