"Biographer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... warning. No admission of the kind is intended. 'In all cases of anticipated battle,' says Mahan, 'Nelson was careful to put his subordinates in possession both of his general plans and, as far as possible, of the underlying ideas.' The same biographer tells us, what is well worth remembering, that 'No man was ever better served than Nelson by the inspiration of the moment; no man ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... tells the story of the third affair so concisely and pithily that his exact words must be put before the reader:—"Another proposition came to his lordship," writes the fraternal biographer, giving Francis North credit for the title he subsequently won, although at the time under consideration he was plain Mister North, on the keen look-out for the place of Solicitor General, "by a city broker, from Sir John Lawrence, who had ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the creator of the older national hymn and other patriotic songs; an ardent lover of his country, opposed to Danish influences in politics and culture; strictly orthodox and a powerful orator. Hauge. Hans Nilsen Hauge (1771-1824), a peasant lay-preacher, of whom a biographer has said: "Since the Reformation no single man has had so profound an influence on ecclesiastical and Christian life in Norway." The "Haugian revival" of the emotional religious life is proverbial. Its value was great in every way; directly and also by ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... no history should exist of the childhood and early life of an emperor of such note as "Barbarossa;" yet, in spite of most diligent search, we have been compelled almost to renounce one of the most pleasing tasks of a biographer, which consists in making acquaintance with a hero in his infancy, and through childhood and youth following his career to fame and glory. So far as we have been able to discover, no trace, except a few dry data, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... data of the utmost value to the student of the endocrine basis of human personality. In the conventional two-volume biography of this superwoman, she is pictured as an intellectual saint, stepped from a stained glass window upon her wonderful visit to a clay-smeared earth. The biographer, presenting all the ins and outs of her body and soul as he has, makes her live before us with a ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... fashion; the fashion of table-conversation, as he said, the methodless method of the human mind. It was always delightful, and always amusing, tragic, or instructive, and it was likely to be one of these at one instant, and another the next. I felt myself the most fortunate biographer in the world, as undoubtedly I was, though not just in the way ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... restore Byron's reputation is the more necessary, since Moore himself, who is his best biographer, failed not only in his duty as a friend, but as the historian of the poet's life: for he knew the truth, and dared not proclaim it. Who, for instance, could better inform us of the cause which led to Byron's separation from his wife? And yet Moore ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... itself. He knows, poor weary tramp, that on the favourable impression he makes upon the "boss," depends his night's lodging and food, as well as a job of work in the future. We will leave then the ideal swaggerer to some other biographer who may draw glowing word-pictures of him in all his jay's splendour, and we will confine ourselves to describing the real swagger, clad in flannel shirt, moleskin trowsers, and what were once thick boots, but might now be ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Napoleon gave a key to the misfortunes of Italy, when he said, "It is a peninsula too long for its breadth." And the significance of the Seven Years' War is expressed in a single phrase by Milton's last biographer, when he defines it as the "consummation politically and the attenuation spiritually of the movement begun in Europe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... man than Samuel Johnson, as the Doctor went round the Borough canvassing for Mr. Thrale; and the child was true to this early consecration. 'A life of lettered ease spent in provincial retirement,' it is thus that the biographer of that remarkable man, William Taylor, announces his subject; and the phrase is equally descriptive of the life of Edward Barron. The pair were close friends, 'W. T. and a pipe render everything agreeable,' writes Barron in his diary in 1823; and in 1833, after Barron had moved ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... correspondence, and other papers, a detailed account of his life, adventures, and rise as an artist, and a discriminating sketch of his character, the peculiarities of which are happily illustrated by anecdotes. Many things of him, unknown even to his admirers, are here given to the world, and his biographer, fully appreciating the artist, has yet, not like a flatterer, but with true independence, spoken candidly of the faults of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... his biographer, that he remembered the incident, and that "he had a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a long black ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Although Anne lived during the Augustan Age of English literature, she had no literary capacity or taste. Kneller's portrait of the Queen gives her a face rather agreeable and intelligent than otherwise—a round, full face, with ruddy complexion and dark-brown hair. A courtly biographer, commenting on this portrait, takes occasion to observe that Anne "was so universally beloved that her death was more sincerely lamented than that of perhaps any other monarch who ever sat on the throne of these realms." ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... I suppose, matter of common knowledge that Manning's early and conspicuous ascendency in the counsels of the Papacy rested mainly on the intimacy of his personal relations with Pius IX. But it was news to most of us that (if his biographer is right) he wished to succeed Antonelli as Secretary of State in 1876, and to transfer the scene of his activities from Westminster to Rome, and that he attributed the Pope's disregard of his wishes to mental decrepitude. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Numerous small courts opened off in the north side. Among these were Hemlock, Swan, Chair, Crown and Star Courts. The Row and its vicinity had for many years a notoriously bad reputation. One of the courts off Little Shear Alley was Boswell Court, not, as some have imagined, called after Johnson's biographer. This court was at one time a very fashionable place of residence; Lady Raleigh, the widow of Sir Walter, ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... as a biographer, admirable as he is as a writer of a Journal, yet had little of the stuff out of which an historian is made. His compilation is a creditable performance for a young man who had but lately returned home from his travels. It certainly adds nothing ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... Mr. Tipp of the Elia essays. "Tipp," says his pleasant biographer, "never mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a precipice; or let off a gun." I cannot follow ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... Watson, I do honestly believe that we are going to pull it off, after all." He slapped me on the shoulder with a sudden burst of hilarity. "I am going out now. It is only a reconnaissance. I will do nothing serious without my trusted comrade and biographer at my elbow. Do you stay here, and the odds are that you will see me again in an hour or two. If time hangs heavy get foolscap and a pen, and begin your narrative of how we saved ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for two reasons—first, he has always loved and admired Grant; second, he is familiar in general with the conditions of life in the middle West, and is especially qualified to tell the truth both in color and fact. The tastes and training of a realistic novelist are an admirable equipment for a biographer, provided the hero of his story and his environment appeal to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... for an idea, neither more nor less. I selected no particular model for my hero, and I claim for him no attribute but that of his having been possible at the period; least of all did I think of Saint Anthony, who is now deprived even of his distinguished biographer Athanasius, and who is represented as a man of very sound judgment but of so scant an education that he was master ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... superfluous to adduce more arguments, negative or positive, against the theory that the Earl of Pembroke was a youthful friend of Shakespeare, it is worth noting that John Aubrey, the Wiltshire antiquary, and the biographer of most Englishmen of distinction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was zealously researching from 1650 onwards into the careers alike of Shakespeare and of various members of the Earl of Pembroke's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... this picture having escaped the notice of the biographer of Hogarth is by no means singular. Mr. Halls, one of the magistrates at Bow-street, has, among other choice specimens by Hogarth, the lost picture of the Harlot's Progress; the subject telling her fortune by the tea-grounds in her cup, admirably characteristic of the artist ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Brants, and built a magnificent house, with a saloon in form of a rotunda, which he enriched with antique statues, busts, vases, and pictures, by the most celebrated masters; and here, surrounded by works of art, he carried, (says his biographer,) into execution those numberless productions of his prolific and rich invention, which once adorned his native country, but now are become the spoil of war, and the tokens of conquest and ambition, shining with equal lustre among super-eminent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... altogether appreciated—by Gosse, Froude and other "critic flies." When Doctor Samuel Johnson was told that Boswell proposed to write his life, he threatened to prevent it by taking that of his would-be biographer. It were curious to consider what "crabbed old Carlyle" would have done had he suspected the danger of falling into the hands of a literary backstairs Mrs. Grundy like Edmund Gosse! In his "Heroes and Hero Worship" ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... be an Eutychean, until he had received a written declaration from him that he would maintain the Council of Chalcedon. In the first three years of his reign, Anastasius gained popularity by enacting wise laws, and by removing a severe and detested tax, so that, in the words of the ancient biographer of St. Theodore, "what was to become a field of destruction appeared ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... eccellente pittore,' as Vasari emphatically describes him—his religion breathes of the free air of heaven rather than the cloister, neither enthusiastic nor superstitious, but practical, manly and healthy—and this, although the picturesque biographer of S. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... more agreeable than the self-sufficient mechanics of villages and towns, who were ready to dispute on all topics, and inclined to be convinced on none. This club had the pleasure of subscribing for the first edition of the works of its great associate. It has been questioned by his first biographer, whether the refinement of mind, which follows the reading of books of eloquence and delicacy,—the mental improvement resulting from such calm discussions as the Tarbolton and Mauchline clubs indulged in, was not injurious to men engaged in the barn and at the plough. A well-ordered mind ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... necessary to the successful composition of so prolix a tale; and certainly I have never betrayed the ownership of such a qualification. The tale, nevertheless, is an irrevocable fact; and my present business it is to be its biographer. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... not only behaves like a vulgar debauchee, but pursues the meanest arts of the fortune-hunter who is ready to marry any woman for her money. Such is the modest and meritorious orphan, and mankind now carries its "base indifference" so far, that Smollett's biographer, Mr. Hannay, says, "if Roderick had been hanged, I, for my part, should have heard the tidings unmoved . . . Smollett obviously died without realising how nearly the hero, who was in some sort a portrait of himself, came ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... that two other difficulties must confront any conscientious biographer of Burton—the first being Burton's choice of subjects, and the second the friction between Lady Burton and the Stisteds. But as regards the first, surely we are justified in assuming that Burton's studies were pursued purely for historical ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... sailed from Sicily was commanded by one of the Lomellini, a noble family of Genoa, with whom Sofonisba fell so desperately in love that she offered him her hand—which, says her biographer, "he accepted like a generous man." Does this mean that she had been ungenerous in depriving him of the privilege of asking for ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... your creditors with repeated promises to pay them out of your Pennsylvania dividends.' . . . MANY German physicians and surgeons hold that there remains in the brain of a decollated head some degree of thought, and in the nerves something of sensibility. It is stated by his biographer, that in the case of Sir EVERARD DIGBY, executed for a participation in the Gunpowder Plot, the tongue pronounced several words after the head was severed from the body. After the execution of CHARLOTTE ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... which can aspire to centrality, much less might. He, loving heroes, attempts concealing his passion, and, if accused of it, denies the accusation. After reading all his writings, no one could for a moment claim that Thackeray was the biographer of heroes. He is a biographer of meanness, and times, and sham aristocracy and folks, and can, when he cares to do so, portray heroism lofty as tallest mountains. With Hugo all is different. He will do nothing else than dream and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... feet. Everybody was kindly disposed towards the sick man and his family. His heart (and his mother's too, as we may fancy) melted within him at the thought of so much good-feeling and good-nature. Let Pen's biographer be pardoned for alluding to a time not far distant when a somewhat similar mishap brought him a providential friend, a kind physician, and a thousand proofs of a most touching ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... many miraculous stories which the biographer of Elizabeth relates of her, I had no right, for the sake of truth, to interweave in the plot, while it was necessary to indicate at least their existence. I have, therefore, put such of them as seemed least absurd ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... only be by working in a different manner. A 'public' to appreciate the 'Hound of Heaven' is to me inconceivable." Mr. William Archer, an experienced judge of popular likes, was of the same opinion. "Yet," Francis Thompson's biographer tells us, "in the three years after Thompson's death the separate edition of the 'Hound of Heaven' sold fifty thousand copies; and, apart from anthologies, many more thousands were sold of the books ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... its adherents maintained, of independent origin. He was a sturdy, energetic man. As a boy he had shown his principles by steadily thrashing the son of a dissenting minister till he became the terror of the young schismatic. He played (his biographer says) in 1747 for Surrey against all England, and at the end of the match gave his bat to the first comer, saying, 'I will never have it said of me, Well struck, Parson!' He was ordained a few days later, and was 'converted by Law's "Serious Call."' While holding a curacy at Clapham he became a friend ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... disputing, and writing of our sovereign lady? There was much need that your Tully, the consul, should go and leave the care of his commonwealth to busy himself idly about her; and after him your Diogenes Laertius, the biographer, and your Theodorus Gaza, the philosopher, and your Argiropilus, the emperor, and your Bessario, the cardinal, and your Politian, the pedant, and your Budaeus, the judge, and your Lascaris, the ambassador, and the devil and all of those you call lovers of wisdom; whose ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... memoir is the distinguished Venetian Admiral Carlo Zeno (1334-1418), brother of Nicolo and Antonio, reputed discoverers of America. His biographer, Jacopo Zeno (1417-1481), Bishop of Feltre and Belluno, and later of Padua, was his grandson. The work is dedicated to Pius II. in honor of his recent elevation to the papal throne, and since this is evidently the dedication copy, the ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... The biographer of Napoleon, speaking of the loss sustained by England on the field of Waterloo, says, "Fifteen thousand men killed and wounded, threw half Britain into mourning. It required all the glory and all the solid advantages of that day to reconcile the mind to the high price at which it was ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... unvarnished truth, than that of Count Cavour. He was a man of the highest order of greatness; and when we have said that, we have also said that he was a man of simplicity, directness, and transparency. A man of the first class is always easily interpreted and understood. The biographer of Cavour has nothing to do but to recount simply and consecutively what he said and what he did, and his task is accomplished: no great statesman has less need of apology or justification; no one's name is less associated with doubtful acts or questionable policy. His ends were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... indeed to supply what is missing at the beginning and end, but to restore those leaves which have been torn out of the middle, imitating, as accurately as I was able, the language and manner of the old biographer, in order that the difference between the original narrative, and my own interpolations, might ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... frankincense. Whatever were Alfred's motives, the fact is undoubted, that he sent one of his bishops to St. Thomas, who brought back aromatic liquors, and splendid jewels. Alfred seems to have been rich in the most precious commodities of the East; for he presented Asser, his biographer, with a robe of silk, and as much incense as a strong man could carry. After all, however, the commerce of England in his reign was extremely limited: had it been of any importance, it would have been more specially noticed and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... duties) had a house and some land; and this town continued to be their headquarters till the novelist, who was the eldest of the family, was about sixteen. He had two sisters (of whom the elder, Laure, afterwards Madame Surville, was his first confidante and his only authoritative biographer) and a younger brother, who seems to have been, if not a scapegrace, rather a burden to his friends, and ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... accomplished, but what is the world saying now of his judgment? His recent friendly but discriminating biographer, Prof. George H. Haynes, declares that even in matters of taste he was at fault. The paintings he thought masterpieces, his gift to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, are for the most part consigned to the lumber-room. In sculpture his judgment ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... gentlemen, as we are, but professional men—the height of whose ambition at that moment was to cut his throat. But the story is too pleasing to be abridged; I shall give it, therefore, accurately, from the French of his biographer: "M. Des Cartes had no company but that of his servant, with whom he was conversing in French. The sailors, who took him for a foreign merchant, rather than a cavalier, concluded that he must have money about him. Accordingly they came to a resolution by no means advantageous to his purse. There ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... in the streets, and walk home in great numbers without caps or attendants. Luckily the weather was fine, and did not add to their distress by rain or wind, though their confusion was greatly augmented by its being broad daylight, and the streets full of spectators, who (says her biographer) could neither refrain from looking nor laughing at such splendid and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... some,—the brave Mackie, at Ciudad Rodrigo, for instance—successfully led forlorn-hopes. Finally, passing over the old sore of non-decoration for Peninsular services, since that, common to many regiments, is at last about to be healed,—Mr Robinson, the biographer of Sir Thomas Picton, has dared, in order to vindicate the harsh and partial conduct of his hero, to cast dust upon the facings of the brave boys of Connaught. It need hardly be said that they have found defenders. Of these, the most recent is Lieutenant Grattan, formerly an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Richard's Almanac" for 1757, where it was printed as a preface signed "Richard Saunders." Franklin began this Almanac in 1732. John Bigelow, Franklin's biographer and editor, says it "attained an astonishing popularity." For twenty-five years it had an average circulation of 10,000 copies. Sometimes it was sent to press as early as October in order to supply remote colonists in time for the new year. Translations of it have been printed in nearly ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... terrified him when a child. He started in his sleep, and frightened the family with his cries. He saw evil spirits in monstrous shapes and fiends blowing flames out of their nostrils. 'Once,' says a biographer, who knew him well, and had heard the story of his visions from his own lips, 'he dreamed that he saw the face of heaven as it were on fire, the firmament crackling and shivering with the noise of mighty thunder, and an archangel flew in the midst of heaven, sounding a trumpet, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... according to the portrait of him given by his biographer Washington Irving, was a tall man, of robust and noble presence. His face was long, he had an aquiline nose, high cheek bones, eyes clear and full of fire; he had a bright complexion, and his face was much covered with freckles. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... CAMPBELL'S conscientious biographer appears to have felt that the value of this charming account of his interview with HERSCHEL was in its report of astronomical facts and opinions, and he adds a foot-note to explain that "HERSCHEL'S opinion never amounted to more than hypothesis ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... was natural enough in the first years of a supremely happy marriage, crowning an early manhood in which love of any kind had, for better or worse, played hardly any part at all. Yet almost nothing in these beautiful and often brilliant lyrics is in any strict sense personal. The biographer who searches them for traits quivering with intimate experience searches all but in vain. Browning's own single and supreme passion touched no fountain of song, such as love sets flowing in most poets and in many who are not poets: even the memorable months of 1845-46 provoked ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... man of letters is not as a rule eventful. It may be rich in spiritual experiences, but it seldom is rich in active adventure. We ask his biographer to tell us what were his habits of composition, how he talked, how he bore himself in the discharge of his duties to his family, his neighbors, and himself; what were his beliefs on the great questions that concern humanity. We desire to know what he said and wrote, not what he ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... "I am glad I am not an Englishman, or as true as the world, a chap like Lord John Russell would ruin me for ever. I am not a poet, and can't write poetry, but I am a Clockmaker, and write common sense. Now a biographer like that man, that knows as little of one as he does of the other, would ruin me for everlastingly. It ain't pleasant to have such a burr as that stick on to your tail, especially if you have no comb ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to assist, conjointly with my three brothers, Moses, Raphael, and Mazliakh, and five sisters, in providing for the maintenance of the family." Moses, the eldest of his brothers, died at the age of thirty-two, and Joseph (the biographer) entered the business of Sabbati Zevi Morini of Pesaro. Being prosperous in his commercial pursuits, he provided for his sisters, probably by giving to each of them a suitable dowry. One of them, Flaminia by name, became the ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... certainly written the Life of Ralegh from fuller information than any previous biographer. He is intelligent, industrious, sympathetic: and the world has in his two volumes larger means afforded it of knowing Ralegh than it ever possessed before. The new letters and the newly-edited old letters are in themselves ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... of January 8th, 1732/3. From these letters we learn that Swift was really invited by Walpole to meet him. Swift's visit to England concerned itself mainly with the publication of "Gulliver's Travels," but Sir Henry Craik thinks that Swift had other thoughts. "As regards politics," says this biographer, "he was encouraged to hope that without loss either of honour or consistency, it was open to him to make terms with the new powers. In the end, the result proved that he either over-estimated his own capacity of surrendering his independence, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Lucius Brady, his biographer to be, that Stingaree confided the data of all the misdeeds recounted in these pages; but of his life during the quiet intervals, of his relations with confederates, and his more honest dealings with honest folk (of which many a pretty tale ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... obliged to make frequent visits to England, where his friendship with Lanfranc was renewed, and where he made the acquaintance of distinguished prelates and abbots and churchmen, among others of Eadmer, his future biographer. It seems that he also won the hearts of the English nobility by his gentleness and affability, so that they rendered to him uncommon attentions, not only as a great ecclesiastic who had no equal in learning, but as a man whom they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... portrait to posterity, it must either be the likeness of some celebrated individual, or it must represent a face which, independently of peculiar associations, corresponds with the universal ideas of beauty. So the pen of the biographer should portray only those who 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 ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... for her biographer to answer off-hand. Lettice, as we know, had admitted into her heart a feeling of sympathetic tenderness for Alan, which, under other circumstances, she would have accepted as worthy to dominate her life and dictate its moods and duties. But the man for whom this ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... treasonable practices of Oldcastle and his adherents, and that he was anxious to deal as mercifully with his enemies as would be consistent with a due regard to the peace and safety of the realm; and his biographer considers this as all which legitimately falls within his province. Whether Oldcastle himself were on that night in St. Giles' Field, is now a question probably beyond the reach of certain conclusion. The King's pardon to Longacre ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as referring to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives him a right to be placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits which will ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Egypt, were set to make bricks without straw), with very slight materials to describe the life of one who died when I was sixteen, and whom I loved from his unvaried kindness to me, of the life of one who, had he lived, would have had a far abler biographer. Henry, in early life, took a propensity to and entered the navy, and was a midshipman in the battle of the Nile, but soon after, disliking the service, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... at this period occurred. In the year 1780, and at the age of eighty-four, he married his third wife, and was severely afflicted that a miscarriage of the Duchess destroyed his hopes of another Cardinal de Richelieu; for to that eminence he destined the child of his age. His biographer adds, that the Duchess was an affectionate and attentive wife, notwithstanding that her octogenarian husband tried her ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... his income was small, he managed somehow to provide private tutors for them. Both he and his wife were earnest Christians, and the fine example of their own lives was no doubt of greater value to their boys than the formal instruction they received from hired teachers. Thus an early biographer of the Brorsons writes: "Their good parents earnestly instructed their boys in all that was good, but especially in the fear and knowledge of God. Knowing that a good example is more productive of good than the best precept, they were not content ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... infirmity of leaving works unfinished, and suffering reactions of disgust. But Coleridge taxed himself with that infirmity in verse before he could at all have commenced opium-eating. Besides, it is too much assumed by Coleridge and by his biographer, that to leave off opium was of course to regain juvenile health. But all opium-eaters make the mistake of supposing every pain or irritation which they suffer to be the product of opium. Whereas a wise man will say, suppose you do leave off opium, that will not deliver you from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... "The biographer who finds such material before him as the lives and characters of the Bronte family need have no anxiety as to the interest of his work. Characters not only strong but so uniquely strong, genius so supreme, misfortunes so overwhelming, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... engages a composer to write an opera for the opening of the season, which generally consists of twenty or thirty nights, during which period seldom more than two operas are performed. The first night of one of these seasons is most amusingly described by the biographer of Rossini. "The theatre overflows, the people flock from ten leagues' distance; the curious form an encampment round the theatre in their calashes; all the inns are filled to excess, where insolence reigns at its height. All occupations have ceased; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... author of the "Theory of Chess," (1799) a work referred to by Professor Allen, the biographer of Philidor as "the most divertingly absurd of all chess books." Some idea of the plan and style of the work may be obtained from the following extract from the author's preface: "The game of chess, though generally ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... the most attractive branches of natural history. Wilson was the pioneer; Ord, his biographer, followed, and his friend Titian Peale; Audubon is universally known, and stands preeminent; and the learned Nuttall and excellent and enthusiastic Townsend are much respected. Most of these men ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... club met at the Turk's Head from 1763 to 1783. Among the most notable members were Johnson, the arbiter of English prose; Oliver Goldsmith; Boswell, the biographer; Burke, the orator; Garrick, the actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. Among the later members were Gibbon, the historian; and Adam Smith, the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... desecrate the reticent and consistent tone of the work, pervert its spirit, and detract from its harmonious attraction and truth. A greater or more indecent and unjustifiable liberty was never taken by a publisher with a foreign work; it was an insult to the memory of Washington Irving, to his biographer and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... take high rank among the martyrs of learning. After a brilliant school career at Gloucester, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where, says his biographer, "he did so philosophise, as it might be observed, he was determined more by Reason than Authority"; and this dangerous beginning he shortly followed up, when master of the Free School at Gloucester, by the still more dangerous conclusion that the common doctrine of the Trinity ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... they are vague and often unsuspected. The psychologists, whose pretensions are so great and whose actual results are still so small, may perhaps lead, an age or two hence, to the desired knowledge. But the biographer of today must beware of adopting the unripe formulas of any immature science. Nevertheless, he must watch, study, and record all the facts pertaining to his subject, although he cannot explain them. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... patiently under him, like a sensible man, just because he is Leicester's friend. Some modern gentleman of note—I forget who, and do not care to recollect—says that Raleigh's 'prudence never bore any proportion to his genius.' The next biographer we open accuses him of being too calculating, cunning, timeserving; and so forth. Perhaps both are true. The man's was a character very likely to fall alternately into either sin—doubtless did so a hundred times. Perhaps both are false. ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Mr. Stiggins, to be a 'swellin' wisibly.'" The Brave Baron challenges PERCY to mortal combat on this issue, defying him to prove that Mr. Stiggins was ever described within the limits of Pickwick, as "swellin' wisibly." Will the erudite biographer of Bradshaw be surprised to learn, that, in the first place, the description "swellin' wisibly" was never applied to Mr. Stiggins at all, but was used by Mr. Weller senior, as illustrating the condition of a "young ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... illogicality of any argument drawn from their failure to establish the point he is hammering at, he all at once says, with the most astounding assumption, "having shown that much of what his [Thomson's] biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in fact, have been blind wonderment—how is the rest to be accounted for?" "Having shown"!!! Why, he has shown nothing but his own arrogance in supposing that his mere ipse dixit will be taken by the whole ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the source of all art, that everyone here who is more distinguished than the others has been to Paris. We go to Paris with baskets on our backs, and sticks in our hands, and bring back what we can pick up. And having lived immersed in art till you're forty, you return to the Catholic Celt! Your biographer will be puzzled to explain this last episode, and, however he may explain it, it will seem ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... novel, nor even because in its hero we have to regret an 'inheritor of unfulfilled renown.' It is not the genius so much as the character of this St. Andrews student which has won the sympathy of his biographer, and may win, he hopes, the sympathy of others. In Mr. Murray I feel that I have lost that rare thing, a friend; a friend whom the chances of life threw in my way, and withdrew again ere we had time and opportunity for perfect recognition. ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... likewise, in a letter to Humboldt regarding his Faust, which occupied him for sixty years, full of interruptions and gaps: "The difficulty has been to get through strength of will what is really to be gotten only by a spontaneous act of nature." Zola, according to his biographer, Toulouse, "imagines a novel, always starting out with a general idea that dominates the work; then, from induction to induction, he draws out of it the characters ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... great council or congress which had been called by the revolutionist Bolivar, now President of Colombia. The project appealed strongly to Clay. A league of young republics in the New World to offset the Holy Alliance in Europe was, as his biographer remarks, "one of those large, generous conceptions well calculated to fascinate his ardent mind." The imagination of the President was not so easily touched: he instructed Clay to inquire more particularly into the purposes ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... this great episode, truly the turning point in American history, without pausing for a glance at the character of Seward. The subject is elusive. His ablest biographer* plainly is so constantly on guard not to appear an apologist that he ends by reducing his portrait to a mere outline, wavering across a background of political details. The most recent study of Seward** surely reveals between ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... "Yet," responded No.2, "some of those old-times people were very enterprising. There was that great traveller Robinson Crusoe: ye must confess he was a great man for his time." "The same who wint to the South Sea Islands and settled there?" asked the first biographer. "The "very same ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... perhaps be admitted, is not very good art-criticism. Though in justice to its author it must be said that he did not wish to be regarded as Keene's critic as well as biographer. ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... have been burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were formed; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been despondent. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only the landmarks and shrines which have disappeared,—the last as these lines are being written, being Clifford's Inn,—while Mr. Tulkinghorn's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, redolent of Dickens and Forster, his biographer, is doomed, as also the Good Words offices in Wellington Street, where Dickens spent so much of his time in the later years of his life. The famous "Gaiety" is about to be pulled down, and the "old Globe" has already gone from this street of taverns, as well as of letters, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... that nothing which the world could give Him was worth having. Strangest thing of all in one who must have been conscious of His own genius, and of the value of His teachings to mankind, He made not the least effort to perpetuate these teachings. He wrote no book, provided no biographer, did none of those things which the humblest man of genius does to ensure that distant generations shall comprehend and appreciate his character and message. He was content to speak His deepest truths to casual listeners. He spent ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... like manner, (we quote from the same biographer,) "was a stranger to every evil and malignant passion; and, indeed, was not much under the influence of passion of any sort. But his disposition was cheerful and gentle, and his heart was brimful of kindly affections. He was friendly and benevolent, open and candid in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... see later on, were at one time somewhat strained; but the years had softened his asperity, and this indirect tribute to his brother composer may readily be accepted as a set-off to some things that the biographer of the greater genius would ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... "I should compliment you on the completeness of the picture you paint of me. When I need a biographer, I'll call on you. Just now I have another business proposition. I understand you know the location of some ancient Martian mine-workings. You need a partner. I'm ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... whether this may not be Walt Whitman's "secret," or, at any rate, the spiritual experience of which the poet's latest biographer, Mr. Emory Holloway, writes? His interesting account of Walt Whitman's Manuscript Note-Books is ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... in the road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned towards his flying companion a face of peculiar peace and benignity. Evan's mind went through a crisis of instantaneous casuistry, in which it may be that he decided wrongly; but about how he decided his biographer can profess no doubt. Two minutes afterwards he had overtaken Turnbull and told the tale; ten minutes afterwards he and Turnbull had somehow tumbled into the yacht called the Gibson Girl and had somehow pushed off from the ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... and had he acted upon it with his inherent tact and skill, taking advantage of fair occasions to prove the power and substance that were in him, it would greatly have facilitated the task of his biographer. ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Epicurean, and Peripatetic systems; giving, however, an exclusive preference to the Pythagorean, which he studied with Euxenus of Heraclea, a man, however, whose life ill accorded with the ascetic principles of his Sect. At the early age of sixteen years, according to his biographer, he resolved on strictly conforming himself to the precepts of Pythagoras, and, if possible, rivalling the fame of his master. He renounced animal food and wine; restricted himself to the use of linen garments and sandals made of the bark of trees; suffered his ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... this life nineteen years before him. The story of his romantic after marriage, and many details of his career from birth to death, will be found in Mr. O. B. Frothingham's "Life of George Ripley," told by his kindly biographer. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Speaking roughly, the whole duchy was but forty miles square, and the larger portion consisted of bare hillsides and ruinous ravines. Yet this poor territory became the center of a splendid court. 'Federigo,' says his biographer, Muzio, 'maintained a suite so numerous and distinguished as to rival any royal household.' The chivalry of Italy flocked to Urbino in order to learn manners and the art of war from the most noble general of his day. 'His household,' we hear from Vespasiano, 'which consisted of 500 mouths ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... that the "literary" letter—the kind of letter that can be published—is no longer with us. But the old letter of ceremony was not really more useful than a powdered wig, and as for the sort of letter that delights the heart and lightens the labor of the biographer—well, that is still being written by the kind of person who can write it. It is better that a letter should be written because the writer has something to say than as a token of culture. Some of the letters of our dead great do ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... was styled, to take up privateering was Nathaniel Tracy, the son of a Newburyport merchant. College bred, as were most of the sons of rich merchants, he started out at the age of 25 with a number of privateers, and for many years returned flushed with prizes. To quote his appreciative biographer: "He lived in a most magnificent style, having several country seats or large farms with elegant summer houses and fine fish ponds, and all those matters of convenience or taste that a British nobleman might ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... my friends die with me." Conjugal affection was the feeling that clung to his heart; and when he had taken his last farewell of his wife, he said, "The bitterness of death is now over." He suffered the sentences of his judges with resignation and composure. Some of his expressions (says his biographer) imply much good-humour in this last extremity. The day before his execution, he was seized with a bleeding at the nose. "I shall not now let blood to divert this distemper," said he to Burnet, who was present; "that will be done ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... estimation, with the master minds of all nations—with Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. He has arisen above the prejudices of the great and fashionable; and the learned and aristocratic Southey has sought to be the biographer of his sorrows and the expounder of his visions. The proud bishops who disdained him, the haughty judges who condemned him, are now chiefly known as his persecutors, while he continues to be more honored and extolled ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the pits of his dangerous deductive method. I don't present this as Mr. ELLIOT'S view. He is respectful-critical, and makes perhaps the best case for his old master's claim to greatness out of the assumption that SPENCER himself, stark enemy to authority and dogmatism, would have preferred his biographer's critical examination to any mere "master's-voice" reproduction of Spencerian doctrine. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... Muther, art-critic and biographer, calls our attention to the similarity between Wagner's music and Bocklin's painting. While Wagner was "luring the colours of sound from music," Bocklin's "symphonies of colour streamed forth like a crashing ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... as well as in the general respect and esteem of Scotland at large. His "Life of Beattie," whom he befriended and patronised in life, as well as celebrated after his decease, was not long published, before the benevolent and affectionate biographer was called to follow the subject of his narrative. This melancholy event very shortly succeeded the marriage of the friend, to whom this introduction is addressed, with one of ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... law; but, like our own inimitable Shakspere, he picked up "small Latin and less Greek." Having shown an early inclination for painting, they placed him under the tuition of Jacob Van Zwaanenburg, a painter unmentioned by any biographer; he afterwards entered the studio of Peter Lastman, and finally received instruction from Jacob Pinas. The two last had visited Rome, but, notwithstanding, could have given little instruction to Rembrandt, as their works show no proof of their having studied the Italian ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... Territorial Legislature, the Constitutional Convention, and the State Senate. The younger James Lemen was on terms of intimacy with Abraham Lincoln at Springfield, and {p.09} his cousin, Ward Lamon, was Lincoln's early associate in the law, and also his first biographer. Various representatives of the family in later generations have attained success as farmers, physicians, teachers, ministers, and lawyers throughout southern Illinois and ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... Theatre. "Quite an opera pit," he said to Charles Lamb, conducting him over the benches of that establishment, described by Lamb as "the last retreat of his every-day waning grandeur." The following letter—the authenticity of which seems to be vouched for by the actor's biographer—supplies a different view of the Surrey ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... angelical, but might also be diabolical temptations to spiritual pride. Thus the blasphemous followers of Gibb were surrounded by a bright light, no less than pious Mr. Welsh, a very distinguished Presbyterian minister. Indeed, this was taken advantage of by Mr. Welsh's enemies, who, says his biographer Kirkton, 'were so bold as to call him no less than a wizard'. When Mr. Shields and Mr. John Dickson were imprisoned on the Bass Rock, and Mr. Shields was singing psalms in his cell, Mr. Dickson peeping ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... permit the chamberlain to stage-manage it, there are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human. The biographies of great people fall more or less readily into the histories of these two selves. The official biographer reproduces the public life, the revealing memoir the other. The Charnwood Lincoln, for example, is a noble portrait, not of an actual human being, but of an epic figure, replete with significance, who moves on much the same level of reality as Aeneas or St. George. Oliver's Hamilton is a majestic ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... of seven devils. Luther's religious opinions were, of course, quite apart from his physical state, sound or unsound. Still, even with him the reality of supernatural intercourse became intensely vivid as a result of nervous affections. His latest biographer points out that as a youth while in the monastery he was seized with something that might well have been an epileptic fit, and that although there is no record of a return of this, he did suffer from ordinary fits of fainting.[58] ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... visits Florence, perhaps summoned thither to answer charges made against her by certain in the Order. She returns to Siena to minister to the plague-stricken. She meets at this time Fra Raimondo of Capua, her Confessor and biographer. Her gradual induction into public affairs is accompanied by growing sorrow over ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... forty men. The commander of the Presbyterian, or rather Convenanting party, was Mr Robert Hamilton, of the honourable House of Preston, brother of Sir William Hamilton, to whose title and estate he afterwards succeeded; but, according to his biographer, Howie of Lochgoin, he never took possession of either, as he could not do so without acknowledging the right of King William (an uncovenanted monarch) to the crown. Hamilton had been bred by Bishop Burnet, while the latter lived at Glasgow; his brother, Sir Thomas, having married a ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the Bronte story can give no idea of its undying interest, its exceeding pathos. Their life as told by their biographer Mrs Gaskell is as interesting as any novel. Their achievement, however, will stand on its own merits. Anne Bronte's two novels, it is true, though constantly reprinted, survive principally through the exceeding vitality of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... antiquary; it was this which animated his page with picture and his narrative with interesting vivacity; above all, it was this temperament, which invested him with that sympathy with his subject, which made him the most delightful biographer in our language. In a word, it was because he was a poet, that he was a popular writer, and made belles-lettres charming to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to queen Elizabeth, he did not know a worse man in the whole band than himself; yet he was then in possession of an inheritance of four thousand a year. "It was the constant custom of that queen," pursues the earl's biographer, "to call out of all counties of the kingdom, the gentlemen of the greatest hopes and the best fortunes and families, and with them to fill the more honorable rooms of her household servants, by which she honored them, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... biographer, exerted an influence upon his character only second to that of his father. She married her cousin, M. Périer, also of a Parliamentary family, and Counsellor of the Court of Aides at Clermont. She was alike beautiful and accomplished, a student of mathematics, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... written by Washington to Lodges are spurious. This is rendered nearly certain: First, by the non-production of the originals: Second, by the absence of copies among the records of his letters: Third, by their want of dates: Fourth, by the fact that his intimate friend and biographer, Chief Justice Marshall,[81] (himself a Mason in his youth,) says that he never heard Washington utter a syllable on the subject, a matter nearly impossible, if Washington had for years been engaged in writing laudatory ...
— Washington's Masonic Correspondence - As Found among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress • Julius F. Sachse
... have been burned, and where he died peaceably in 1836, when he was eighty-one years old. He is described as a tall, handsome man, of an erect figure and carriage, a fair complexion, and a most attractive countenance. "He had," his biographer tells us, "a soft, tremulous voice, very pleasing to the hearer, and laughing gray eyes that appeared to fascinate the beholder," except in his rare moments of anger, when their fiery glance would curdle the blood of those who had roused his wrath. He was above all the heroes of Ohio ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Baroness von Kielmansegg had decided to go to England. She was in high favour with George, and took every advantage of her influence. She left an immense fortune, which was acquired in ways into which an eulogistic biographer of the lady would not enquire. Certainly, she received for her good offices large sums of money from the promoters of the South Sea Act, she accepted bribes to secure peerages, and, it is said on the authority of Sir ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... you know what they might have been, and they seem to you witty beyond comparison. In my Grandfather I've had (for instance) to give up the temporal order almost entirely; doubtless the temporal order is the great foe of the biographer; it is so tempting, so easy, and lo! there you are in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mendoza had some reason for his arrogance. At twenty years of age, when sent by his father to Chile at the head of his force, he had already distinguished himself by his bravery, and, according to one biographer, had already fought in Corsica, Tuscany, Flanders, and in France. Even in that age there were not many who could boast of having effected all this when still in their teens. It was little wonder that he was high-spirited, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... martyrdom of chronic disease, can fully appreciate his energy, or sympathize with his difficulties. Better than all this is his unwavering trust in God, from his boyhood to the day of his early death. Here was the secret of his joyfulness. His biographer well remarks, "Beyond all doubt the inalienable treasure and guarantee of cheerfulness, being reconciliation to God, was in that heart, whose pulsations are still beating in the leaves of this book. In his sky the star of hope was always in the ascendant. The aspect which life had ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... by his biographer that Marcus Aurelius had a face that never changed—for joy or sorrow, "being an adherent," he adds, "of the Stoic philosophy." The pose of superiority to emotion was not uncommonly held in those times to be the mark of a sage—Horace's "nil admirari". ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... dark pockets of a travelling bag. I listened in wonder and astonishment, behind my newspaper, to stories of myself, which if they had been true would have consigned any man to a prison for life. After my fictitious biographer had occupied himself for nearly an hour with the eloquent recital of my delinquencies and crimes, I very quietly joined in the conversation. Of course I began by modestly doubting some statements which I had just heard, touching the author of 'Bleak House,' and other unimportant ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... run parallel to one another, beginning and ending at odd times. They mutually interlace and interfere at points, but we cannot unify them completely in our minds. In following your life-history, I must temporarily turn my attention from my own. Even a biographer of twins would have to press them ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... indicated by the historian is told at length in the opening chapters of the present work and, so far as is known, nowhere else. The inference is therefore unavoidable that we have here "The Graal, the Book of the Holy Vessel" to which the biographer of Fulke refers. The use, moreover, of the definite article shows that the writer held this book to be conclusive authority on the subject. By the time he retold the story of Fulke, a whole library of Romances about Perceval and the Holy Graal had been written, ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... countrymen! KNOW one another, and you will LOVE one another." In 1876 he made an extended argument for the Centennial bill, an eloquent plea AGAINST the old States'-rights arguments. "He poured out," says his biographer, "an exposition of nationalism and constitutionalism which equaled in effect one of Webster's masterpieces." "As a representative of the South," Lamar said at a later time, "I felt myself, with my Southern associates, to be a joint ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... it is impossible to avoid disappointment at the grossness of the jesting. No thought, no word raised it above the low level of the audience made up of the laborers on the farms and the loungers in the groceries. The biographer who has made public "The First Chronicles of Reuben" deserves to be held ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... and Hasid, for in mental and moral attainments he was unique in his generation. As the Besht was noted in his early life for dulness and indifference, so Elijah was remarkable for diligence and versatility. His life, like the Besht's, became the nucleus of many wonderful tales, which his biographer narrates with painstaking exactness. They present the picture of a man diametrically different from Israel Baal Shem Tob. Every year, we are told, added to the marvellous development of the young intellectual giant. When he was six years old, none but Rabbi Moses ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... and lodged and feasted by the worthy owner for three days. The honour thus shown to Gresham is only one more proof of the esteem and respect in which he was universally held by all parties, and, "in truth," as his biographer justly remarks,(1612) "his great experience, his long and familiar intercourse with men of all grades and professions, from princes and nobles—with whom ... he was on as intimate a footing as the impassable barrier of rank will ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... and damask doublet with crimson sleeves. In the National Gallery we possess his own portrait by himself, in company with Cardinal de Medici. The faces are well contrasted, and we judge from Sebastian's that his biographer describes him justly, as fat, indolent, and given to self-indulgence, but genial and ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... Voss, that a public lecture of Moestlin, the instructor of Kepler, was the means of making Galileo acquainted with the true system of the universe. This assertion, however, is by no means probable; and it has been ably shown, by the latest biographer of Galileo,[5] that, in his dialogues on the Copernican system, our author gives the true account of his own conversion. This passage is so interesting, that ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... valueless, for all that. I can no more write a story than compose a picture." The final statement may be taken for what it is worth, written as it was at a time of disillusionment. The first part of Ruskin's analysis is certainly true and has been thus expanded by his biographer, Sir E. T. Cook: "The grotesque and the German setting of the tale were taken from Grimm; from Dickens it took its tone of pervading kindliness and geniality. The Alpine ecstasy and the eager pressing of the moral were Ruskin's own; and so also is the style, delicately ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... His biographer asserts that Bernini, the celebrated Florentine artist, architect, painter and poet, once gave a public opera in Rome, for which he painted the scenes, composed the music, wrote the poem, carved the statues, invented the engines, and built the theater. Because of his versatile ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... The identification is not without difficulties and it has been suggested that the town is really Negapatam. The Life of the pilgrim says that it was on the coast, but he does not say so himself and his biographer may have been mistaken.] ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Pope have been discussed in a literature more voluminous than that which exists in the case of almost any other English man of letters. No biographer, however, has produced a definitive or exhaustive work. It seems therefore desirable to indicate the main authorities upon which such a biographer would have to rely, and which have been consulted for the purpose of the following ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Mark Twain's death his various literary effects passed into the hands of his biographer and literary ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... years of his life, his thoughts seem to have been much directed to religious subjects; and he kept what he entitled a "self-controlling journal," in which he registered his thoughts. We have probably reason to regret that the scrupulous delicacy of his biographer has hitherto withheld it from the public. The few sentences transcribed from it, give a strong conception of the piety and clear-headedness of the noble author. They were written within a fortnight of his death. They describe him as "having completed his 74th year, and having ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... complex impressions, influences, and shaping factors of destiny that any biographer discerns in the formative years of his subject are as indecipherable as a palimpsest, and as little to be classified as the contents of Pandora's box; nor is it on record that the man himself can look ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... disobliging to lay very much stress on the fact that, after all, the greatest of Richardson's works is his successor, caricaturist, and superior—Fielding. When the memoirs of Miss Pamela Andrews appeared, the future biographer of her doubly supposititious brother was a not very young man of thirty-three, who had written a good many not very good plays, had contributed to periodicals, and had done a little work at the Bar, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... entertainingly about this group. As far as I can make out, it was almost entirely female. When a book came out called A Girl among the Anarchists, G. B. S. was provoked to a sort of explosive reminiscence. "A girl among the anarchists!" he exclaimed to his present biographer; "if they had said 'A man among the anarchists' it would have been more of an adventure." He is ready to tell other tales of this eccentric environment, most of which does not convey an impression of a very bracing atmosphere. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the one in which Johnson and his biographer lodged. Burns came sixteen years later, and wrote on the pane of his bedroom window the scandalous epigram on Inveraray so often quoted. The present Duke (who has perpetrated a fair amount of poetry himself) would give much of his odd cash to recover that pane, which ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... good-natured critics, and enrolled for better or worse in the brotherhood of muscular Christians, who at that time were beginning to be recognised as an actual and lusty portion of general British life. As his biographer, I am not about to take exception to his enrolment; for, after considering the persons up and down Her Majesty's dominions to whom the new nick-name has been applied, the principles which they are supposed to hold, and the sort of lives they are supposed to lead; ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Cusa, see also Heller, vol. i, p. 216. For Aristotle's views, and their elaboration by St. Thomas Aquinas, see the De Coelo et Mundo, sec. xx, and elsewhere in the latter. It is curious to see how even such a biographer as Archbishop Vaughan slurs over the angelic Doctor's errors. See Vaughan's Life and Labours of St. Thomas of Aquin, pp. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Red Jacket took in this battle, though by no means conspicuous, was such as to call forth from an early biographer the affirmation, that "he displayed the most undaunted intrepidity, and completely redeemed his character from the suspicion of that unmanly weakness, with which he had been charged in early life; while in no instance did he exhibit the ferocity of the savage, or disgrace himself, by any ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... frank biographer, and an honest one; she uses no sand-paper on me. I have, to this day, the same dull head in the matter of conundrums and perplexities which Susy had discovered in those long-gone days. Complexities annoy me; they irritate me; then this progressive feeling presently ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... 1862 he published an "Ecclesiastical Cyclopaedia of antiquities, architecture, controversies, denominations, doctrines, governments, heresies, history, liturgies, rights, monastic orders, and modern Judaism." As the biographer of the well-known and esteemed Dr. Kitto, Dr. Eadie has also achieved a considerable reputation. Collected from papers furnished by Dr. Kitto's personal friends, this biography is perhaps one of the best and most interesting in the English literature, and it deservedly met with a very large circulation. ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... Bailie Nicol Jarvie never lived in the Saut Market in half such true flesh and blood as he does in Rob Roy. At all events, the inimitable Bailie is known to the universe at large by the additions made to his real character by the prodigal hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous contrasts in which he is placed with the caterans and reivers of the hills. In the city of Glasgow he was looked upon, and justly, as an honour to the gude town—consulted on all difficult matters, and famous for his knowledge of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... is a curious fact that the biographer of Hablot K. Browne is altogether silent on his Punch work, although it lasted with intervals over a quarter of a century. The particulars of this work are referred to further on, when Punch's ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... infinitesimal way; but it is a blessing for the world that his influence was confined to a very small corner of the then civilized world, and that others of broader views succeeded him to manage the affairs of states and nations. With all deference to old Plutarch, the biographer of Lycurgus, we wish to say that however grand the laws of this man may have been as ideals, they were utter ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... at his command, Morse now earnestly resumed the experiments, which a few months later resulted so successfully. Referring to the homeward voyage from Europe, in 1832, his biographer says: ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... it appears, "enlisted the Harts and others in an enterprise which his own genius planned," says Peck, the personal acquaintance and biographer of Boone, "and then encouraged several hunters to explore the country and learn where the best lands lay." Just why Henderson and his associates did not act sooner upon the reports brought back by the hunters—Boone and Scaggs and Callaway, who ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... (says his biographer, BERMUDEZ,) that painters put their own portraits in their works, that is to say, that they exhibit their own genius, their propensities, affections, and the dispositions of their minds in them, the pictures ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various |
