"Biography" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it was every way more comfortable, save that we had still the backless slab seats. Here I went at odd times in winter for several years. I had acquired a great fondness for reading, devouring everything in the way of books I could lay my hands upon. Especially I had a great passion for history, biography, geography, natural philosophy, and the like, and I let nothing escape me that the country afforded. I had no money to buy books, and had to depend on borrowing them. I soon went through arithmetic, grammar, and the history of the United States. ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... easy to give instances: one must suffice here. Biography, which is one of the most characteristic kinds of English writing, was unknown to the moderns as late as the sixteenth century. Partly the awakened interest in the careers of the ancient statesmen and soldiers which the study of Plutarch had ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... be harmonized, if a true conception of his being is to be formed. We know the faces of our friends, but we see each as one. The features can, if we will, be separately considered, catalogued, and valued; but who ever thus thinks habitually of one he knows well? Yet to know well must be the aim of biography,—so to present the traits in their totality, without suppression of any, and in their true relative proportions, as to produce, not the blurred or distorted outlines seen through an imperfect lens, but the vivid apprehension which follows long intimacy with its continual, though ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... days, when he saw a vision of God, and received from Him instructions as to matters then pressing. For many generations afterwards the story ran that the Duke had been up to Heaven. This became a favourite theme for romancers. It is stated in the biography of a certain Feng Po that "one night he saw the gate of heaven open, and beheld exceeding glory within, which ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... to work under any other teacher, assuring the family that he felt able now to go on alone. Early morning and late evening found the young musician at his organ in the garret. Those who read this biography will scarcely believe how great was his progress. But ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... importance of this class of biography, it may at least be averred that it has not yet received its due share of attention. While commemorating the labours and honouring the names of those who have striven to elevate man above the material and mechanical, the labours of the important industrial class to whom society ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... kinder and 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 ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... my mind laughed aloud at the pitiful imposture. Another device was to create points of interest, like a series of shrines along a tedious road, which should present some aspect of allurement. There was a book-shop here or an art-shop there; yesterday a biography of Napoleon was exhibited in the one, or a print of Murillo's 'Flight into Egypt,' in the other; and it is become a matter of speculation whether they were there to-day. Just as a solitary sailor will beguile the tedium of empty days at sea by a kind of cribbage, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... 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, and the fitnesses of worship—the ideas ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... came to see Treffinger's studio and his unfinished picture. Since I've been here, I've decided to stay the summer. I'm even thinking of attempting to do a biography ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... of a Prussian King, is interesting to Prussia chiefly, and to us little otherwise than as the Biography of a distinguished fellow-man, Friedrich's Biography, his Physiognomy as he grows old, quietly on his own harvest-field, among his own People: this has still an interest, and for any feature of this we shall be eager enough; but this withal ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the game are, many of them, remarkable; and we believe they are known to have less of the mythical about them than those told in other departments. One who knows the game will feel that it is sufficiently absorbing to be woven in with the textures of government, of history, and of biography. It is of the nature of chess gradually to gather up all the senses and faculties of the player, so that for the time being he is an automaton chess-player, to whom life and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... to her. When she learned the Cayenne story, her anger was terrible. She called Florent a convict and murderer, and said it was no wonder that his villainy had kept him lank and flat. Her versions of Florent's biography were the most horrible of all that were circulated in the neighbourhood. At home she kept a moderately quiet tongue in her head, and restricted herself to muttered indignation, and a show of locking up the drawer where the silver was kept whenever Florent ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of superior talents as a Spanish inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties of his office. And yet in his fine devotion to his art, in his honest and serviceable friendship for Schiller, what lessons are contained! Biography, usually so false to its office, does here for once perform for us some of the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly mingled tissue of man's nature, and how huge faults and shining virtues cohabit and persevere in the same character. History serves us well to this ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the Cornhill an essay on the evolution of the Hittite syllabary, (for only one author could make that popular;) or a sketch of cock fighting among the ancients to the Monthly Record; or an essay on Ayahs in India to an American magazine; or a biography of Washington or Lincoln to any English magazine whatever. We have them every month in some American periodicals, and our poor insular serials can get on without them: "have ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... himself stranded with only worry for company. Similarly, if the study of history is taken up in the way a fad should be taken up, anything in the way of a book will now interest the worrier, for hardly a book worth reading fails to contain either a bit of travel, geography, biography, law, or something on manners ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... an account of the Rothamsted experiments, and a short biography of Sir John Lawes, the reader is referred to a pamphlet by the present writer, entitled 'Sir J. B. Lawes, Bart., LL.D., F.R.S., and the Rothamsted Experiments' ('Scottish Farmer' ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... times in which we live. The present is the age of small men, whose lives are necessarily written while living, lest, when dead, and all hope of reward is past, nothing should be remembered to be said of them. What, moreover, can be more agreeable, than for a man to read his own biography, especially when drawn by the partial hand of friendship, and retouched in each successive edition, as new circumstances require, new virtues are disclosed, and new deeds demand a record? It may be likened to the reading of one's own epitaph, wherein one can see to it for himself, that ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... the same with Boccaccio. For two centuries, when but little was known of the Decameron north of the Alps, he was famous all over Europe simply on account of his Latin compilations on mythology, geography, and biography. One of these, de Genealogia Deorum, contains in the fourteenth and fifteenth books a remarkable appendix, in which he discusses the position of the then youthful humanism with regard to the age. We must not be misled by his exclusive references ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Joan the Maid' is by the Editor, who has used M. Quicherat's Proces (five volumes, published for the Historical Society of France), with M. Quicherat's other researches. He