"Autobiographical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the climax of irritation is reached when, having troubled to write down autobiographical details, having wrestled with your modesty and overthrown it, having posted your letter and prepaid it, the —— editor rejects your contribution without thanks. This hard fate overtook me—moi qui ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Elizabeth is worthy of a far higher place than has thus far been given it. John Knox, the reformer, in his History of the Reformation in Scotland, has some very vivid portraits of his helpers and enemies. The personal and aggressive elements enter too strongly for a work of history; but the autobiographical parts show rare literary power. His account of his famous interview with Mary Queen of Scots is clear-cut as a cameo, and shows the man's extraordinary power better than a whole volume of biography. Such scenes make one wish that more of his time had been given to literary work, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.—I should be glad to know whether it would be advisable for me to write a book of "Reminiscences," as I see is now the fashion. My life has been chiefly passed in a moorland-village in Yorkshire, so that it has not been very eventful, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... Ida Pfeiffer: Inclusive of a Visit to Madagascar. With an Autobiographical Introduction. Translated by H.W. Dulcken. New York. Harper & ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... have read Sir Walter Besant's delightful but little known "All in a Garden Fair" (it is interesting to know that this was semi-autobiographical, and that its original title was "All in a Garden Green") will recollect the minute description of the locality in which the opening scenes take place. The author and I "talked it over." He told me the exact spot where the story was laid—a village ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Kleist's "Prinz von Homburg," the novel "Maria" by Otto Ludwig, "Das Sndkind" by Anzengruber, "Jrn Uhl" by Gustav Frenssen and "Aebel" by Sophus Michaelis.[4] Finally Ludwig Ganghofer has briefly sketched his own sleep walking in his autobiographical "Lebenslauf eines Optimisten," and Ludwig Tieck has given unrestrained expression to his passionate love toward this heavenly body in different portions of ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... a passage dealing with the same experience; it is undoubtedly autobiographical, though it comes from Villette, into which Charlotte Bronte threw the picture of her own solitary experiences in Brussels. She is left alone at the pensionnat in the vacation, strained by work and anxiety, and tortured by exhaustion, restlessness, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nature of government, in respect to originality and vigor, we must go back to classic times. But literature, that is, literature which is an end in itself and not a means to something else, did not exist in America before Irving. Some foreshadowings (the autobiographical fragment of Franklin was not published till 1817) of its coming may be traced, but there can be no question that his writings were the first that bore the national literary stamp, that he first made the nation conscious of its gift and opportunity, and that he first announced ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... must try to hide the fact whenever the real Spain fell below the ideal, however I might reason with my infatuation or try to scoff it away. It had once been so inextinguishable a part of me that the record of my journey must be more or less autobiographical; and though I should decently endeavor to keep my past out of it, perhaps I should not try very hard ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... public opinion as far as he could. He had changed his style since the Mrs. Hemans' days. He was essentially imitative in his poetic faculty; and of late he had followed the lead of a popular writer of sonnets.' He turned his poems over: they were almost equivalent to an autobiographical passage in his life. Arranging them in their order, they came ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... rather at length on this drama on account of the real value of its thought and, above all, on account of what one may call its autobiographical interest. It was at this time that Strauss's mind began to take more definite form. His further experience will develop that form still more, but without making any ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... the fasherie of the same,' and henceforward wished his brethren only to pray that God would 'put an end to my long and painful battle.' And with this preface he now printed the old meditation or confession of 1566. It is therefore autobiographical by a double title. And it is made even more interesting by the striking rubric with which ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... terrible problems of life. But of their personal history there is seldom more than a trace found. Compare with this the autobiographies of Gibbon, Leigh Hunt, Mill, or even the Reminiscences of Carlyle, and the widely-branching outpourings of Ruskin in his autobiographical sketches. Not that the English over-estimate their own worth and importance, but the Russians seem to have the instinctive sense of ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... second autobiographical account of repeated sleep walking I find in the "Buch der Kindheit," the first volume of Ludwig Ganghofer's "Lebenslauf eines Optimisten." When the boy had to go away to school his mother gave him four balls of yarn to take with him, so that he might mend his ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... was by no means autobiographical. She gave no sketches of her idiosyncrasies, and she repeated no remembered comments and prophets of her contemporaries about herself. She either concealed or she had lost any great interest in her own personality. But ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... title is given at the beginning of this section had been written several years before the date of its publication. It is a great advance in certain respects over the first novel, but wants the peculiar interest which belonged to that as a partially autobiographical memoir. The story is no longer disjointed and impossible. It is carefully studied in regard to its main facts. It has less to remind us of "Vivian Grey" and "Pelham," and more that recalls "Woodstock" and "Kenilworth." The personages were many of them ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... In his autobiographical sketch the poet tells us that, "The farm proved a ruinous bargain. I was the eldest of seven children, and (p. 005) my father, worn out by early hardship, was unfit for labour. His spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... impressive parts of that singular autobiographical poem, which, at first sight so tedious and insipid, seems to gather force and meaning with each fresh perusal. These pages, which carry up to the verge of manhood the story of Wordsworth's career, contain, perhaps, as strong and simple a picture ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... have been an extremely proud man, one who would feel keenly a public disgrace. Was he exposed to "the scorn of gazers" on one or both of these occasions? It is tempting, and admittedly dangerous, to read autobiographical significance in the note on Eleanor's words. But another question intrudes itself in this connection: Is there a link between the two arrests and Idler No. 22, "Imprisonment of Debtors," which Johnson substituted for the original ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... finds its intense expression in lyrical love-poetry, one of the most enduring forms of literature because of its elementariness and universality; but it is also found in other parts of the emotional field. In seeking concrete material for lyrical use the poet may take some autobiographical incident, but commonly the world of inanimate nature yields the most plastic mould. It is a marvellous victory of the spirit over matter when it takes the stars of heaven and the flowers of earth and makes them ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry |
