Quotes by Women Biographers

Mary Shelley

Doris Lessing

Patricia Cornwell

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Mary Soames

Laura E. Richards

Kitty Kelley

Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain.

In the love affair, as in sculpture, poetry, and every other fine art, no lasting success can be achieved without skill.

Doris Langley Moore

For mothers who must earn, there is indeed no leisure time problem. The long hours of earning are increased by the hours of domestic labor, until no slightest margin for relaxation or change of thought remains.

Katharine Anthony

I eat till, honest, I felt every button on all my clo'es. The folks where we were stayin' were the old-fashioned hospitable kind; they didn't let you off till your jaws struck work and wouldn't wag no more.

Laura E. Richards

The past is our only real possession in life. It is the one piece of property of which time cannot deprive us; it is our own in a way that nothing else in life is. In a word, we are our past; we do not cling to it, it clings to us.

The facts of life are to the biographer what the text of a novel is to the critic.

Victoria Glendinning

Competition with a parent is doomed from the start: you're a loser if you fail, a traitor if you win.

She imagines herself clean as a fish,
evasive, solitary, dumb. Her prayer:
to make peace with her own monstrous nature.

Elaine Feinstein

Just as a child is born without fear, so is it born without prejudice. Prejudice, like fear, is acquired.

In things greate and extraordinary some perhaps will take notice of God's working, who either forgett or believe not that he takes as well a care and account of their smallest concernments...

Lucy Hutchinson

One of the penalties of longevity is that some of the dearest and most familiar faces depart, leaving gaps which cannot be filled.

Listening continuously and taking notes for an hour is an unusual cognitive experience for most young people. Professors should embrace — and even advertise — lecture courses as an exercise in mindfulness and attention building, a mental workout that counteracts the junk food of nonstop social media.

And even when success comes, as I am sure it will, bear in mind that there are more quiet and enviable joys than to be among the most sought after women at a ball...

Blanche Wiesen Cook

Sometimes I have a terrible feeling that I am dying not from the virus, but from being untouchable.

Measuring is one of the more practical uses of mathematics, but the ability and desire to measure aren't always wrapped up with the need to know useful answers.

The first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.

Mary Lee Settle

The part we play is not as we want it, but as we are made-with the genitals God gave us.

It's okay to be afraid. It's not okay to let the fear STOP you.

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.

When a book's pattern and the shape of its inner life is as plain to the reader as it is to the author -- then perhaps it is time to throw the book aside, as having had its day, and start again on something new.

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

I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.

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

I have switched on this modern laptop machine. And I have told myself that I must resist the temptation to start playing solitaire upon it.

Margaret Drabble

It is not good to repudiate the dead because then they do not leave you alone, they are like dogs that bark intermittently at night.