American Biographer Quotes

No honest historian can take part with — or against — the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should be merely a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.

All the great people and great things in life are failures. It is in doing what we cannot do but must try to do that humans rise to their exalted fulfillment. Maglie had tried to do with an old man's arm and back what a young man might not have been able to do as well. Of such failures is greatness made.

Here lies the tremendous mystery - that God should be all-powerful, yet refuse to coerce. He summons us to cooperation. We are honored in being given the opportunity to participate in his good deeds. Remember how He asked for help in performing his miracles: Fill the water pots, stretch out your hand, distribute the loaves.

Elisabeth Elliot

If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am?

John Lancaster Spalding

Jobs did not know that Sculley had told Eisenstat he wanted to quit, but by then it didn't matter. Overnight, he had changed his mind and decided to stay. Despite the blowup the day before, he was still eager for Jobs to like him. So he agreed to meet the next afternoon.

Walter Isaacson

Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him-the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Dodgson of course was a meticulous traveler. He packed each article separately, well wrapped in paper to twice its bulk.

Florence Becker Lennon

Criticism prevents art from forgetting, prevents it from sinking into conformity.

I would rather be disliked for who I am than to be respected for who I'm not.

The problem with winning at blackjack and sports betting is that sooner or later a big guy in a suit tells you to leave.

William Poundstone

You think she's warm, but she's really quite aloof. She gives it all to the camera.

To be a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact, patience, and thoroughness of a scholar but the stamina of a horse.

We must be willing to change chairs if we want to grow. There is no permanent compatibility between a chair and a person. And there is no one right chair. What is right at one stage may be restricting at another or too soft. During the passage from one stage to another, we will be between two chairs. Wobbling no doubt, but developing.

Between the villages of Aubiere and Romagnat in the ancient Province of Auvergne there is an old road that comes suddenly over the top of a high hill. To stand south of this ridge looking up at the highway flowing over the skyline is to receive one of those irrefutable impressions from landscape which requires more than a philosopher to explain. In this case it is undoubtedly, for some reason, one of exalted expectation.

Lincoln's removal from New Salem to Springfield and his entrance into a law partnership with Major John T. Stuart begin a distinctively new period in his career.

John George Nicolay

The biographer must be close enough to sympathize, but far enough away to see clearly, to explain but not to defend or attack. He is literature's high-wire performer. A false step this way or that and he loses his balance — and his book.

Gerald Clarke (author)

What you're looking at there is my arm, going into the rock... and there it is - stuck. It's been without circulation for 24 hours. It's pretty well gone.

You should climb around inside my brain, Dan. It's like this dark room surrounded by quicksand." "I know what you mean," her brother said quietly. "I hate being in my brain sometimes. I have to get out." "What do you do?" Amy asked. Dan shrugged "I go to other places. My toes. My shoulders. But mostly here." He tapped his chest and immediately reddened. "I know. It's stupid." "Not really," Amy said. "I wish I could do that, too.

If you trace up Masonry, through all its Orders, till you come to the grand tip-top head Mason of the World, you will discover that the dread individual and the Chief of the Society of Jesus [i.e., the Superior General of the Jesuit Order] are one and the same person.

Trust is established by working around horses in an utterly predictable manner.

Night fell clean and cold in Dublin, and wind moaned beyond my room as if a million pipes played the air.

Patricia Cornwell

When will the dead world cease to dream,
When will the morning break?

It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

Van Wyck Brooks

(All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadness)

I do not believe that the deeper problems of living can ever be answered by the process of thought. I believe that life itself teaches us either patience with regard to them, or reveals to us possible solutions when our hearts are pressed close against duties and sorrows and experiences of all kinds.

Hamilton Wright Mabie