"Autobiography" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hope for; its actual effect during eighteen hundred years has been to split them into a multitude of camps, and so set them to denouncing, damning, jailing and murdering one another. Again, consider the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. Ben wrote it to prove that he was an honest man, a mirror of all the virtues, an injured innocent; the world, reading it, hails him respectfully as the noblest, the boldest, the gaudiest liar that ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... book. It is autobiography in its perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of god and devil in conflict, than ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... Village Watch-Tower"; and it was not even a book of which I had heard. It was first published in 1895 by Houghton, who published much of her other work at the time, and apparently was never published again. Shortly thereafter I found a copy of her autobiography. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and began to prepare himself for the serious business of life, or the study of the law, when, to use his own words, "a long illness threw him back on the kingdom of fiction, as it were by a species of fatality." His autobiography of this period is extremely interesting:—"My indisposition arose in part at least, from my having broken a blood-vessel; and motion and speech were for a long time pronounced positively dangerous. For several weeks I was confined ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... Scotland, whose history is so well known that it would serve no good purpose to give only such a brief account of it as could be given in the space here available. He wrote several works of admitted literary merit, his "Institutes" being to this day considered a standard legal authority. He left an autobiography in MS. which was published by his widow in 1716. The estate of Rosehaugh, where he always took up his residence while in the Highlands, was, in his time, profusely covered with the Dog Rose, a fact which first suggested to the famous lawyer ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... chapters of this collection are so much in the nature of an autobiography that the author has long shrunk from the idea of allowing them to see the light during his lifetime. His repugnance has been overcome by very warm expressions on the subject uttered by valued friends to whom they were shown, and by a desire that some at least who knew him in youth should be able ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... endless Collector and Compiler on all manner of subjects, is very authentic always, and does not want for natural sense: but he is also very crude,—and here and there not far from stupid, such his continual haste, and slobbery manner of working up those Hundred and odd Volumes of his:—[See his Autobiography, which forms Beitrage, B. vi. (the biggest ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... many writers, many geniuses even, but not one his superior in intellect and romantic response to life. He was a poet, thinker, artist, philosopher and master of prose, as a posthumous volume ("Wolf, the Autobiography of a Cave Dweller") amply proves, but he was not ready then to fully express himself, and it troubled him not at all. He loved life's every facet, was gay and helpful to himself and others, and yet always with an eye for the undercurrent of human misery, error and tragedy as well ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the "Last Leaf" on my probably over-large accumulation of printed pages. What I have set down is in no way an autobiography. It is simply the presentment of the panorama of nearly fourscore momentous years as unrolled before one pair of eyes. Whether the eyes have served their owner well or ill the gentle reader will judge. I hope I have not ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... were sprinkled over the page as if they had been shaken out of the pepper box. But you inquire in vain the name of the slaver that wrecked "poor Robinson Crusoe"— a name that would have been printed on his memory beyond forgetting because of the very misfortune itself. Now the book is the autobiography of a man whose only years of active life between eighteen and twenty-six were passed as a sailor. It was written apparently after he was seventy-two years old, at the period when every trifling incident and name of youth would survive most brightly; yet he names ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... of his daily life, his ideas must have been of an excellent quality. His flowing white hair, and the calmness and purity of his aspect, gave him quite an apostolic look; and once while visiting at the house of a friend, a certain small boy—the same for whom John Brown afterwards wrote his autobiography of a boy—asked his mother if that man was one of Christ's disciples. Such was the father of ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... is Lucy Larcom (1826-1893). One of a numerous family, she worked as a child in the Lowell mills, later taught school in Illinois, was one of the editors of Our Young Folks, and wrote a most fascinating autobiography called A New England Girlhood. Several of her poems are still used in schools. The one that follows is, perhaps, the most popular of these. It is semi-dramatic, and the three voices of the poem can be easily discovered. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... other grievances which are thus presented by the British Admiral Cochrane. [Footnote: "Autobiography of a Seaman," by Thomas, tenth Earl of Dundonald, Admiral of the Red; Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, London, 1860, vol. i, p. 24.] "Our treatment of its (America's) citizens was scarcely in accordance with the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... approbation from the tails of her choice acquaintance, I have preferred leaving out altogether; and I have so curtailed the labours of her paw, and the workings of her brain, as to condense into half-a-dozen pages her little volume of introduction. The autobiography itself, most luckily, required no alteration. It is the work of a simple mind, detailing the events of a simple but not uneventful life. Whether I have succeeded in conveying to my readers' intelligence the impression which this ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... Lincoln's statement in the Autobiography that he had picked up the little advance he had made upon his early education, or rather lack of education, is altogether too modest. It is known that after his term in Congress he studied and mastered geometry; and, like Washington, he ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... paragraphs are nearly an autobiography of the life of Charles Dudley Warner whose contributions to the story start here with Chapter ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... nor his influence in political affairs suffered the least abatement in the six closing years of his life, which bridged the distance between his relinquishment of the Speaker and the hour when he finally laid down his pen. The withheld portion of this Autobiography makes that abundantly clear, for, as in a mirror, it reflects the secret history of the Liberal party. His relations with Lord Rosebery, both during and after that statesman's brilliant but difficult Administration, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... together. His fidelity and veracity are as universally admitted as his direct and lucid style is generally admired. His account of his own life and career is a masterpiece in this category of literature, for it is written with blended modesty and naivete. In many passages of this "Autobiography" he does not hesitate to assume great credit for his own courage, probity, and skill, but in each case the justification is manifest, for he constantly refers to the tortuous and treacherous machinations of his virulent enemies. The "Autobiography" ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Madame Guyon (1648-1717), who—in addition to many other works—wrote a very detailed autobiography. She lived with her husband, whom she treated with coldness, finding her sole joy in her spiritual intercourse with God. "I desire only the divine love which thrills the soul with inexpressible bliss, the love which seems to melt my whole being." God burns her with His ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... one who was a boy in the older era of the urbane Addison and the witty Pope, and a man in the newer period of the novelists, is well described in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. "All the little money," wrote that book-lover, "that came into my hands was laid out in books. Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate volumes. I afterwards ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... more admire "the lifelong and heroic literary labours" of my fellow-men, patiently clearing up in words their loves and their contentions, and speaking their autobiography daily to their wives, were it not for a circumstance which lessens their difficulty and my admiration by equal parts. For life, though largely, is not entirely carried on by literature. We are subject to physical passions and contortions; the voice breaks and ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... producing the conditions under which his courtier flourished; and the Italian of the Renaissance, as he appeared to the rest of Europe, was such a gentleman as he depicts. For the historian his book is of equal value in its own department with the Principe of Machiavelli, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... father had seventeen children. He was the fifteenth. He says in his autobiography, that his father died at the age of eighty-nine, and his mother at the age of eighty-five, and that neither were ever known to have any sickness except that of which ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... says Ethan Allen, in his autobiography, "that by all that was holy the American rebels should not be feasted by the ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... much more is the past liable to be glossed over? To be faithful here is next to impossible, for Satan helps us to deceive ourselves and instructs us to carry out the deception to others. This consideration might well cause the pen of autobiography to drop from a Christian's hand, did not an earnest desire to glorify God in his merciful dealings, together with the consciousness that to no other could the task he safely delegated, act as a counterpoise to the discouragement. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... intention to write an autobiography. Since I took to writing in my middle years I have, from time to time, related some incident of my boyhood, and these are contained in various chapters in The Naturalist in La Plata, Birds and Man, Adventures among Birds, and other works, also in two or three ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... It is indeed a stupendous piece of art, and much of it surpassingly beautiful; but the absorbing interest of it will always be that it is a "human document," an autobiographical fragment, the most touching autobiography ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Giorgione's life recorded by the older biographers, or known by contemporary documents. Now let us turn to his artistic remains, the disjecta membra, out of which we may reconstruct something of the man himself; for, to those who can interpret it aright, a man's work is his best autobiography. ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... fellowmen. Not that I feel the least indebted, upon this score, to my exceedingly weak-minded parents, who, beyond doubt, would have made an arrant genius of me at last, if my guardian angel had not come, in good time, to the rescue. In biography the truth is every thing, and in autobiography it is especially so—yet I scarcely hope to be believed when I state, however solemnly, that my poor father put me, when I was about fifteen years of age, into the counting-house of what be termed "a respectable hardware ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... eighteen months, while employed as hunter of the construction company of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, in 1867-68, killed nearly five thousand buffalo, which were consumed by the twelve hundred men employed in track-laying. He tells in his autobiography of the following remarkable experience he had at one time with his favourite horse Brigham, on an impromptu ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... biography of Thackeray has ever been written because of his expressed wish, but his daughter, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, has supplied this lack with many sketches and introductions to various editions of her father's works. Anthony Trollope in his autobiography gives many charming glimpses of Thackeray but his sketch of Thackeray in the English Men of Letters series is ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... saw in 1628 the birth of John Bunyan who, in his own peculiar field of literature, was to lead the world. His father, Thomas Bunyan, was a brazier, a mender of pots and pans, and he reared his son John to the same trade. In his autobiography, John Bunyan says that his father's house was of "that rank that is meanest and most despised of all ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... opinion is, that Galt was ill-used by the Canadian Government. He says in his "Autobiography," that his whole and sole offence consisted of having accepted a file of the "Colonial Advocate," and shaken hands with the editor, the notorious William Lyon Mackenzie. In those days of ultra-toryism, such an instance of liberality and freedom from party-prejudice was sufficient ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... life, of Admiral Byng and Lord George Germaine, of Minden and Gibraltar, of Prince Ferdinand and General Gage, of Bunker Hill, and finally of the American armies, to which the soldier-sailor had deserted. The boy repaid this devoted friend by reading the newspapers to him; and he tells us in his autobiography that he could not remember when he did not read, so early was he taught by his mother and sisters, in true New England fashion. At a very early age he began to go to school; sometimes in his native town, sometimes in ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... for this book that kindly judgment of my countrymen which has attended everything I have done in my life so far. I have tried to guard against the dangers and the besetting infirmities of men who write their own biography. An autobiography, as the word implies, will be egotistical. An old man's autobiography is pretty certain to be garrulous. If the writer set forth therein his own ideals, he is likely to be judged by them, even when he may fall far short ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... governor of Gallipoli, has written, in Spanish, the history of this band of adventurers, to which he belonged, and from which he separated when it left the Thracian Chersonese to penetrate into Macedonia and Greece.—G.——The autobiography of Ramon de Montaner has been published in French by M. Buchon, in the great collection of Memoires relatifs a l'Histoire de France. I ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... not too presumptuous. You and the world which awaits it so eagerly may both know, but you hear it from the lips of the author. It is nothing less than the autobiography of van Manderpootz!" ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... the kind—was a monument to his discoveries, a record of his adventures among the masterpieces of Europe, beginning on the ground floor as the Strozzi Palace, developing into various French castles, and finishing on the top as a Swiss chalet, atrocious as architecture, but amusing as autobiography. All his buildings were more or less reminiscent, and told again in stone the story so often told in words at the Nazionale, for Death was kind and claimed him before he had ceased to be the discoverer to ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... said, answering not so much to his last remark as to the whole trend of his autobiography, "I suppose you are happy in this way of life, since you seem to prefer it. But it would be ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... inner life of the Scottish people, and its bearing on what has been somewhat clumsily termed "the condition-of-the-country question." My sketches will, I trust, be recognised as true to fact and nature. And as I have never perused the autobiography of a working man of the more observant type, without being indebted to it for new facts and ideas respecting the circumstances and character of some portion of the people with which I had been less perfectly ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... in the supplement and in the earlier numbers was revised and largely written by Rigdon. The preparation of the work began after he and Smith settled in Nauvoo, Illinois. In his last years Smith rid himself almost entirely of Rigdon's counsel, and the part of the autobiography then written takes the form of a diary which unmasks Smith's character as no one else could do. Most of the correspondence and official documents relating to the troubles in Missouri and Illinois are incorporated ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... it, 'Paul Armstrong.' 'Yours very truly, Paul Armstrong.' 'Disrespectfully yours, Paul Armstrong.' 'Sacred to the memory of Paul Armstrong, who died of boredom in the Rocky Mountains.' 'Paul Armstrong: the Autobiography of ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... he said; "read it. I can form no opinion of it myself. If you think it worthy, some day—at the proper time—it can end my autobiography. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... things better in France; yet, as she reflected, provided you are unhampered by prejudice, are fairly in funds and know the ropes, even grimy fog-bound London is, in this particular connection, by no means to be sneezed at. And truly Poppy's autobiography during the said month would have made extremely merry reading, amounting in some aspects to a positive classic—though of the kind hardly suited as a basis of instruction for the pupils of a young ladies' school. Setting aside adventures of a more questionable character, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Sergius Soltikoff, which was the first, (if we may be sure that she had a first,)—and which seems clearly to have been elevated, if not purified, by a true and deep affection. That it was so appears not by any protestation or even calm assertion of her own, which in an autobiography might be reasonably doubted, but from the unstudied tenderness of her allusions to him; from the fact, which indirectly appears, that he first cooled towards her, and the pang—not of wounded vanity—which this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to his somewhat tiresome page. However, the thief cannot escape his inevitable defects. The vanity, the weakness, the sentimentality of those who are born beasts of prey, yet have the faculty of depredation only half-developed, are the foes of truth, and it is well to remember that the autobiography of a rascal is tainted at its source. A congenial pickpocket, equipped with the self-knowledge and the candour which would enable him to recognise himself an outlaw and justice his enemy rather than an instrument of malice, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... time the Hindus came to believe that the most effective type of sacrifice was self-sacrifice and suffering, accompanied by a refusal to injure others, or ahimsa.[53] Only the warrior caste of Kshatriyas was allowed to fight. In his autobiography, Gandhi brings out clearly the pious nature of his home environment, and the emphasis which was placed there upon not eating meat because of the sacred character of ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... the Bright Collection; 4. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre; 5 Norman Crosses (with Engravings); 6. Duchess of Queensberry and Gay; 7. Dryden and Flecknoe; 8. Legends of the Monastic Orders; 9. T. Lodge and his Works; 10. Birth of the Old Pretender; 11. History of Winchelsea (with Engravings); 12. Autobiography of Mr. Britton; 13. The recent Papal Bull historically considered: with Notes of the Month. Review of New Publications, Literary and Antiquarian Intelligence, Historical Chronicle, and OBITUARY, including Memoirs ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... admitted that I had never witnessed an execution. He simply replied: "Neither have I." This detail is worth preserving, for it is a reproof to that large body of readers, who, when a novelist has really carried conviction to them, assert off hand: "O, that must be autobiography!" ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... In his Autobiography, speaking of this time, Frederick Douglass says: "I believe my first offence against our Anti-slavery Israel was committed during these Syracuse meetings. It was in this wise: Our general agent, John A. Collins, had recently returned from England full of communistic ideas, which ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... London school which Leigh Hunt and Lamb attended about the same time as Coleridge. The former has left a record of its life in his "Autobiography," and Lamb has written of it, with special reference to Coleridge, in his "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" and "Christ's ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... a trap for his correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed (even to an editor), it should, if possible, ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... slight undertaking; and immediately, when there was any question of a great journey, meant as soon as the gods might bring it to pass. "I had agreed with Captain Morris, of the Pacquet at New York, for my passage," he writes in the "Autobiography," "and my stores were put on board, when Lord Loudoun arrived at Philadelphia, expressly, as he told me, to endeavor an accommodation between the Governor and the Assembly, that his Majesty's service might not be obstructed by their dissentions." ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... such as Cicero's Letters, Suetonius, Vasari's Lives of the Painters, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Sir John Mandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon's Memoirs, Mommsen, and (till we get a better one) ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the "Old Red Sandstone," which at once established his reputation as a scientific geologist. But this work was the fruit of long years of patient observation and research. As he modestly states in his autobiography, "The only merit to which I lay claim in the case is that of patient research—a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass me; and this humble faculty of patience, when rightly developed, may lead to more extraordinary development of ideas ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... not a history, a military treatise, an essay, or a scrap of autobiography. It has no more accuracy or literary merit than letters usually possess. So I hope you will not judge it too harshly. My only object is to try and show as truthfully as I can the part played in this monstrous war by a despatch rider ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... at any time in his career with all his faults and vices; but when he goes deepest into human nature, we may be sure that self-knowledge is his guide; as Hamlet said, "To know a man well, were to know himself" (oneself), so far justifying the paradox that dramatic writing is merely a form of autobiography. We may take then as a guide this first criterion that, in his masterpiece of psychology, the dramatist will reveal most ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... enjoying, and hoping all these years; for through the publication of my entire Sermons, as has again and again been demonstrated, I have been brought into contact with the minds of more people, and for a longer time, than most men. This I mean not in boast, but as a reason for thinking that this autobiography may have some attention outside of my own circle, and I mention it also in gratitude to God, Who has for so long a time given me this unlimited and almost ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... urbane substitutes for "No, you are wrong," "No, it isn't." Our own Benjamin Franklin, whose appreciation of the conversational art in France won completely the hearts of the French people, tells us in his autobiography that in later life he found it necessary to throw off habits acquired in youth: "I continued this positive method for some years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence: never using when I advanced anything that might possibly be disputed, ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... only the first of these letters, written shortly after the event, and intended for the Pope's ear, contains a hint of Michelangelo's dread of personal violence if he remained in Rome. His words seem to point at poison or the dagger. Cellini's autobiography yields sufficient proof that such fears were not unjustified by practical experience; and Bramante, though he preferred to work by treachery of tongue, may have commanded the services of assassins, uomini arditi e facinorosi, as they were somewhat euphemistically called. At any ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... his turn at autobiography. He told rather whimsically of his three months' experiences at the tail of the juvenile whirligigs, and his auditors listened to them with mild smiles. He ventured upon numerous glowing parentheses about Julia, and they at ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... greater names than Mrs. Oliphant's, but surely none that will shine with a tenderer and purer radiance. Mrs. Oliphant was an indefatigable worker and had the spirit of true knighthood beating in her womanly bosom. Of her autobiography the Philadelphia Ledger says: "The volume is unique in interest and a most valuable and helpful story of a noble and honorable life. Mrs. Coghill has the best equipment as an editor: discretion, taste, a word of connection wherever needed, no self-consciousness, ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... to expatiate concerning himself, even when he is trying to corner a fellow-man. This principle of human nature perhaps accounts for the frequent failure of thieves to catch thieves, in spite of the proverb; the pursuit suggests somehow the pleasures of autobiography, and while they are reminded of this and that the suspects escape the detectives. Our friend gladly paused ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the place who could read Latin was an event. Years after, when the pure gold of fame was no longer a glimmering vision or a current of fate, but a wonderful fact, Abraham Lincoln wrote of such visits as Jasper's in the settlement a curious sentence in an odd hand in an autobiography, which we reproduce here: ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... The dramatic scene between Raffaelle and Fiammetta was written in 1832; and about the same time he had a design to translate the Vita Nuova of his favorite Dante; a work which he justly prized, as the development of that immense genius, in a kind of autobiography, which best prepares us for a real insight into the Divine Comedy. He rendered accordingly into verse most of the sonnets which the Vita Nuova contains; but the Editor does not believe that he made any progress in the prose translation. These ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... year 1761, studied first with his father J.J. Dussek, and in his twenty-second year received further instruction from Emanuel Bach; he soon enjoyed great fame as an executant. Tomaschek, himself a pianist of note, thus speaks of him in his autobiography:— ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... the afternoon, and how they came and peeped into the window, and thought all the world had forgotten them. Then the sweet voice, distinct in its articulation as Laura's, went straying off into wilder fancies, a chaos of autobiography and conjecture, like the letters of a war correspondent. You would have thought her little life had yielded more pangs and fears than might have sufficed for the discovery of the North Pole; but breakfast-time drew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... week-night. One evening there will be a Bible exposition; the next, reports of church work; the next, a prayer meeting; the next a liturgy meeting; the next, another Bible exposition; the next, an extract from the autobiography of some famous Moravian; the next, a singing meeting. At these meetings the chief thing that strikes an English visitor is the fact that no one but the minister takes any prominent part. The minister gives the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... his peculiar manner, and yet there are some characteristic bits—especially at the beginning—in the Sartor Resartus vein. I take it that these are reminiscences of Irving and of the Thackeray circle, and there is a curious portrait of Coleridge, not very thinly veiled. There is enough autobiography, too, of interest in ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... when a boy of nine he fell in love with his father's cousin, a handsome woman of thirty, then on a visit to his home, and that he caressed her in the most passionate manner. Belonging to an earlier day was Felix Platter, the celebrated Swiss physician of the sixteenth century, who tells us in his autobiography that when he was a child he loved to be kissed by a certain young married woman. In Un Coeur Simple, Flaubert describes the development of the love-sentiments. "For mankind there is so much love in life. At the age of four we love horses, the ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... 1806, he died in 1873. For his extraordinary education see his "Autobiography." When thirteen years old, he began the study of political economy through lectures from his father while walking; he then (1819) read Ricardo and Adam Smith, and at fourteen he journeyed to France, where ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... 