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date: 18 March 2025

Biography 

see also Autobiography
  1. And kept his heart a secret to the end
    From all the picklocks of biographers.
     
    of Robert E. Lee
    Stephen Vincent Benét 1898–1943 American poet and novelist: John Brown's Body (1928)
  2. The Art of Biography
    Is different from Geography.
    Geography is about Maps,
    But Biography is about Chaps.
     
    Edmund Clerihew Bentley 1875–1956 English writer: Biography for Beginners (1905) introduction
  3. A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
    Thomas Carlyle 1795–1881 Scottish historian and political philosopher: Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1838) ‘Jean Paul Friedrich Richter’
  4. Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.
    Benjamin Disraeli 1804–81 British Tory statesman and novelist; Prime Minister 1868, 1874–80: Contarini Fleming (1832) pt. 1, ch. 23; see Emerson
  5. There is properly no history; only biography.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–82 American philosopher and poet: Essays (1841) ‘History’; see Disraeli
  6. Many brave men lived before Agamemnon's time; but they are all, unmourned and unknown, covered by the long night, because they lack their sacred poet.
    Horace 65–8 bc Roman poet: Odes bk. 4, no. 9, l. 25
  7. 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 English poet, critic, and lexicographer: James Boswell Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) 31 March 1772
  8. Seek not to question other than
    The books I leave behind.
     
    Rudyard Kipling 1865–1936 English writer and poet: ‘The Appeal’ (1940)
  9. Lives of great men all remind us
    We can make our lives sublime,
    And, departing, leave behind us
    Footprints on the sands of time.
     
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807–82 American poet: ‘A Psalm of Life’ (1838)
  10. The biographer at work, indeed, is like the professional burglar.
    Janet Malcolm 1934–  American writer: Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (1994)
  11. Discretion is not the better part of biography.
    Lytton Strachey 1880–1932 English biographer: Michael Holroyd Lytton Strachey vol. 1 (1967) preface
  12. Then there is my noble and biographical friend who has added a new terror to death.
    on Lord Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors being written without the consent of heirs or executors
    Charles Wetherell 1770–1846 English lawyer and politician: Lord St Leonards Misrepresentations in Campbell's Lives of Lyndhurst and Brougham (1869); also attributed to Lord Lyndhurst (1772–1863)
  13. Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.
    Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet: Intentions (1891) ‘The Critic as Artist’ pt. 1