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There ain't nothing that breaks up homes, country, and nations like somebody publishing their memoirs.
-Will Rogers
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I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.
-Philip Roth
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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
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Members rise from CMG (known sometimes in Whitehall as Call Me God) to KCMG (Kindly Call Me God) to GCMG (God Calls Me God).
-Anthony Sampson
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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 A. Samuelson
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He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.
-Friedrich von Schiller
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Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land.
This text appeared in the Seattle Sunday Star on Oct. 29, 1887, in a column by Dr. Henry A. Smith. Smith took notes as Seattle spoke and created this text in English from those notes.
-Chief Seattle
text of Chief Seattle's Treaty Oration (1854), "Originally published in the Seattle Sunday Star", October 29, 1887
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Autobiographies ought to begin with Chapter Two.
-Ellery Sedgwick
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The facts of a person's life will, like murder, come out.
-Norman Sherry
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What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?
-Logan Pearsall Smith
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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.
-C. H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon
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When the time for recognition of service to the nation in wartime comes to be considered, Bob Hope should be high on the list. This man drives himself and is driven. It is impossible to see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, can work so hard, and can be so effective. He works month after month at a pace that would kill most people.
-John Steinbeck
Once There Was A War, New York: Bantam, p.65., 1958
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The immense majority of human biographies are a gray transit between domestic spasm and oblivion.
-George Steiner
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Once in Persia reigned a king
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maxim true and wise,
Which he held before the eyes
Gave him counsel at a glance
Fit for every change and chance.
Solemn words, and these are they:
Even this shall pass away.
-Theodore Tilton
The King's Ring (All Things Shall Pass Away)
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Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
-Mark Twain
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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
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We all leave footprints in the sand, the question is, will we be a big heal, or a great soul.
-Source Unknown
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There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people, if he's any good.
-Source Unknown
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Your descendants shall gather your fruits.
-Virgil
Eclogues, no. 9, l. 50 (37 B.C.)
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For what is a poem, but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding. It is the deepest part of autobiography.
-Robert Penn Warren
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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
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Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
-Evelyn Waugh
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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
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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
La Table Ronde Human Personality, 1950
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All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.
-Rebecca West
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Books about Legacy