554; sketch; monograph; minute account, detailed particular account, circumstantial account, graphic account; narration, recital, rehearsal, relation. historiography[obs3], chronography[obs3]; historic Muse, Clio; history; biography, autobiography; necrology, obituary. narrative, history; memoir, memorials; annals &c. (chronicle) 551; saga; tradition, legend, story, tale, historiette[obs3]; personal narrative, journal, life, adventures, fortunes, experiences, confessions; anecdote, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... My grandfather's autobiography, written about forty years later, comes to an end at this point. It is a curious document, full of the strong religious sentiment by which he came to be distinguished; tracing the finger of Providence in all that happened to him, even in the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... dropped by Mr. BONAR LAW in the course of debate are gradually furnishing the House with an almost complete autobiography. To-day it learned that while, unlike Mr. BALFOUR, he reads a great many newspapers he does not include among them a certain financial organ which makes a speciality ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... your book ('Mrs. Kemble's Autobiography') as far as Bealings by a safe convoy, and my cousin, Elizabeth Phillips, who is staying there, will ultimately convey it to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... who might then still be living. But as he has there plainly given the names of the leading persons concerned—the famous Surgeon Cruikshank,[41] there can at this time of day be little risk of offending or hurting anyone by presenting the passage, which the curious student of the Autobiography can insert at the proper point, and may feel that its presence adds to the completeness of the impression, half-humorous, half-eerie, which De Quincey was fain to produce by that somewhat grim episode. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... dates—cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates—new style, old style, precession of the equinoxes, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in favour of incidents; and an authority more appropriate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoires at eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident and revolution without any reference to vulgar eras ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... we know from a very curious passage in his well-known autobiography. He appears to have smoked not so much for pleasure as for supposed reasons of health. "It is well known," he wrote, "to those that wait in my chamber, that the shirts, waistcoats, and other garments I wear next my body, are sweet, beyond what either can easily be believed, or ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... be read as a novel: it is to be studied as an autobiography, a prophecy, a record of aspirations, disguised under a series of incidents which are flung together with no more regard to the unities than a pack of shuffled playing-cards. I can do nothing better than let him picture himself, for it is impossible not to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and marriage are always amusing in their demureness. Who Cousin Peters was we cannot now say, but she was evidently a relation and a gossip. The episode concerning Mistress Harrison and the Queen is explained by the following quotation from the autobiography of ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... worship of Allah. For the site of that mosque, the Moghul emperor Aurangzeb ruthlessly cleared away a magnificent temple most sacred to the Hindus. Concerning another famous Hindu temple in the same city, listen to the Autobiography of another earlier Moghul emperor, Jahangir. "It was the belief of these people of hell [the Hindus] that a dead Hindu laid before the idol would be restored to life, if in his life he had been a worshipper there.... I employed a confidential person ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... the present, are the prime moments for coquetries with the lighter branches of natural science, and the brother and sister had agreed to avail themselves of the geological facilities of their position, the fascinations of Hugh Miller's autobiography having entirely gained them during Aubrey's convalescence. Ethel tore herself away from the discussion of localities with the old man, who was guide as well as philosopher, boatman as well as naturalist, and returned to her patient, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... capable of deep and lasting passion, James Buchanan loved his mother. Among his papers there was found a fragment of an autobiography, which ended in 1816, when the writer was only twenty-five years of age. He says his father was "a kind father, a sincere friend, and an honest and religious man," but on the subject of his mother he ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... torn scraps of paper, as if she were on a journey. Were they all accompanied with the exact time and circumstances of their composition, they would form, in connection with others unpublished, her spiritual autobiography from the death of Eddy and Bessie, in 1852, to the autumn ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... when a little girl. To his daughter on her studies and on ease of manner. On thoroughness of education. On Jefferson's autobiography. On the actor's life. Lawrence Barrett's death. His theatre in New York in prospect. As to his brother, John Wilkes Booth, the slayer of Lincoln. Advice ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... first drawn up, Franklin agreed to the undertaking and was accordingly commissioned. On his return to Pennsylvania, Franklin published an advertisement at Lancaster on April 26, setting forth the terms offered (the full text of this advertisement is found in Franklin's autobiography). ...
— Conestoga Wagons in Braddock's Campaign, 1755 • Don H. Berkebile
... but true. The noise of which is now loud everywhere. Less lovely individual than this Trenck [Pandour Trenck, Cousin of the Prussian one,] there was not, since the days of Attila and Genghis, in any War. Blusters abominably, too; has written [save the mark!] an 'AUTOBIOGRAPHY,'—having happily afterwards, in Prison and even in Bedlam, time for such a Work;—which is stuffed with sanguinary lies and exaggerations: unbeautifulest of human souls. Has a face the color of indigo, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... In the "Autobiography of P. T. Barnum," published in 1855, I partly promised to write a book which should expose some of the chief humbugs of the world. The invitation of my friends Messrs. Cauldwell and Whitney of the "Weekly Mercury" caused me to furnish for that paper a series of articles ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of French romance, never married. Let us hope that the writing of her artless little autobiography called a novel brought consolation. Did she ever forgive the recalcitrant? Her story, Emma, ou la fiancee, ends with the aphorism: "Without the scrupulous fulfilment of the given word, there can be neither happiness nor ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... down and laughing at her own impetuosity, "now I come to think of it, I was just as ignorant a few months ago, but I was reading the autobiography of a great concert director the other day and in it he speaks of Margherita Martelli and the brief but wonderful career she had. She only sang for two or three years, and had scored triumph after triumph when a sudden illness deprived her of her voice, and she vanished from the stage as suddenly ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... of one of our own sons of the successive "phases of faith"(116) through which his soul passed from evangelical Christianity to a spiritual Deism, a record of heart-struggles which takes its place among the pathetic works of autobiography, where individuals have unveiled their inner life for the instruction of their fellow-men:—all these are instances where the great moral and spiritual problems that belong to the condition of our race may be seen embodied in the sorrowful experience of individuals. They ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... apparently not at all to her discomfort, in that age of sparer and braver habits, straight between the page and her eyes. There is a very animated allusion to one or two of her aspects in the fragment of a "spiritual autobiography," the reminiscences of a so-called Stephen Dewhurst printed by W. J. (1885) in The Literary Remains of Henry James; a reference which has the interest of being very nearly as characteristic of my father himself (which his references in almost ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... a