Quotes by Biographers - Page 4

Many a person has held close throughout their entire lives two friends that always remained strange to one another because one of them attracted by virtue of similarity the other by difference.
Emil Ludwig
History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.
Philip Guedalla
Sometimes in studying Ramanujan's work, [George Andrews] said at another time, "I have wondered how much Ramanujan could have done if he had had MACSYMA or SCRATCHPAD or some other symbolic algebra package.
Robert Kanigel
It's freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?""Indignation," said Michelangelo. "Best fuel I know. Never burns out.
Irving Stone
Lyndon Johnson’s sentences were the sentences of a man with a remarkable gift for words, not long words but evocative, of a man with a remarkable gift for images, homey images of a vividness that infused the sentences with drama.
Robert A. Caro
The science of public happiness was how Keynes saw his work as an economist.
Richard Davenport-Hines
Forgetfulness transforms every occurrence into a non-occurrence.
Plutarch
He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who confessed: in the course of many enquiries, Hawksmoor had come across those who accused themselves of crimes which they had not committed and who demanded to be taken away before they could do more harm. He was acquainted with such people and recognised them at once - although they were noticeable, perhaps, only for a slight twitch in the eye or the awkward gait with which they moved through the world. And they inhabited small rooms to which Hawksmoor would sometimes be called: rooms with a bed and a chair but nothing besides, rooms where they shut the door and began talking out loud, rooms where they sat all evening and waited for the night, rooms where they experienced blind panic and then rage as they stared at their lives. And sometimes when he saw such people Hawksmoor thought, this is what I will become, I will be like them because I deserve to be like them, and only the smallest accident separates me from them now.
Peter Ackroyd
When a man's eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil.
Plutarch
Experiment and reason, tempered by intuition, were to him preferable to solid plodding in the well-trodden paths of experience.
Richard Davenport-Hines
Act well your part,there all the honor lies.
Edgar Lee Masters
On his thirteenth birthday he had seen a film in which the central character was a painter who, unable to sell his work, grew cold and hungry as he went from one unsuccessful interview to the next; eventually he had become a vagrant, sleeping in the streets of the city where once he had walked in hope. Hawksmoor left the cinema in a mood of profound, terrified apprehension and, from that time, he was filled with a sense of time passing and with the fear that he might be left discarded on its banks. The fear had not left him, although now he could no longer remember from where it came: he looked back on his earlier life without curiosity, since it seemed to lack intrinsic interest, and when he looked forward he saw the same steady attainment of goals without any joy in their attainment. For him, the state of happiness was simply the state of not suffering and, if he cared for anything, it was for oblivion.
Peter Ackroyd
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
Plutarch
...but there were four things I taught Walter to consider: 1) That it was Cain who built the first City, 2) That there is a true Science in the World called Scientia Umbrarum which, as to the publick teaching of it, has been suppressed but which the proper Artificer must comprehend, 3) That Architecture aims at Eternity and must contain the Eternal Powers: not only our Altars and Sacrifices, but the Forms of our Temples, must be mysticall, 4) That the miseries (If the present Life, and the Barbarities of Mankind, the fatall disadvantages we are all under and the Hazard we run of being eternally Undone, lead the True Architect not to Harmony or to Rationall Beauty but to quite another Game. Why, do we not believe the very Infants to be the Heirs of Hell and Children of the Devil as soon as they are disclos'd to the World? I declare that I build my Churches firmly on this Dunghil Earth and with a full Conception of Degenerated Nature. I have only room to add: there is a mad-drunken Catch, Hey ho! The Devil is dead! If that be true, I have been in the wrong Suit all my Life.
Peter Ackroyd
This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night; there is not a Field without its Spirits, nor a City without its Daemons, and the Lunaticks speak Prophesies while the Wise men fall into the Pitte.
Peter Ackroyd
As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.
Diogenes Laërtius
And I was a Child again, watching the bright World. But the Spell broke when at this Juncture some Gallants jumped from the Pitt onto the Stage and behaved as so many Merry-Andrews among the Actors, which reduced all to Confusion. I laugh'd with them also, for I like to make Merry among the Fallen and there is pleasure to be had in the Observation of the Deformity of Things. Thus when the Play resumed after the Disturbance, it was only to excite my Ridicule with its painted Fictions, wicked Hypocrisies and villainous Customs, all depicted with a little pert Jingle of Words and a rambling kind of Mirth to make the Insipidnesse and Sterility pass. There was no pleasure in seeing it, and nothing to burden the Memory after: like a voluntarie before a Lesson it was absolutely forgotten, nothing to be remembered or repeated.
Peter Ackroyd
He [Stanley] had stated that he longed to do something wonderful for the African tribes along the Congo, and instead, as would become all too apparent, had set them up for a terrible fate. In 1877 he came down the great river as the first European ever to do so, declaring his hope that the Congo should become like `a torch to those who sought to do good'." Instead, it became the torch that attracted the archexploiter King Leopold II of Belgium.
Tim Jeal
Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti]
Irving Stone
their anxiety, justified or not, was genuine,
Robert A. Caro
To-day well, my Utopia, if ever I framed one, would be a land where the laws demanded that people should be vicious. Then one would be able to count at any rate on a little virtue. If no man might live with a woman in any but an irregular union, there would be at once quite a run on honest matrimony and the Law Courts would be full of desperately wicked monogamists; while if every one was expected to steal and swindle, there would soon be an extensive criminal class who respected property.
Edward Verrall Lucas
Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity.
William Manchester
The hero acts alone, without encouragement, relying solely on conviction and his own inner resources. Shame does not discourage him; neither does obloquy. Indifferent to approval, reputation, wealth, or love, he cherishes only his personal sense of honor, which he permits no one else to judge.[…] Guided by an inner gyroscope, he pursues his vision single-mindedly, undiscouraged by rejections, defeat, or even the prospect of imminent death.
William Manchester
He fought for his very survival. If he fought dirty sometimes that does not diminish the fact that he refused to give up.
Nancy Milford
A man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas.
Agnes Repplier
Author says that, while Eisenhower had other intellectual mentors, he learned how to lead men from Gen. Walter Krueger. Krueger was the first American enlisted man to rise to four-star general, and he so identified with those he led that he once invited a sentry out of the rain and gave him his own dry uniform.
Jean Edward Smith
The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it…eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.
Plutarch
He was able to sit in silence for long stretches without feeling a need to make small talk.
Charles R. Cross
Oh dear... it really is rather disillusioning. When one's friends marry for money they are wretched, when they marry for love it is worse. What is the proper thing to marry for, I should like to know?
Nancy Mitford
Step out of my sunlight.
Diogenes Laërtius
The author points out that novices to total war, and this Hitler and the British press have in common, overreact to daily events and lose sight of overall strategy.
William Manchester
Time goes you say? Ah no! Alas Time stays we go.
Henry Austin Dobson
DYER. (Sits down) There was nothing that I recall save that the Sunne was a Round flat shining Disc and the Thunder was a Noise from a Drum or a Pan.VANNBRUGGHE. (Aside) What a Child is this! (To Dyer) These are only our Devices, and are like the Paint of our Painted Age.DYER. But in Meditation the Sunne is a vast and glorious Body, and Thunder is the most forcible and terrible Phaenomenon: it is not to be mocked, for the highest Passion is Terrour.
Peter Ackroyd
The farm work they hated was the only work they knew. Often, even the basic skills of plumbing or electricity or mechanical work were mysteries to them – as were the job discipline and the subtleties that children raised in the industrial world learn without thinking about them; starting work on time, working set hours, taking orders from strangers instead of their father, playing office politics.
Robert A. Caro
Women, of their nature, crave for liberty; they will not be ordered around like servants.
Peter Ackroyd
Hamilton wanted to lead the electorate and provide expert opinion instead of consulting popular opinion. He took tough, uncompromising stands and gloried in abstruse ideas in a political culture that pined for greater simplicity. Alexander Hamilton triumphed as a doer and thinker, not as a leader of the average voter. He was simply too unashamedly brainy to appeal to the masses. Fisher Ames observed of Hamilton that the common people don't want leaders 'whom they see elevated by nature and education so far above their heads.
Ron Chernow
There is a camaraderie that grows up among those who work with old books and old papers, largely, I suspect, because we understand that we are at odds with the rest of the world: we are travelling backwards, while all those around us are still moving forward.
Peter Ackroyd
If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.
Nancy Mitford
Rules, whether they govern sexual morality or financial probity, regardless of whether they are justifiable or undesirable, always provoke bold recalcitrants to devise clever, defiant ways to breach them.
Richard Davenport-Hines
Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else - above all, a travel bureau - arrange everything before-hand?
Richard Aldington
The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.
Agnes Repplier
I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.
Plutarch
These things sensibly affected Theseus, who, thinking it but just not to disregard, but rather partake of, the sufferings of his fellow citizens, offered himself for one without any lot. All else were struck with admiration for the nobleness and with love for the goodness of the act.
Plutarch
Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when taken little by little.
Plutarch
What we learn in childhood is carved in stone. What we learn as adults is carved in ice.
David Kherdian
In time you shall see Fate approach youIn the shape of your own image in the mirror.
Edgar Lee Masters
Satire is enjoyable compensation for being forced to think.
Edgar Johnson
As often is the case with addictions, the fanciful notion of a gradual discontinuance only provided a comforting pretext for more sustained indulgence.
Ron Chernow
The people had once created the city. The city now created the people, or, more exactly, the people of Venice now identified themselves more in terms of the city. The private had become public.
Peter Ackroyd
...indeed, with the Radletts, you never could tell. Why, for instance, would Victoria bellow like a bull and half kill Jassy whenever Jassy said, in a certain tone of voice, pointing her finger with a certain look, "Fancy?" I think they hardly knew why, themselves.
Nancy Mitford
A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.
Ida Tarbell
Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble never unhappy or ill never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them.
Catherine Drinker Bowen
the much-sought prize of eternal youthIs just arrested growth.
Edgar Lee Masters
What importance should be given to details, in developing a subject?--Remorselessly sacrifice everything that does not contribute to clarity, verisimilitude, and effect.Accentuate everything that sets the main idea in relief, so that the impression be colourful, picturesque. It's sufficient that the rest be in its proper place, but in half-tone. That is what gives to style, as to painting, unity, perspective, and effect.- Constantin Georges Romain Héger, teacher to Charlotte Brontë
Claire Harman
Eisenhower and Patton, old friends and figures crucial to the Allies' upcoming success, conferred over yet another gaffe on Patton's part that could have cost him his command. Patton's head is on Ike's shoulder in gratitude, but the scene is rescued from being completely maudlin by Eisenhower's internal question as to whether Patton wears his ever-present helmet to bed.
Jean Edward Smith
We pass and leave you lying. No need for rhetoric, for funeral music, for melancholy bugle-calls. No need for tears now, no need for regret.We took our risk with you; you died and we live. We take your noble gift, salute for the last time those lines of pitiable crosses, those solitary mounds, those unknown graves, and turn to live our lives out as we may.Which of us were fortunate--who can tell? For you there is silence and cold twilight drooping in awful desolation over those motionless lands. For us sunlight and the sound of women's voices, song and hope and laughter, despair, gaiety, love--life.Lost terrible silent comrades, we, who might have died, salute you.
Richard Aldington
O world, that's you!You are but a widened place in the riverWhere Life looks down and we rejoice for herMirrored in us, and so we dreamAnd turn away
Edgar Lee Masters
Some drink to forget, I drink to remember. I drink in order to understand what I mean and to discover what I know. Under its benign influence all the stories and dramas which properly belong to the sphere of art are announced by me in conversation.
Peter Ackroyd
The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown. The only way out is through.
Plutarch
He was walking around in circles, the smell of the old furniture suddenly very distinct. There was a newspaper in his hand and he started reading it, paying particular attention to the headlines which seemed to be floating towards him so that now a band of black print encircled his forehead. He was curled upon the bed, hugging his knees, when the next horror came upon him: those who heard him last night would now have to report his theft, and his employer would call the police. He saw how the policeman took the telephone call at the station; how his name and address were spoken out loud; how he looked down at the floor as they led him away; how he was in the dock, forced to answer questions about himself, and now he was in a cell and had lost control of his own body. He was staring out of the window at the passing clouds when it occurred to him that he should write to his employer, explaining his drunkenness and confessing that he invented the story of theft; but who would believe him? It was always said that in drink there was truth, and perhaps it was true that he was a convicted thief. He began to sing,One fine day in the middle of the night,Two dead men got up to fightand then he knew what was meant by madness.
Peter Ackroyd