has also used M. Wallon's Biography, the works of Father Ayroles, S.J., the Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy of M. Simeon Luce, the works of M. Sepet, of Michelet, of Henri Martin, and, generally, all printed documents to which he has had access. Of unprinted ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... seem half so easy now us it had on that other morning in March when he stood in the barn talking to Julia. Making your fortune always seems so easy until you've tried it. It seems rather easy in a novel, and still easier in a biography. But no Samuel Smiles ever writes the history of those who fail; the vessels that never came back from their venturous voyages left us no log-books. Many have written the History of Success. What melancholy Plutarch ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... work is based throughout on the sources; its literary quality is above the average and it appraises Jackson and his times in an unimpeachable spirit of fairness. Within very limited space, William G. Brown's Andrew Jackson (1900) tells the story of Jackson admirably; and a good biography, marred only by a lack of sympathy and by occasional inaccuracy in details, is William G. Sumner's Andrew Jackson (rev. ed., 1899). Of older biographies, the most important is James Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Craftsman: Beside the stature of this book, the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You read it with a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence and gratitude. There is something strangely touching about words so candid, and a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such wild and ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... of James Whitcomb Riley IN TEN VOLUMES Including Poems and Prose Sketches, many of which have not heretofore been published; an authentic Biography, an elaborate Index and numerous Illustrations ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... "There is no reason to suppose that he had seen Germany." wrote Mr. George Long in Sir William Smith's "Dictionary of Greek Biography and Mythology."] ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... The playing, the portraits, were now explained. A lover of the Polish composer, Davos knew every incident of his biography. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... was that grandfather of mine, whom I can only remember as a grand-looking old man, with snow-white hair and piercing hawk's eyes. The merriest of wild Irishmen was he in his youth, and I have often wished that his biography had been written, if only as a picture of Dublin society at the time. He had an exquisite voice, and one night he and some of his wild comrades went out singing through the streets as beggars. Pennies, sixpences, shillings, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... work which of all Dr. Johnson's writings will perhaps be read most generally, and with most pleasure. Philology and biography[124] were his favourite pursuits, and those who lived most in intimacy with him, heard him upon all occasions, when there was a proper opportunity, take delight in expatiating upon the various ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... and often even to himself. He supposed that he was recording and classifying, but he was creating and vivifying. Within the bounds of his epical scheme, which was always factitious, every person was so natural that his characters seemed like the characters of biography rather than of fiction. One does not remember them as one remembers the characters of most novelists. They had their being in a design which was meant to represent a state of things, to enforce an opinion ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his craft; and so well did he fulfil his promise, until the debility of his ship and a chain of misfortunes interposed to prevent him, that the Admiralty charts in current use are substantially those which Flinders made over a hundred years ago.* (* Sir J.K. Laughton in Dictionary of National Biography 19 328.) ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... boyish-hearted old scamp whom you have seen scuttling away from the circulating library with M. St. Pierre's memoirs of young Paul and his beloved Virginia under his arm; or stepping briskly out of the book store hugging to his left side a carefully wrapped biography of Lady Diana Vernon, Mlle. de la Valliere, or Madame Margaret Woffington; or in fact any of a thousand charming ladies whom it is certain he had met before. Ladies too, who, born whensoever, are not one day older since he last saw them. Nearly a hundred years of Parisian residence have not ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... instance. So, to cut the matter short, things were at last made up pleasant enough. The time was fixed for the wedding, and an announcement about it—Marriage in High Life and all that—put into the county paper. There was a regular biography, besides, of the governess's father, so as to stop people from talking—a great flourish about his pedigree, and a long account of his services in the army; but not a word, mind ye, of his having turned wine-merchant afterward. Oh, no—not ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... undervalued his own efforts. His life was one of little incident: it is his character, his mind, the society around him, the period in which he shone, that give the charm to his correspondence, and the interest to his biography. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... nothing that I know in biography anywhere more beautiful, more striking, than the contrast between the two halves of the character and demeanour of the Baptist; how, on the one side, he fronts all men undaunted and recognises no superior, and how neither threats nor flatteries ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... play—ever unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no sentences in his treatise hold ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... States in 1823, and there eked out a precarious existence by giving private lessons. In 1825 he went to Mexico, where he was well received and where he held several important posts, including those of member of Congress and judge of the superior court. In Heredia's biography two facts should be stressed: that he studied for five years in Caracas, the city that produced Bolivar and Bello, respectively the greatest general and the greatest scholar of Spanish America; and that he spent only twelve years, all told, in Cuba. As he lived for ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... deal of Pen's personal experiences, and that "Leaves from the Life-book of Walter Lorraine" would never have been written but for Arthur Pendennis's own private griefs, passions, and follies. As we have become acquainted with these in the first volume of his biography, it will not be necessary to make large extracts from the novel of "Walter Lorraine," in which the young gentleman had depicted such of them as he thought were likely to interest the reader, or were suitable for the purposes ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the private biography of Mr. Ivy, and it is quite possible that he may have possessed endearing traits which he had no opportunity to manifest in our intercourse. It would be foolish and futile for the ends I have in view in this writing to cite or comment ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 later ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... should go to some gathering where she will meet those who will refresh her intellectually. Keep the mind open to all the impressions of nature. Love the open air. Fresh air is not a fad, it is a necessity if one would keep young. Occasionally read a book of travel or a biography of some well-known person. Keep mentally alert. An intellectual back number adds years to her seeming age. Nothing makes for youth as a young mind, save ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... born at Garthland Place, Scotland, in 1855. He wrote several volumes of biography and criticism, published a book of plays greatly influenced by Maeterlinck (Vistas) and was editor ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... In Huxley's admirable biography, written by his son, you may read of a 'longshoreman who, thanks to reasonably short hours of work and a little leisure, took up the study ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... 