full autobiography of Plautus would be, in place of such scant and tasteless biographical morsels as we do have, only less welcome, perhaps, would be his own stage directions for his plays, supposing him to have written stage directions and to have written them with something more than even modern fullness. We should ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... which he requested Wilson's attention was the private autobiography, written expressly to give his own story of all the facts of the ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... January 9, 1906, I was on hand with a capable stenographer, ready to begin. Clemens, meantime, had developed a new idea: he would like to add, he said, the new dictations to his former beginnings, completing an autobiography which was to be laid away and remain unpublished for a hundred years. He would pay the stenographer himself, and own the notes, allowing me, of course, free use of them as material for my book. He did not ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... June 1867. Although he has since become Australia's most acclaimed writer, in his own lifetime his writing was often "on the side"—his "real" work being whatever he could find. His writing was frequently taken from memories of his childhood, especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee. In his autobiography, he states that many of his characters were taken from the better class of diggers and bushmen he knew there. His experiences at this time deeply influenced his work, for it is interesting to note a number of descriptions and phrases that are identical in his autobiography ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... translation from the Greek done by a boy, probably as a boy's lesson It is not uncommon that such exercises should be treasured by parents, or perhaps by the performer himself, and not impossible that they should be made to reappear afterward as original compositions. Lord Brougham tells us in his autobiography that in his early youth he tried his hand at writing English essays, and even tales of fiction.[38] "I find one of these," he says, "has survived the waste-paper basket, and it may amuse my readers to see the sort of composition I was ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... was ready sometimes to stay his stomach with facts in its stead,—mere fact being but the outward husk, whereas truth is the rich kernel concealed within. His son tells us that Daudet might have taken as a motto the title of Goethe's autobiography, "Dichtung und Wahrheit,"—Poetry and Truth. And this it is that has set Daudet apart and that has caused his vogue with readers of all sorts and conditions,—this unique combination of imagination and verity. "His originality," M. Jules Lemaitre has acutely remarked, "is closely to unite observation ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... be personal! Seriously, you know, the one thing I have admired in the very few great people I have ever met is the absence of embarrassment. They don't need to explain who they are, they haven't got to preface their statements of opinion by fragments of autobiography, to show their right to speak. It is convenient to feel that if people don't know who you are, they will feel slightly foolish afterwards when they discover, like the man who shook hands warmly with Queen Victoria, and said, "I know the face quite well, but I can't put a ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... James Ralph a hack author. See 'The Dunciad,' and Franklin's 'Autobiography.' He was hired by Pelham to abuse Sir R. Walpole, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... autobiography was written by Mr. Lincoln's own hand at the request of J. W. Fell of Springfield, Ill., December 20, 1859. In the note which accompanied it the writer says: "Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested. There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Whitman either as a prophet or a poet, except inferentially as the words of his critics may carry distinct impressions. After all, the justest estimate of Whitman and his book is his own. Whitman's puzzling characteristics are best understood if we realize that Leaves of Grass is an autobiography—and an extraordinarily candid one—of a man whose peculiar temperament found expression in prose-verse. His gentleness, his brusqueness, his egotism, his humility, his grossness, his finer nature, his crudeness, his eloquence, ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... uncle turned him adrift in the world, with only two guineas, the fruits of his five years' service, in his pocket. During the next seven years of his life he endured many vicissitudes and hardships. Yet he says, in his autobiography, "in my poor and obscure lodgings, at eighteenpence a week, I indulged in study, and often read in bed during the winter evenings, because I could not afford a fire." Travelling on foot to Bath, he ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... whatever that ‘Lavengro’ is in the main an autobiography. We have none. The only question is how much Dichtung is mingled with the Wahrheit. Had it not been for the amazingly clumsy pieces of fiction which he threw into the narrative—such incidents as that of his meeting on the road the sailor son of the old ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... dull business, partly from an entire lack of humour, partly from the absence of any settled plan that might help one to endure the dreariness of the setting. Mr. CANNAN certainly knows his subject, and few novels indeed have given me, rightly or wrongly, a greater suggestion of autobiography. But for once the art of being exhaustive without being exhausting seems ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... short a book as this the author is able to play with his mask and to fix his expression. Throughout the work of an entire lifetime, however, which is of real value only when it is one long autobiography, deceit is impossible, because when the writer is least conscious ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... ministry in his "Life," which forms a continuation of his "History of the Rebellion." The relations of the Church and the Dissenters during this period may be seen in Neal's "History of the Puritans," Calamy's "Memoirs of the Ejected Ministers," Mr. Dixon's "Life of Penn," Baxter's "Autobiography," and Bunyan's account of his sufferings in his various works. For the political story of the period as a whole our best authorities are Bishop Kennet's "Register," and Burnet's lively "History of my own Times." The memoirs ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... mysterious picture. A boy of quick and enthusiastic temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... is dedicated to the Massachusetts Historical Society, who have honored the author with their presidency for eight years past. It is rather an autobiography than a biography, and an autobiography of the most trustworthy kind, 'written accidentally and unconsciously, as it were, in familiar letters or private journals, or upon the records of official service.' Such a Life is the volume before us. The most skilful ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... one day was invited to listen to Someone's Recollections or Reminiscences. All went well for five minutes, when the Autobiographist, looking up from his Autobiography, found that Mr. Punch was fast asleep. The Sage slumbered as the Representative of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... cottage, and remained there from September, 1895, to March 21, 1896. It was evident to her sister and all around her that she was fast failing; but when ever she was well enough she did some work. At this time she had begun her autobiography. When she was free from pain, she was always bright and cheerful, and enjoyed a joke as much ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... insuperable, and that he was already making up his mind to part from Harriet. About the middle of June the separation actually occurred—not by mutual consent, so far as any published documents throw light on the matter, but rather by Shelley's sudden abandonment of his wife and child. (Leigh Hunt, Autobiography page 236, and Medwin, however, both assert that it was by mutual consent. The whole question must be studied in Peacock and in Garnett, Relics of Shelly, page 147.) For a short while Harriet was left in ignorance of his abode, and with a very ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... died in Belleville in May, 1865. Governor Reynolds was a quaint and forceful character. He was a man of much learning; but in conversation (and he talked much) he rarely rose above the odd Western vernacular, of which he was so complete a master. He was the author of two books—one an autobiography, and the other "The Pioneer ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... Camelford—confiscation which I have heard my father complain of as especially unfair—Lawrence being a younger son. The romantic story of Lord Grey was to be the subject of "Master Anthony's Record," but Master Anthony's sentimental autobiography went the way of all my earlier efforts. It was but a year or so after the collapse of Master Anthony, that a blindly-enterprising printer of Beverley, who had seen my poor little verses in the Beverley Recorder, made me the spirited offer of ten pounds for a serial story, to be set up and ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and Charles Dickens's novels have had a sale equaled by a few books in the world. The two authors began their literary life in a like manner, by tucking their manuscripts under the editor's door at night ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Hunts were again prosecuted for a libel upon the Prince Regent, and sentenced to be imprisoned two years, and to pay a fine of L500. Bat the imprisonment was alleviated in every possible way, as we gather from Leigh Hunt's charming description of his prison in his Autobiography. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... man who built the university and the house at Monticello was great. It is more true of these buildings than of any others I have seen that they are the autobiography, in brick and stone, of their architect. To see them, to see some of the exquisitely margined manuscript in Jefferson's clean handwriting, preserved in the university library, and to read the Declaration, is to gain a grasp of certain sides of Jefferson's ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... [498] Autobiography of Sir Symond d'Ewes i. 405: 'Being only misled by some Machiavellian politics who seemed zealous for the liberty of the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Bible. Even the denunciations of Popery have a dubious sound. What is sometimes called 'the religious world' were no longer buyers of Borrow. Nor was 'the polite world' much better pleased. The polite reader was both puzzled and annoyed. First of all: Was the book true—autobiography or romance? A polite reader objects to be made a fool of. One De Foe in a couple of centuries is enough for a polite reader. Then the glorification of ale and of gypsies and prize-fighters—would it not be better at once to dub the book vulgar, and so have done with it for ever? ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... he had not writ, as for what he had," that much more has been laid to his charge than he ever deserved. Among ascriptions of this kind may be mentioned the curious Apology for the Life of Mr. The' Cibber, Comedian, 1740, which is described on its title-page as a proper sequel to the autobiography of the Laureate, in whose "style and manner" it is said to be written. But, although this performance is evidently the work of some one well acquainted with the dramatic annals of the day, it is more than doubtful whether Fielding had any hand or part in it. Indeed, his own statement ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... says Mr. Livesey in his autobiography, "though small, was like a palace; for none could excel my Jenny for cleanliness and order. I renovated the garden, and made it a pleasant place to walk in. On the loom I was most industrious, working from early in the morning often till ten, ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... more or less complete. At its minimum, it is simply a "feeling of familiarity" with the object; at its maximum it is locating the object precisely in your autobiography. You see a man, and say, "He looks {358} familiar, I must have seen him somewhere", and then it dawns on you, "Oh! yes, now I know exactly who he is; he is the man who . . ." Between these extremes lie various ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... and couldn't make head or tail of why I wanted to read them. There were two red-letter days: one when I first bought the two volumes of Herrick, the second when I tumbled upon De Quincey. That's the author to bowl a boy over. The Stage-Coach, the Autobiography, the Confessions—I could never get tired of them. I remember buying an ounce of laudanum at a chemist's on London Bridge and taking it home, with the intention of following in the steps of my hero and qualifying to drink ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... imprisoned. He was "under the leads" over the Piazzetta wing, and the account of his durance and his escape is one of the most interesting parts, and certainly the least improper, of his remarkably frank autobiography. Venice does not seem to have any pride in this son of hers, but as a master of licentiousness, effrontery, adventurousness, and unblushing candour he stands alone in the world. Born at Venice in 1725, it was in the seminary ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... religious parents, who appreciated the advantage of education, Miss Evans was allowed to make the best of her circumstances. We have few details of her early life on which we can accurately rely. She was not an egotist, and did not leave an autobiography like Trollope, or reminiscences like Carlyle; but she has probably portrayed herself, in her early aspirations, as Madame de Stael did, in the characters she has created. The less we know about the personalities of very distinguished geniuses, the better it is for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... by heart the first book of the Iliad, and the Odes of Horace. There is a legend that he often soothed his little son to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. He wrote verse, he was a very clever draughtsman, and he was a collector of rare books and prints. Mr. W. J. Stillman, in his "Autobiography of a Journalist," refers to the elder Browning, whom he knew in his later years, as "a serene, untroubled soul,... as gentle as a gentle woman, a man to whom, it seemed to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to cloud his frank acceptance of life ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... "or the autobiography of Sir Richard Burton. Fenton has the same extraordinary gift of language and dialect that Burton had: the art of 'make-up,' too; and he's been to Mecca; a great adventure I believe he had. Perhaps you can get him to talk of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... are two new books by Margot Asquith! One is My Impressions of America, the other continues The Autobiography of Margot Asquith. Of the first of these books there is to say that it represents Mrs. Asquith's matured impressions and will have a value that could not possibly attach to interviews or statements she gave on this side. It also gives, for the first time, her frank and direct ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... know so well as your friends? You will show up your friends, then, one after another. When your friends give out, who is left for you? Why, nobody but your own family, of course. When you have used up your family, there is nothing left for you but to write your autobiography. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in the best humor. He sent for a bottle of wine, and filled for Riemer and me; he himself drank Marienbad water. He seemed to have appointed this evening for looking over, with Riemer, the manuscript of the continuation of his autobiography, perhaps in order to improve it here and there, in point of expression. "Let Eckermann stay and hear it too," said Goethe; which words I was very glad to hear, and he then laid the manuscript before Riemer, who began to read, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... novel especially, but also poetry, has drifted toward biography and autobiography. The older poets, who yesterday were the younger poets, such men as Masters, Robinson, Frost, Lindsay, have passed from lyric to biographic narrative; the younger poets more and more write of themselves. In the novel the trend is even more marked. An acute ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Washington, and especially approved his plan for uplifting the Negro by industrial training. One of the great services that Page rendered literature was his persuasion of Washington to write that really great autobiography, "Up from Slavery," and another biography in a different field, for which he was responsible, was Miss Helen Keller's "Story of My Life." And only once, amid these fine but not showy activities, did Page's ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... in which the two series of letters already published should be thrown into one, and as much new material added as could be found suitable. The task of carrying out this scheme fell again upon me. The new edition constituted in effect a nearly complete epistolary autobiography. It contained not less than a hundred and fifty of Stevenson's letters hitherto unpublished. They dated from all periods of his life, those written in the brilliant and troubled days of his youth predominating, and giving a picture, perhaps unique in its kind, of a character and talent in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... death. We should, I think, be more fortunate still if the memoirs had not ceased in mid-career, or if their author had permitted himself to write of his family affairs without reserve or restraint, in the approved manner of modern autobiography. We should like, for example, to know much more than we do about the wife and the two sons to whom he ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... was falling in great gray blobs upon the skylight of the little room in which I opened my eyes on that February morning whence dates the chronological beginning of this autobiography. The jangle of a bell had awakened me, and its harsh, discordant echoes were still trembling upon the chill gloom of the daybreak. Lying there, I wondered whether I had really heard a bell ringing, or had only dreamed it. Everything about ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Jerrold's animosity had declared itself—first, because his copy was always certain; and secondly, because he and Leech were great friends, and Leech was then a power—though not in the same degree as Jerrold, who was almost absolute." These strictures are repeated in Vizetelly's autobiography. Smith's "Physiologies," he says, which were some of them enlarged from the Punch sketches, brought him great popular favour, in spite of their slight intrinsic worth. Thackeray was invited by Vizetelly to produce similar sketches at a hundred pounds apiece—which was double ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... on Religion. 1 vol. The Autobiography. 1 vol. Dissertations and Discussions. 5 vols. Considerations on Representative Government. 1 vol. Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy. 2 vols. On Liberty: The Subjection of Women. Both in 1 vol. Comte's Positive ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Laura. I don't know how I came to have that in here. And here's General Grant's autobiography for his namesake," he said with an effort at carelessness, and waited to ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... his autobiography of having acquired the habit of expressing himself in terms of modest diffidence, "never using," he says, "when I advance anything that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... Augustine. But in modern times, since Petrarca, there are at least two thousand actors on the public stage whom we see by the revelations of private correspondence. Besides letters that were meant to be burnt, there are a man's secret diaries, his autobiography and table-talk, the recollections of his friends, self-betraying notes on the margins of books, the report of his trial if he is a culprit, and the evidence for beatification if he is a saint. Here we are on a different footing, and we practise a different art when dealing ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... From the autobiography of AEneas Sylvius and the lyrics of Petrarch we gain a far truer picture of the feeling of the period up to the sixteenth century than from any poetry in other countries. Even the epic had a more modern tone in Italy; Ariosto's ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the novel-reading sense of the word, my story has no real conclusion. The repose that comes to all of us after trouble—to me, a repose in life: to others, how often a repose only in the grave!—is the end which must close this autobiography: an end, calm, natural, and uneventful; yet not, perhaps, devoid of all lesson and value. Is it fit that I should set myself, for the sake of effect, to make a conclusion, and terminate by fiction what has begun, and thus far, has proceeded in truth? In the interests of Art, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... his escape does not lend itself to mystic treatment and symbolic interpretation. He ended by finding his way to the West by the Suez Canal route in the usual manner. Reaching the shores of South Europe he sat down to write his autobiography—the great literary success of its year. This book was followed by other books written with the declared purpose of elevating humanity. In these works he preached generally the cult of the woman. For his own part he practised it under ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... on Darwin's mind by this first visit to a volcanic island, is borne witness to by a remarkable passage in the "Autobiography" written by him in 1876. "The geology of St. Jago is very striking, yet simple; a stream of lava formerly flowed over the bed of the sea, formed of triturated recent shells and corals, which it has baked into a hard white rock. Since then the whole island has been upheaved. But the ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... stage; Les Gynographes, with a general plan for rearranging the status of women; L'Andrographe, a "whole duty of man" of a very novel kind; Le Thesmographe, etc.,—besides, close upon the end and after the autobiography above described, a Philosophie de M. Nicolas. His more or less directly narrative pieces, Le Pied de Fanchette, Lucile, Adele, La Femme Infidele, Ingenue Saxancour, are nearly always more or less tinged ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the facts of a man's life are meaningless, chaotic, discordant: it is the poet's office to put them into the crucible of his spirit and give them forth as a significant and harmonious whole. The "poetry" of Goethe's autobiography—by far the best of autobiographies in the German language—must not be taken to imply concealment, perversion, substitution, or anything ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke |
