Portal:Biography/Quote
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"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach."
In A Christmas Carol, 1843
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Quoted in Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton by Sir David Brewster, 1855
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
In Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding, 1748
"If I can stop one heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching
Or cool one pain
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again
I shall not live in vain."
"Blue Moon, now I'm no longer alone,
without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own."
Blue Moon, 1934
"Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage."
In The Spritual Life, 1947
"I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul."
In "J'accuse…!", L'Aurore January 13, 1898
"Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together."
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
"Foundation", Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
"Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful...
... the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken."
In The Answer, 1936
"…life will not perish! It will begin anew with love; it will start out naked and tiny; it will take root in the wilderness, and to it all that we did and built will mean nothing—our towns and factories, our art, our ideas will all mean nothing, and yet life will not perish! Only we have perished. Our houses and machines will be in ruins, our systems will collapse, and the names of our great will fall away like dry leaves. Only you, love, will blossom on this rubbish heap and commit the seed of life to the winds."
In R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), 1921
"For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen."
BT Group television advertisement (1993)
"There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in."
Quoted in State of the Ark by Lee Durrell
"When are you people going to learn? It's not about who's right or wrong. No denomination's nailed it yet, and they never will because they're all too self-righteous to realize that it doesn't matter what you have faith in, just that you have faith. Your hearts are in the right place, but your brains need to wake up. I have issues with anyone who treats faith as a burden instead of a blessing. You people don't celebrate your faith; you mourn it."
Said by the character Serendipity in Dogma
"From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space."
In Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852
"I think I'd most like to spend a day with Harry. I'd take him out for a meal and apologise for everything I've put him through."
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world."
Trademark of the Institute for Intercultural Studies
"It is better to debate a question, without deciding it, than to decide it, without debate."
In Pensées et correspondances
"Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't."
In Illusions, 1977
"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable."
Speech to the Democratic National Convention on August 26, 1996
"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
In The Diary of Anaïs Nin 1939–1944, published 1969
"He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave."
— Sir William Drummond of Logiealmond
In Academical Questions, 1805
"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition."
In Cosmos, 1980
"I bought some batteries, but they weren't included – so I had to buy them again."
From I Have a Pony, Warner Bros. Records CD (1985)
"The world is fast learning that of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him."
In An Address on Abraham Lincoln before the Republican Club of New York City, February 12, 1909
"Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe ... every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy."
Quoted by Anthony Peratt in The World & I, May 1988, pp. 190–197.
"Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old."
In Thoughts on Various Subjects
"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."
Said by the character Dumby in Act III of Lady Windermere's Fan
"Most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so."
In The ABC of Relativity, 1925
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?"
Apocryphal
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
Apocryphal
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."
In The Farmer Refuted, published 1775
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
On the steps of Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963
"There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death."
In Resignation, 1849
"Just how difficult it is to write a biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the truth about his or her love affairs."
In Vogue, 1 November 1952
"Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory."
In Contarini Fleming, 1832
"People always complain about muck-raking biographers saying 'Leave us our heroes.' 'Leave us our villains' is just as important."
In his Diary, 11 February 1996
"Beauty is momentary in the mind –
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body's beauty lives."
In Peter Quince at the Clavier, 1923
"I never did write a biography, and I don't exactly know how to set about it; you see I have to be accurate and keep to the facts, a most difficult thing for a writer of fiction."
Referring to her Life of Charlotte Brontë in a letter to Harriet Anderson, 15 March 1856
"Biography should be written by an acute enemy."
Quoted by S. K. Ratcliffe, The Observer, 30 January 1927
"Think, in this battered Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way."
In The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám
"The history of the world is but the biography of great men."
In Heroes and Hero Worship, 1840
"Discriminating brevity is a law of the right biographic method."
In Principles of Biography, 1911
"It is not histories I am writing, but lives; the most glorious deeds do not always indicate virtue or vice, but a small thing like a phrase or a jest often reveals more of a character than the bloodiest battles."
— Plutarch
"In history, so-called Great Men are but labels serving to give a name to historical events, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs that seems to them an act of their own free will is, in an historical sense, not free at all but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity."
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."
"The Art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about Maps,
But Biography is about Chaps."
In Biography for Beginners, 1905
"History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth."
Interviewed by George Plimpton in The Paris Review, Winter 1986
"Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands."
In The Garden of Proserpine, 1866