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 goes by. For ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... search of his better half. Upon this point, unfortunately, there hangs a mist,—not impenetrable, as we conceive, but yet impenetrated,—a secret to which the given clue has been neglected, and which remains to the present day the opprobrium of a careless biography. The fact and the date of his marriage in Ireland are obtained from his own writings; but, further than that her name was Elizabeth,—a fact recorded by himself,—the lady of his choice remains unknown, her maiden name and family. Mere trifles these, to be sure,—but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... quietly bearing the philosopher's question to the clouds. It was a point which delivered the answer. In the life of every great man there is likewise a point which delivers the special message which he was born to publish to the world. Biography is greatly simplified when it confines itself chiefly to that one point. What does the reader, who has his own work to do, care for a great multitude of details which are not needed for the setting of the picture? To the point is the cry ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... congratulatory telegram sent by a friend to a Cambridge Senior Wrangler hailing from Scotland, "Three cheers for the parritge!" And that curious and most impressive fact which Mr. Bayard, the late American Ambassador, hunted up for our edification from various dictionaries of biography—the fact, namely, that a large proportion of our most eminent men spring from the homes of the poorer clergy, where certainly sumptuous fare and much meat do not obtain, is a proof that abstemious living, while forming a valuable discipline ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... ill-tempered animal, that they put up with his moroseness almost without a growl; but there is a limit to sufferance, beyond which neither men nor bears can travel, and that boundary was at last attained with the B.'s. As what I am now about to relate is, however, rather an important fact in my biography, I must inform you how the matter occurred, and what were the circumstances which ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... in one little community where a community building would be erected which would be used as a school in daytime, a motion-picture house at night, and a church on Sunday. A community secretary would have his office here, and would have charge of a select little library of fiction, poetry, biography, and works of reference. The leading periodicals dealing with farm problems, sociology, and economics, as well as lighter subjects, would be on file. In connection with this building would be an assembly-room suitable for dances, social events, and theatricals, and equipped with ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... perhaps more pleasure than anything he did in his whole stage life. The advent of "Peter Pan" was at hand. The remarkable story of how Charles got the manuscript of "Peter Pan" has already been told in this biography. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... [128] Biography is quite a different thing from history; and the Colored men who may imagine themselves neglected ought to remember that this is a History of the Negro Race. We have mentioned these men as representative of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... its insidious forms. "Take one step out of yourself," say the S[u]fis, "and you will arrive at God."[57] This one step is the most difficult act of life; yet urged by love, man has taken it again and again. This phase is so familiar to every reader of spiritual biography, that I need not insist upon it. "In the field of this body," says Kabir, "a great war goes forward, against passion, anger, pride and greed. It is in the Kingdom of Truth, Contentment and Purity that this battle is raging, and the sword that rings forth most loudly is the sword of His Name."[58] ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... she? Oh, do you not know who Busie is? Have you forgotten? Then I will tell you her biography all over again, briefly, and in the very same words I used when telling it you once ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... East Tennessee for a Period of nearly Four Years during the great Southern Rebellion. Written by Himself. Containing a Short Biography of the Author. With ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... secretary ever saw the correspondence, or knew of the occurrence. The President put the papers away in an envelop, and no word of the affair came to the public until a quarter of a century later, when the details were published in Mr. Lincoln's biography. In one mind, at least, there was no further doubt that the cabinet had a master, for only some weeks later Mr. Seward is known to have written: "There is but one vote in the cabinet, and that is cast by the President." This mastery ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... letters, perhaps a few words on Martineau himself would not be out of place here. He came of an old Huguenot family. Mr. Jackson, from whose biography of him I am quoting, says that Gaston Martineau, who, tradition tells us, was a surgeon of Dieppe, came to England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and that though first he went to London to live, yet that eventually he ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... his own unstudied account of the first voyage and discovery, and the narrative from the biography of Columbus by his son, furnish a very complete history of the enterprise from which so large a part of the world's later development has followed. It should be noted, however, that both of the accounts manifest the not unnatural ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... incongruously; but, for the most part, the booksellers of to-day have a very excellent sense of what is fitting. The result is that those who care about books can differentiate them at a glance. They know what is the approved style and line for biography and history, for poetry and fiction, for sermons, for gift-books, and so ad infinitum. The 'Life' of So-and-so, and the 'Annals' of Such-and-such, are unmistakeable; they have respectability written on every corner and angle of them. The dull brown or the dull green ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... claim indulgence for adding a little more of the biography of this particular bird, as a representative also of the instincts of her race. She completed the nest in about a weeks time, without any aid from her mate, who indeed appeared but seldom in her company and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... this period of transition between the Ciceronian and the Augustan age is Cornelius Nepos (circ. 99-24 B.C.). In earlier life he was one of the circle of Catullus, and after Cicero's death was one of the chief friends of Atticus, of whom a brief biography, which he wrote after Atticus' death, is still extant. Unlike Sallust, Nepos never took part in public affairs, but carried on throughout a long life the part of a man of letters, honest and kindly, but without any striking originality or ability. ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... 