All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
In this age of specialization, I sometimes think of myself as the last ‘generalist’ in economics, with interests that range from mathematical economics down to current financial journalism. My real interests are research and teaching…
—Paul Samuelson (1915–2009) American Economist
No matter how brilliant you are, if your style is too intense, most people will dismiss you.
—Marty Nemko (b.1950) American Career Coach
I suppose that everyone of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next.
—A. A. Milne (1882–1956) British Humorist, Playwright, Children’s Writer
February 13, 1951. No! I cannot claim that with the end of this notebook, of the notebook, all will be settled, that all will have been done. Perhaps I will have the desire to add to this again. To add something. To add. Perhaps. To add to this again at the last moment
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do—well, that’s Memoirs.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble.
—Charles Spurgeon (1834–92) English Baptist Preacher
Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
It isn’t that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history’s meaning.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
Even if I was well – I must make myself as good a Philosopher as possible. Now I have had opportunities of passing nights anxious and awake I have found other thoughts intrude upon me. If I should die, said I to myself, I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have lov’d the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember’d.
—John Keats (1795–1821) English Poet
Biography is: a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish Critic, Journalist, Philosopher
Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.
—Rebecca West (1892–1983) English Author, Journalist, Literary Critic
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–89) American Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic
Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
—Richard Feynman (1918–88) American Physicist
I don’t think anybody should write his autobiography until after he’s dead.
—Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) Polish-born American Film Producer, Businessperson
I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.
—Rene Descartes (1596–1650) French Mathematician, Philosopher
Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is rather like facing a psychoanalyst.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man’s name live for thousands of years. But above this level, far above, separated by an abyss, is the level where the highest things are achieved. These things are essentially anonymous.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
We all leave footprints in the sand, the question is, will we be a big heal, or a great soul.
—Unknown
Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.
—Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) British Historian, Poet, Critic
This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind… let it be something good.
—Unknown
The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn’t sit in the same room with me.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
I have not much interest in anyone’s personal history after the tenth year, not even my own. Whatever one was going to be was all prepared before that.
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American Short-Story Writer, Novelist
Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
If those gentlemen would let me alone I should be much obliged to them. I would say, as Shakespeare would say… “Sweet Friend, for Jesus sake forbear.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.
—Unknown
My Turn is the distilled bathwater of Mrs. Reagan’s life. It is for the most part sweetish, with a tart edge of rebuke, but disappointingly free of dirt or particulate matter of any kind.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form—it may be called fleeting or eternal—is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.
—Walter Benjamin
There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
History is the essence of innumerable biographies.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
That which resembles most living one’s life over again, seems to be to recall all the circumstances of it; and, to render this remembrance more durable, to record them in writing.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
I … am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.
—Isaac Asimov (1920–92) Russian-born American Writer, Scientist
There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
There will be some trouble about ‘biography’ because I have never troubled myself to supply particulars of my early life to any writer.
—Arthur Wing Pinero (1855–1934) English Playwright, Actor