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 the ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... completed and compared them, one by the other; and thus, by means of the confessions of the accused, certain allusions and confidences of his made to others, and his indiscretions when he was drunk, I was enabled to make up his biography with a precision which is not ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... that's not true: there is a subtle undercurrent of old love affairs revived that runs right to the very last page—and that is one of Mrs Vaizey's greatest skills. If you haven't done so, do read the little biography we have written of her, as it will help you to understand her writing rather better than if ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... who was present at the time of the murder of Jane McCrea, and afterwards gave the account to Jared Sparks, who records it in his "Life of Arnold." See "Library of American Biography," ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... remember quieter inflections and more modest language. But here, in the meantime, there seems to swim up some outline of a new cerebral hygiene and a good time coming, when experienced advisers shall send a man to the proper measured level for the ode, the biography, or the religious tract; and a nook may be found between the sea and Chimborazo, where Mr. Swinburne shall be able to write more continently, and Mr. Browning ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Franklin interrupts the narrative of his life to give some account of his religious beliefs, and we will follow his example. And first of all let us say frankly that Parton, whose work is likely long to remain the standard biography of Franklin, gives a false color to the religious experience of his hero. Of regeneration there is in Franklin no sign, but instead of that a constant growth,—which is far more wholesome. He was always an amused and skeptical observer of the revivals and wild enthusiasms kindled by his friend Whitefield ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... get them through the voyage and yield fortunes. Crew after crew was sacrificed to this frenzied rush for money, but nothing was thought of it. Again, there were examples of almost incredible temerity. In his biography of Peter Charndon Brooks, one of the principal merchants of the day, and his father-in-law, Edward Everett tells of a ship sailing from Calcutta to Boston with a youth of nineteen in command. Why or how this boy was placed in charge is not explained. This juvenile ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... selected from a far larger number 440 plays and games and arranged the best of them in a course by school grades, from the first to the eighth, inclusive, and also according to their educational value as teaching observation, reading and spelling, language, arithmetic, geography, history, and biography, physical training, and specifically as training legs, hand, arm, back, waist, abdominal muscles, chest, etc. Most of our best games are very old and, Johnson thinks, have deteriorated. But children are imitative and not inventive in their games, and easily learn new ones. Since ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... volume from the collection of Mr. Heber, vii. 1682.—Sir William Musgrave was a Trustee of the British Museum, and bequeathed near two thousand volumes to that incomparable establishment. He was partial to biography, and gave much assistance to Granger. His Adversaria and Obituary, I often consult. The latter work is an excellent specimen ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... chiefly to the recollections of his two faithful friends, Horatio Bridge and Elizabeth Peabody. These were first systematised and published by George P. Lathrop in 1872, but a more complete and authoritative biography was issued by Julian Hawthorne twelve years later, in which, however, the writer has modestly refrained from expressing an opinion as to the quality of his father's genius, or from attempting any critical examination of his father's literary work. It is in order to supply ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... may add, wished Traubel to be so remembered. In his careful record of the Camden sage's utterances and pulse-beats he approached (as nearly as any one) the devoted dignity of Boswell. We were about to say the self-effacing devotion of Boswell; but the beauty of biography is that the biographer cannot wholly delete himself from the book. One is always curious about the recording instrument. When we see a particularly fine photograph our first question is always, "What kind of camera was it ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... archbishop of Paris, his chaplain, and eight other priests, were arrested. One was a missionary just returned from China, another was the Abbe Crozes, the admirable chaplain (aumonier) of the prison of La Roquette,—a man whose deeds of charity would form a noble chapter of Christian biography. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... hair into the print-shops; of having something like justice done to his singing-voice and fine intellect; of making the life and adventures of Thomas Hocker remarkable; and of getting up some excitement in connection with that slighted piece of biography. The Stage? No. Not feasible. There has always been a conspiracy against the Thomas Hockers, in that kind of effort. It has been the same with Authorship in prose and poetry. Is there nothing else? A Murder, now, would make a noise in the ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... Seeley has in his new volume recovered his singularly attractive style and power of literary form. It underwent some obscuration in the three volumes in which the great transformation of Germany and Prussia during the Napoleonic age was not very happily grouped round a biography of Stein. But here the reader once more finds that ease, lucidity, persuasiveness, and mild gravity that were first shown, as they were probably first acquired, in the serious consideration of religious and ethical ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... that very curious work, the 'Century of Inventions,' by the Marquis of Worcester, in which, as in the commonplace book of an author, one may find jotted down many an undeveloped idea of great promise. In this connection we may be allowed to borrow somewhat from a biography by Charles F. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... are wrong and criminal. Thus, though you meant to be complimentary in your sketch of my career, you make more than a dozen mistakes of fact, which I need not correct, as I don't desire my biography to be written till I am dead. It is enough for the world to know that I live and am a soldier, bound to obey the orders of my superiors, the laws of my country, and to venerate its Constitution; and that, when discretion is given me, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... being as charming in style as they are sound in scholarship. Add to these a work on the principles of dramatic criticism that is referred to with respect by the very latest writers on the subject, an important biography, a second very successful novel, and a series of six historical romances that vary in interest, indeed, but that are a noble monument to his own nation and that, alone, would ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... neighbours, by means of gangs of robbers. The man who does this, becomes the slave of his gangs, as the imperial robber, who seizes upon smaller states by means of his victorious armies, becomes their slave, and, ultimately, their victim, The history of India is nothing more than the biography of such men, and the Rajah has read ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... who is trying to write the biography of a great man complained to me lately, that in consulting a dozen of his friends—men and women who had known him as preacher, orator, reformer, and poet—so few of them had anything characteristic and fine to relate. "What," he said "is the use of trying to write biography ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... 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 ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... other people, we can know still less; we can observe something, we can get more from hearsay; but that is a chaos of impressions; the larger part is inference and construction, a work of the imagination, which may or may not be true. Even the biography, carefully made from all available data in the way of personal recollections, letters, and diaries, although it may approach to wholeness, remains, nevertheless, very largely a construction, a work of literary fiction. ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... memoranda in the "diary" which had not yet been turned to any use. Some subject, therefore, was to be hit upon for another publication, in which they could be inserted, when beat out into a sizeable shape; and what could be better adapted for that purpose than the biography of a great Italian artist? The life of poor Salvator Rosa was, in consequence, attempted. Just think of making one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived, a peg to hang notes upon! The next offspring of her ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... prepared. A wish even, that was uttered at such a time, would have had the weight of a command; and from that day to this pious affection has carried out in the spirit as well as to the letter the desire of the dying man. No biography of Cooper has, in consequence, ever appeared. Nor is it unjust to say that the sketches of his career, which are found either in magazines or cyclopaedias, are not only unsatisfactory on account of their incompleteness, but are all in greater or less degree untrustworthy ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... another angle, how many readers buy novels, and buy them to keep? How many modern novels does one find well bound, and placed on the shelves devoted to "standard reading"? In these Olympian fields a mediocre biography, a volume of second-rate poems, a rehash of history, will find their way before the novels that in the last decade have equaled, if not outranked, the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Close, is the inn where Dr. Johnson lodged in 1773, while in the churchyard hard by are the graves of Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart. It is not possible to feel indifferent to such associations. No grander figure can be found in the history of the Reformation than that of John Knox. His biography reads like a romance. Whether serving a two years' sentence in the French galleys, enduring a siege in the castle of St. Andrews, being tried for treason by order of Queen Mary, haranguing from the pulpit against ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... that his master was pursuing and turn it back; and he would guard any object he was desired to "watch" with unflinching constancy. But it would occupy too much space and time to enumerate all Crusoe's qualities and powers. His biography will ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... three distinct Lokmans who are carefully confounded in Sale (Koran chapt. xxxi.) and in Smith's Dict. of Biography etc. art. AEsopus. The first or eldest Lokman, entitled Al-Hakim (the Sage) and the hero of the Koranic chapter which bears his name, was son of Ba'ura of the Children of Azar, sister's son of Job or son of Job's maternal aunt; he witnessed David's miracles of mail-making ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... either represented the popular instincts of the time or else led in the direction of extended territory and power under the individual influence of royal valour or statecraft. The history of England has not, of course, been confined to the biography of its Kings or Queens, but it would be as absurd to trace those annals without extended study of the rulers and their characters as it would be to write the records without reference to the people and popular progress. ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... in his biography that one night while lying awake he fell into practising a little introspection, an unusual thing for him to do, and the conclusion he came to was that he was not a very good young man. I was having a somewhat similar experience that night when in ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... History and biography show that individuals have time and again, been admonished by their assiduous friends of evils or calamities that were to befall them, yet the admonition, though timely given, seldom enabled them to avoid their fate. Men have been ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... mistake not, now is the very time in God's providence when the biography of William Ellery Channing could best make its appearance. We have heard that a distinguished divine, of different speculative religious views from Dr. Channing, has recently said,—'Channing is greatly needed among us at this present ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... this autobiography of a French infantryman was published in Paris in 1917. It is a revelation of the French spirit. It is rather a biography of the spirit, than an account of the amazing experiences M. Fribourg encountered, from 1911 at Agadir, through the fighting on the Meuse, and part of the campaign in Flanders. The descriptions are memorable for their beautiful style, their pathos or their elevation. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... was complete and the cases devoted to poetry and essays well filled. Fiction, too, of the lasting kind, and delightful books of travel, biography ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... I seemed to see A Thing that smirked and smiled: And found that he was giving me A lesson in Biography, As if I ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... this edition won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Literature in the "Biography or Autobiography" category. As such, every attempt has been made to reproduce it exactly as it was printed and as it won the award. In particular, inconsistent hyphenation of compound words is pervasive in this text and has been retained. Unconventional punctuation—for ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... not long ago of which it was the professed object to give to the modern generation of lazy readers the pith of Boswell's immortal biography. I shall, for sufficient reasons, refrain from discussing the merits of the performance. One remark, indeed, may be made in passing. The circle of readers to whom such a book is welcome must, of necessity, be limited. To the true lovers of Boswell it is, to say the least, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... by their public have interested us in their private characters; or who, in a superior degree, have possessed the virtues and mental endowments which claim the general love and admiration of mankind.' This biography, however, was never finished, as Edgeworth found another friend, Mr. Keir, had undertaken it; he therefore sent the materials to him, but some of them are incorporated in the Memoirs, Sabrina, whom Mr. Day had educated, and intended to marry (though he gave up the ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... request only such speeches are published in the appendix of this biography as were prepared entirely without the co-operation ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Editor-Colonel Telfair ran three different views of Andrew Jackson's old home, "The Hermitage," a full-page engraving of the second battle of Manassas, entitled "Lee to the Rear!" and a five-thousand-word biography of Belle Boyd in the same number. The subscription list that month advanced 118. Also there were poems in the same issue by Leonina Vashti Haricot (pen-name), related to the Haricots of Charleston, South Carolina, and Bill Thompson, nephew of one of the stockholders. And an article from a ...
— Options • O. Henry
... throne, and unto the Lamb forever," conveys the meaning of the whole first part; while the second part is confined to those portions of the Apocalypse which describe the terrible signs of the last day, concluding with visions of the new heaven and a hallelujah. And yet Malibran, in her biography of Spohr, calls the oratorio a musical copy of Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment,"—showing that more than one person has ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... acknowledge the tender little glow of health induced by reading, as I sat here in the morning sun, the flattering attention paid me by your gentleman of the ready wreath and quick biography? ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... record of nations and races, diverse in their position and capacities, but identical in nature and one in destiny. Viewed comprehensively, its individuals and events comprise the incidents of an uncompleted biography of man, a biography long, obscure, full of puzzling facts for thought to interpret, and more puzzling breaks for thought to bridge, but, on the whole, exhibiting man as moving and man as moving forward. If we scrutinize the character of this progress, we shall find that the forces which propel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... you are not critical. If you are, then get thee to a library and bury thyself in books of biography, for portrait painters were deceivers ever, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... tails of copper-tinged brown hair down her back, and was perhaps the busiest bee in the household hive, by reason of the manifold studies, health exercises and recreations she had to attend to, she secretly, and of her own motion, and out of love, added another task to her labors—the writing of a biography of me. She did this work in her bedroom at night, and kept her record hidden. After a little, the mother discovered it and filched it, and let me see it; then told Susy what she had done, and how pleased I was, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... remote epoch? If editors in our enlightened time have contrived so soon to give the history of Burns a mythical character, what safety have we in trusting to such ancient narrations as those of Plutarch or Thucydides? On the other hand, where even such a biography as that of Burns is placed by sound and carefully-examined evidence upon an irrefragable basis, a service is rendered to the public beyond the merits of any immediate question that may be under discussion, in the encouragement which it gives to historical inquirers of all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686) gives more than one instance of a deference on the part of the subject of his biography which may seem to the reader excessive, but which alone could satisfy the chivalrous feeling of the loyal knight of ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... come to the biography of our worthy baron—Andrew Tripeaud, the son of an ostler, at ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... something new under the sun: aerial adventure; and the most lively and unjaded fancy may, at first, need direction toward the realization of this fact. Soon it will have a literature of its own, of prose and poetry, of fiction, biography, memoirs, of history which will read like the romance it really is. The essayists will turn to it with joy. And the poets will discover new aspects of beauty which have been hidden from them through the ages; and as men's experience "in the wide fields of air" increases, epic material which ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... respects the noblest warrior who fought for Saxon England against the Normans. His story is a fabric in which threads of fact and fancy seem equally interwoven; of much of his life, indeed, we are ignorant, and tradition has surrounded this part of his biography with tales of largely imaginary deeds; but he is a character of history as well as of folk lore, and his true story is full of the richest elements of romance. It is this noteworthy hero of old England with whom ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... as their future King. Some of the associations of this home must of necessity be saddening, but on the other hand, much must remind of many little acts of kindness and loving attentions paid; and were this a biography of the late Prince, many little anecdotes of his great thoughtfulness for those around him might be told; but his monument will be in the memories ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... these ramblings end? A tragedy ends at the death of any or all; a comedy ends with one of the revived jokes of former years; a biography should terminate at the grave, and a romance finishes as the groom carries his hard-won prize across the threshold of the cottage or palace. ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... The importance of biography for the study of history can hardly be overrated. In a sense it is true that history should be like the law and 'care not about very small things'; concerning itself not so much with individual personality as with fundamental causes affecting the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... and carriages are whirling away toward Fifth Avenue, and tramcars crawling along in procession, packed to the platforms with gayly dressed passengers. Across the way from Macy's huge dark store, the Herald presses are rushing off the biography of the day in sight of everybody, and no philosopher moralizes on that awful, tremendous record of four-and-twenty hours of a whole world's work, play, crime, suffering, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Allibone, Lamb's Biographical Dictionary, Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Warner's Library of the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: - Introduction and Bibliography • Montrose J. Moses
... a very short period the Gordons ranked among the most powerful and warlike clans of Scotland. As Sir Walter Scott wrote of Adam Gordon, in words which might be appropriately applied to the subject of this biography: ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... England and America at a time when the embers had become so extinct that our Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had to borrow workers from Denmark and Germany. Indeed, Martyn's zeal was partly lighted by Carey, though the early termination of his labours has forced me to place his biography before that of the longer-lived Baptist friends—both men of curious and wonderful powers, but whose history shows the disadvantages of the Society government, and whose achievements were the less permanent in consequence. The Burmese branch of their work is chiefly noticeable for the characters ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... year it was being performed at Edinburgh when a fire broke out in the theatre, and the instrumental scores together with the music of the concerted pieces were destroyed. No fresh copy was ever made, but the songs are still to be obtained. Mr. Kitton, in his biography of the novelist, says, 'The play was well received, and duly praised by prominent ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... their contents are very expensive and mostly rare works, each of a size that suggests a packing-case rather than a coat-pocket. The 'Cathedral Series' are important compilations concerning history, architecture, and biography, and quite popular enough for such as take any sincere interest in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... Borrow will be as much surprised as pleased to find what a large collection of documents Dr. Knapp has been able to use in compiling this long-expected biography. {50} Indeed, the collection might have been larger and richer still. For instance, in the original manuscript of ‘Zincali’ (in the possession of the present writer) there are some variations from the printed text; but, what is of very much more importance, the whole—or nearly the whole—of Borrow’s ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... accusations of his enemies, that he actively participated in the deeds of his companions, are unfounded, or, at any rate, exaggerations. It may be remarked that the "Life and Times of Salvator Rosa" by Lady Morgan (1824) is admittedly a romance rather than an accurate and faithful biography.] ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... wandered far afield as a biography of Sergeant York. It is but a story of the strength and the simplicity of a man—a young man—whom the nation has honored for what he has done, with something in it of those who went before and left him as a legacy the qualities of mind and ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... perhaps give a clearer idea of Harvey's relation to his predecessors and contemporaries, and of the value of his services to mankind, than would a far longer biography of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... a score of such stories to-day," he said; "there seem to be enough of them; but I can't find anything adapted to a sermon, and yet they seem to expect a detailed biography." ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... inaugural lectures at Oxford, Sec. 107, that real botany is not so much the description of plants as their biography. Without entering at all into the history of its fruitage, the life and death of the blossom itself is always an eventful romance, which must be completely told, if well. The grouping given to the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Eastern Department, while General Gaines was assigned to the Western. From the assignment of 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
... this long history of literary misappropriation, the chequered career of the rightful author, Rudolph Erich Raspe, offers a chapter in biography which has quite as many ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... that the adoption of the Copernican system has given us, it is plain that we cannot consider the origin and biography of the earth in an isolated way; we must include with her all the other members of the system or family to which she belongs. Nay, more, we cannot restrict ourselves to the solar system; we must embrace in our discussions the starry worlds. And, since we have become familiarized with ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... 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 not leave it alone.' It broke the spell of her ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... 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 my ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... bathe his image are enabled to overcome the sins that involve them in darkness."[261] He appears to contemplate chiefly the veneration of images of Sakyamuni but figures of Bodhisattvas were also conspicuous features in temples, as we know not only from archaeology but from the biography of Hsuean Chuang, where it is said that worshippers used to throw flowers and silk scarves at the image of Avalokita and draw auguries from the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... edition includes all the works extant of Lord BACON, embracing, as we learn from SPEDDING'S preface (which has the rare defect of being much too brief), a biography, which in minute detail and careful finish, and facts hitherto unpublished, will far surpass any before written. Yet, to stay the appetite of the reader, anxious to revive the main points of BACON'S life, he gives in this first ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... contest for the Mississippi Valley. Louis Pelzer has written on the "Economic Factors in the Acquisition of Louisiana" in the "Proceedings" of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, vol. VI (1913). There is no adequate biography of either Monroe or Livingston. T. L. Stoddard has written on "The French Revolution in San ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... little of the Italian patriot. In his life time he had been despised and rejected, but he was now dead; his biography a well-written one was in all the circulating libraries, and even those who were far from agreeing with his political views, had learned something of the nobility of his character. So there was both surprise and envy in Lady Caroline's tone; she ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a non-committal manner which might be taken either for assent or denial. She was afraid to confess ignorance of the Johnson family, lest Aunt Margaret's love of biography should take a further flight in order to recall Sarah Wedderburn's ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... just said will account for the circumstance that I, the youngest and latest of Rossetti's friends, should be the first to seem to stand towards him in the relation of a biographer. I say seem to stand, for this is not a biography. It was always known to be Rossetti's wish that if at any moment after his death it should appear that the story of his life required to be written, the one friend who during many of his later years knew him most intimately, and to whom he unlocked the most sacred secrets of his heart, Mr. ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Tom-a-Chastel, on the summit of which Sir David Baird's monument is to be placed, overlooks the whole strath, and is even visible from Dundee." So far the note from the Perth, newspaper (which was first appended to this "almost veritable romance-biography of Sir William Wallace," in the edition of 1831); and on comparing the circumstances and dates of the period referred to, it does not seem improbable that such might have been the fearful end of that ambitious and cruelly impassioned woman. Earl de Warenne was not a man to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... most of the men who have influenced their age. There are more than sixty authentic letters of Columbus in existence. There are long narratives of his expeditions and discoveries, by persons who knew him more or less intimately. There is an extended biography of him written by his own son, Ferdinand Columbus, or from materials furnished by him. There are numerous documents and state papers authenticating his acts, his privileges, and his dignities. And yet, with all the wealth of material, so copious upon his character and his career, it would ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... 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 and misery, piety and infidelity, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... mind an intimate picture of the greatest Americans who have helped to make American history. In each instance the author has been chosen either because he is particularly interested in the subject of the biography, or is connected with him by blood ties and possessed, therefore, of valuable facts. Only those, however, who have shown that they have an appreciation of what makes really good juvenile literature have been entrusted with a volume. In each case they have written with a child's point ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... indefatigable student in ancient lore, and especially in all that regards Spanish Literature and Old English Romances, this is not the place to make mention. His "Remains of Henry Kirk White," the sweetest specimen of modern biography, has sunk into every heart, and received an eulogy from every tongue. Yet is his ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... guidance of two Winnebagoes, they made their way up the Rock to Hustisford Rapids and there went into camp. Fish, game, clams, roots and the bark of trees constituted their food while there, but Black Hawk in his biography says they found it difficult to keep from starving. And, adding to their present misery, the thrifty, provident squaws saw another harvestless summer passing and a winter of famine before them. With his warriors he then returned to continue the contest. A few skirmishes and collisions ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... not Croker, but Mr. Coulton, 'a Kentish gentleman,' says Lockhart, February 7, 1851, to his daughter Charlotte. **If Lyttelton went to Italy on being ejected from Parliament, as Mr. Rigg says he did in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' Coulton's theory ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... disturb the assassin's slumbers. They have gone for what they were into history, into tradition, into the hereafter both of men and spirits; and what they were may be in part concluded. Mr. Lincoln's career passes, in extent, gravity, and eventful association, the province of newspaper biography; but Booth is the hero of a single deed, and the delineation of him may begin and be exhausted in a single article. I have been at pains, since the day of the President's obsequies, to collect all valid information ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... public ministrations, he was not all the time saving the world even by that which he was in the midst of it, ever laying hold of it more and more. These were things not so easy to tell. And you must remember that our records are very scanty. It is a small biography we have of a man who became—to say nothing more—the Man of the world—the Son of Man. No doubt it is enough, or God would have told us more; but surely we are not to suppose that there was nothing significant, nothing of saving power in that which we are not told.—Charlie, wouldn't ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... forceful; but her position was one of peculiar difficulty, and she apparently took pains to adjust herself with tact and dignity to conditions which her more spirited successors would have found unbearably galling. Professor George Herbert Palmer, in his biography of his wife, epitomizes the early situation when he says that Mr. Durant "had, it is true, appointed Miss Ada L. Howard president; but her duties as an executive officer were nominal rather than real; neither his disposition, her health, nor her previous training ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... had bestowed large territories in Eastern Tartary towards the frontier of Corea, and north of Liaotong towards the Manchu country. ["The situation and limits of his appanage are not clearly defined in history. According to Belgutai's biography, it was between the Onon and Kerulen (Yuen shi), and according to Shin Yao's researches (Lo fung low wen kao), at the confluence of the Argun and Shilka. Finally, according to Harabadur's biography, it was situated in Abalahu, which geographically and etymologically corresponds to modern ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... suggestion and with what assistance I have been able to render my son Revd. Charles Edward Stow, has compiled from my letters and journals, this biography. It is this true story of my own words, and has therefore all ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... biography of some one President. (Consult an encyclopedia, standard works on American history, ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... to lead Macaulay to pronounce Addison "the forerunner of the great English novelists."[11] The elements of the novel, indeed, already existed in Addison's time, and only required combination. Fictitious biography, which may be regarded as its raw material, had been written by Defoe with a life-like reality which has never since been equalled; and the popular drama furnished plots, in the shape of love stories drawn from present ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... running to him, and consequent charges of quackery and charlatanism. How much of these unsavory epithets really applied to him will not be determined until we have a better acquaintance with his more intimate life. A biography and collection of his letters is needed. But it is certain that the general principles he arrived at, aided as much by the wings of intuition as by the clues of incomplete and incompletely controlled experiments, survive as the foundations of whatever we know about the internal ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... characteristic writers a place and to try to stimulate the reader's interest in the man behind the book as well as in the best works of each author. Too much space is devoted in most literary criticism to the bare facts of biography and the details of essays or novels or histories written by authors. My plan has been to arouse interest both in the men and their books so that any reader of this volume may be stimulated to extend his knowledge ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... have long recognized the value of biography as a preparation for the study of history and have given it an important place in ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... written account of a long and busy life. A highly interesting biography and a delightful book, which is well ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... published, in 1809, a tract upon "The Use of Sugar in Feeding Cattle," in which were set forth sundry experiments which went to show how bullocks had been fattened on molasses, and had been rewarded with a premium. I am indebted for all knowledge of this anomalous tractate to the "Agricultural Biography" of Mr. Donaldson, who seems disposed to give a sheltering wing to the curious theory broached, and discourses upon it with a lucidity and coherence worthy of a state-paper. I must be permitted to quote Mr. Donaldson's language:—"The author's ideas are no romance or chimera, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... boyhood verses of "Salt Water Ballads" to "Good Friday"; and therein lies the secret; and incidentally therein lies some of the most thrilling human touches, vivid illustrations for the preacher; some of the most intensely interesting religious experiences that any biography ever revealed ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... sorrow and enter into the joy and radiance. "Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives." If biography teaches any lesson, it is that the events which occur in life are of far less consequence than the spirit in which they are received. It is the attitude of mental receptivity which is the alchemy to transmute events and ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... 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 same motive as the widespread ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... natural modesty of her character she had a great dislike to her biography, or memorial of her in any shape, being written, for she destroyed all letters that might have been used for such a purpose, publicity of any kind being most distasteful to her, evidence of which is very clearly shown in the first part of this narrative. The chief secret of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... some time, and find out what he means by it," Wingrave said. "I don't want to find my biography in the American newspapers. It might interfere with my operations there. Here's this woman coming to worry us! You take her off, Aynesworth! I shall go ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... generally sought after or read with greater avidity than "Plutarch's Lives." However ancient, either Greek or Latin, none has received such a universal popularity. But the character of Plutarch himself, not less than his method of writing biography, explains his universal popularity, and gives its special charm and value to his book. He was a man of large and generous nature, of strong feeling, of refined tastes, of quick perceptions. His mind ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... his life he had strong religious convictions, and felt a loathing for the sins which he had committed. "On their account," says he in the concluding page of his biography, "there is a strong necessity for me to consider my ways and to inquire about a Saviour, since it is utterly impossible for me to save myself without obtaining knowledge of the merits of the Mediator, in which I hope ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... mountain cabbage—deserves a better and more justly descriptive name, for it is really much more like seakale or asparagus. I shall try to follow our young seedling on in life, therefore, so as to give, while I am about it, a fairly comprehensive and complete biography of a ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... when my spiritual visitor entered the room, that volume of Dr. Wordsworth's ecclesiastical biography which contains his life was lying on the table beside me. "I perceive," said he, glancing at the book, "you have been gathering all you can concerning me from my good gossiping chronicler, who tells you that I loved ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... work before us than we now choose to mention—certainly to all the stupid monkish legends about St Hilda and St Cuthbert—to the ludicrous description of Lord Gifford's habiliments of divination—and to all the various scraps and fragments of antiquarian history and baronial biography, which are scattered profusely through the whole narrative. These we conceive to be put in purely for the sake of displaying the erudition of the author; and poetry, which has no other recommendation, but that the substance of it has been gleaned ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... historians of the middle nineteenth century wrote. If not the greatest, yet the most lovable of them all, was Jules Michelet, [Sidenote: Michelet] a free-thinker of Huguenot ancestry. His History of France is like the biography of some loved and worshipped genius; he agonizes in her trials, he glories in her triumphs. And to all great men, her own and others, he puts but one inexorable question, "What did you do for the people?" and according to their answer they stand or fall before ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith |
